Emotions were running high in a packed Boston courtroom on October 6, 1993. The subject of the drama was Kathy Power, an ordinary looking middle-aged woman, but one with an extraordinary past.
In sentencing the former antiwar radical to eight-to-twelve years in prison, Judge Robert Banks said the negotiated sentence was not adequate for the crime, but he also said, “Some measure of justice, obviously, is better than justice denied.”
From high school valedictorian, to Brandeis University honors student, to ardent Vietnam War protester, to one of the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted, to fugitive wife and mother, and now to a prisoner, Kathy Power’s bizarre odyssey had come full circle.
Kathy Power
Katherine Ann Power was born in Denver in 1949, the third of seven children in a typical middle-class family. She won a scholarship to the private Catholic Maycrest Girls High School where she wrote a column for the Denver Post, won a Betty Crocker cooking award, and graduated at the top of her class. She received a full scholarship to the prestigious Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts.
Intellectually gifted, Kathy Power earned straight A’s in both high school and college. Many believe one of those A’s could have stood for “anti-American.”
Young Kathy
When Kathy headed east to begin her collegiate career in 1967, the Vietnam War was rapidly escalating.
At Brandeis, the sociology major joined the anti-war movement and became involved in radical underground politics; she attended many Students for a Democratic Society protest rallies and was active in the National Strike Information Center, a clearing house for nationwide student protests of American involvement in Southeast Asia.
Kathy Power, Circa 1970
Power’s Brandeis roommate, Susan Saxe, was also involved in antiwar politics, as was Stanley Bond, a convicted felon studying at Brandeis as part of a rehabilitation program for inmates of nearby Walpole Prison. The disillusioned former Army soldier had also been a helicopter pilot in Vietnam. When he returned home in 1965, he proceeded to commit twenty armed robberies over a three-month period.
The trio’s animosity escalated in April 1970, as President Nixon expanded the war into Cambodia. The boiling point came a few days later, on April 20, as four protesting students at Ohio’s Kent State University were shot to death by members of the National Guard.
For Power, Saxe, and Bond, words were no longer enough to symbolize their opposition to American activities in Vietnam; it was now time for action. The two bright college girls teamed with the convict and determined to overthrow the government. The chosen means was through armed force.
Susan Saxe and Stanley Bond
Like Bond, Robert Valeri and William “Lefty” Gilday had also served time for bank robbery. Gilday had been a minor-league pitcher before turning to major league robbery.
The convict-coed recruited his fellow felons into his plan to bring peace to America through violence.
Robert Valeri and William Gilday
On September 20, 1970, the three male cons, Stanley Bond, Lefty Gilday, and Robert Valeri, and the two female college students, Susan Saxe and Kathy Power, robbed a National Guard Armory in Newburyport, thirty-five miles northeast of Boston. They stole four-hundred rounds of ammunition, several high-powered weapons, and set fire to the facility, causing $125,000 in damages.
This heist, however, was only the warm-up robbery.
Heist Headlines
Three days later Bond, Valeri, and Saxe, brandishing weapons stolen from the Newburyport Armory, entered the State Street Bank & Trust in the Brighton section of Boston. Gilday, also armed, was assigned to watch the bank entrance from across the street. Power was parked a few blocks away in the switch car.
Armed with handguns, a shotgun, and a submachine gun, Bond, Valeri, and Saxe entered the bank at approximately 9:30 a.m. After firing a warning shot into the air, Bond gave the tellers bags and ordered them to place the money in them. While doing so, one teller pressed a silent alarm, alerting the police.
As officers approached the bank, Gilday, from the outside car, began shooting at them. One shot hit Patrolman Walter Schroeder, who, two years earlier, had helped thwart a similar robbery at the State Street Bank & Trust. The shot hit him in his back, rupturing his aorta. The forty-two-year-old lawman died following day.
Patrolman Walter Schroeder
Boston Police Department
The robbery netted the quintet $26,000 in cash. Stanley Bond distributed $500 to each member and pocketed the remainder.
No one dared challenge the convicted felon known for his hot temper. He distributed the bulk of the rest of the money to radical antiwar left-wing political groups including the Black Panthers.
Bond Handles the Money
The following day, Robert Valeri was arrested after a street informant told police he was involved in the robbery.
After several hours of interrogation, he named his cohorts.
Valeri is Fingered and Talks
Police raided Power and Saxe’s apartment.
The women had already hastily departed but they left behind evidence linking them to the crime: ammunition, weapons, and a telephone switchboard from the armory.
Power Saxe
From Students to Fugitives
Five days later, Stanley Bond was arrested in Grand Junction, Colorado. William Gilday’s time was up the following day, as he was apprehended in Worchester following a high-speed chase with police.
While awaiting trial, Bond accidentally killed himself with a homemade bomb he had built and planned to use in an escape attempt. Valeri turned state’s evidence and testified against Gilday, fingering him as the shooter of Patrolman Schroeder.
Valeri served five years in prison before being paroled. Gilday received two life sentences.
Valeri Bond Gilday
The Men Were Quickly Captured . . .
Kathy Power and Susan Saxe, however, successfully covered their tracks.
In October 1970, they became the fifth and sixth women to be placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list.
. . . But the Women Proved More Elusive
Four-and-a-half years later, on March 27, 1975, Susan Saxe was captured in her home city of Philadelphia.
She served six years in prison before being released in 1982.
Saxe Sacked
Kathy Power had not entered the State Street Bank & Trust on the day of the robbery, but she was next seen at a similar locale.
A surveillance camera showed her opening an account under an assumed named at a Louisville, Kentucky, bank in 1974. This was the last confirmed sighting of her for over nineteen years.
Kathy Power, Captured Only On Camera
Kathy Power remained on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list until 1984. Few fugitives are taken off the list unless they are captured, confirmed dead, or the charges against them are dismissed.
The FBI took the unusual step of removing Power, a still-wanted fugitive, from its Ten Most Wanted List, stating, “We are receiving few leads to her current whereabouts” and “we have no evidence indicating she has resumed in criminal activity.” In addition, the Bureau said, “We will continue our efforts to locate her, but we no longer believe she meets the criteria of a top ten fugitive.”
Kathy Power’s fourteen-year stint on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List is the longest of any woman.
A Most Wanted Woman
If Kathy Power had chosen, the sighting at the Louisville bank in 1974 may have been the last image of her for eternity. The searches of the FBI and all other law enforcement agencies for the fugitive proved fruitless. What caught Kathy Power was her conscience.
After living nearly twenty-three-years in hiding, Kathy Power, through her lawyers, negotiated a surrender with authorities. On September 16, 1993, the forty-four-year-old former FBI Ten Most Wanted Fugitive turned herself in to the Boston Police Department.
Power’s Surrender Makes the Cover of Newsweek
Power revealed she and Saxe had traveled together for over four years, living for a time as lesbian lovers and eluding detection by hiding in women’s communes in Saxe’s native Connecticut. Among the jobs they held were nurse’s aides and clerks in health-food stores. Underground contacts secured fake identifications and social security numbers for them. Power used the name Mae Kelly; Saxe was Lena Paley.
The women continued travelling together throughout the eastern United States before going their separate ways in late 1974.
Kathy in ‘Cuffs
In 1977, Power became Alice Metzinger, a name taken from the birth certificate of an infant who had died the year before Power was born. She refused to say how she obtained the document.
Two years later, soon after moving to Oregon, Power gave birth to a son, Jamie. She refused to identify his father. Mother and son lived in the Beaver state until the time of her surrender, settling in Lebanon in the Willamette Valley in 1985, the year after she was removed from the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List. Power later began dating Ron Duncan, a local man who had worked as an accountant and meat-cutter. She told him of her secret and he did not betray her. Ron left his wife and daughter to be with the fugitive.
While living in Oregon, Power resumed her culinary talents, teaching cooking classes at Linn-Benton Community College in Albany and later working at restaurants in Corvallis and Eugene. She was even one of the finalists who applied for the post of food writer for the Corvallis Post-Gazette. At the time of her surrender, she was part-owner of Eugene’s Napoli Restaurant and Bakery.
Power married Ron Duncan in 1992 and revealed her background to her son and friends.
Life as “Alice Metzinger”
Of the killing of Patrolman Walter Schroeder, Power said, “His death was shocking to me, and I have had to examine my conscience and accept any responsibility I have for the event that led to it.” Still referencing her opposition to the Vietnam War, she added, “The illegal acts I committed arose not from any desire for personal gain but from a deep philosophical and spiritual commitment that if a wrong exists, one must take active steps to stop it, regardless of the consequences to oneself in comfort or security.”
Though she pled guilty to two counts of armed robbery and manslaughter, Kathy Power’s lawyers argued she he been manipulated by the long-dead Stanley Bond into participating in the robberies. Per the surrender agreement, she was sentenced to eight-to-twelve years in prison for her part in the Brighton bank robbery; for the National Guard Armory crimes, she received five years in prison and a $10,000 fine. The prison sentences were served concurrently.
In addition, Judge Banks decreed that once released from prison, Power could not financially profit from her crimes, i.e. from book sales, interviews, lectures, etc. Power appealed this portion of the sentence on First Amendment grounds, but the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court rejected the argument and the United States Supreme Court declined to hear the case.
Power Sentenced
Following Kathy Power’s incarceration, Ron adopted her fourteen-year-old son, Jamie.
Jamie Metzinger and Ron Duncan
While in prison, Kathy Power completed her bachelor’s degree in sociology from Boston University. She became eligible for parole in 1998 but withdrew her request after learning of opposition from Patrolman Walter Schroeder’s family. She was released on October 2, 1999, after serving six years and placed on fourteen years’ probation.
After her release, Power returned to Oregon with her husband and son from her years as “Alice Metzinger.” She earned a master’s degree in Interdisciplinary Studies from Oregon State University where she also taught freshman composition for the English department.
Looking At Her Past
Following Ron’s death, Kathy Power returned to the Boston area where, according to her LinkedIn page, she works as a realtor.
Her son Jamie is now married with two sons.
Radical Turned Realtor
A 1994 episode of Law & Order entitled “White Rabbit,” was (unofficially) based on Kathy Power’s case. In it, Susan Forrest, a conservative suburban wife and mother turns out to be a fugitive student radical who was involved in an armored car heist and murder of a police officer twenty-three-years earlier.
Susan Forrest is played by Mary-Joan Negro. Noted defense attorney William Kunstler appears in the episode playing himself as Forrest’s lawyer.
A Law & Order Episode
Kathy Power spoke on the campus of Oregon State University in 2013.
The imprisoned Lefty Gilday died in 2011 at age eighty-two.
Goodnight Gilday
Kathy Power’s former roommate and partner-in-crime, Susan Saxe, is married to the sister of Hollywood Screenwriter Josh Olson, who is best known for writing the 2005 film A History of Violence.
Susan Saxe Today
Kathy Power had suffered from clinical depression since childhood and, according to her, it worsened following the shooting of Officer Walter Schroeder and continued doing so over the years, ultimately leading to her desire to come clean about her past.
Corvallis, Oregon, family therapist Linda Carroll is the person to whom Kathy Power first revealed her fugitive secret. As therapy, in preparation for her surrender, Carroll and defense attorney Stephen Black had Power put through a mock trial as Vietnam War solider charged with killing civilians.
Linda Carroll is the mother of singer and musician Courtney Love and the daughter of novelist Paula Fox.
Linda Carroll
The two most noted graduates of Denver’s former Maycrest Girls High School wound up on opposite sides of the law.
Whereas Kathy Power became a longtime fugitive, Heather Coogan became the first female Police Chief of Littleton, Colorado.
Different Paths for the Maycrest Alums
Fun Facts:
Kathy Power was sentenced to prison for her role in a fatal bank robbery by Judge Robert Banks.
In addition, her father, Winfield, worked as bank credit manager.
Bank Connections
In a sad final footnote, Boston Detective John Schroeder was killed three years after his brother Walter, when he surprised three men robbing a pawn shop.
Detective John Schroeder
Boston Police Department
Four of Patrolman Walter Schroeder’s nine children became Boston Police Officers.
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/128275309/walter-alfred-schroeder
A Blue Blood Family
On August 24, 1970, one month after the Brighton, Massachusetts, bank robbery resulting in the killing of Boston Police Officer Walter Schroeder, a bomb on the University of Wisconsin campus resulted in a fatality. The four perpetrators were placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted List on September 3, six weeks before Kathy Power and Susan Saxe’s elevation to the list. One of the Wisconsin bombers, Leo Burt, remains at large over a half-century later.
Here is a link to my writeup on the Stirling Hall bombing and the search for Leo Burt.
SOURCES:
- Boston Globe
- Boston Herald
- Chicago Tribune
- Corvallis Gazette-Times
- Los Angeles Times
- New York Times
- Newsweek Magazine
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