The New York Times Magazine tomorrow will publish a cover story on the “radical [jailhouse] transformation” of one Judith Clark — now serving 75 years for her role in the notorious 1981 Brinks heist.
Clark is the last woman still imprisoned in connection with the robbery, in which three heroic men — Nyack PD Sgt. Edward O’Grady, Officer Waverly “Chipper” Jones and Brinks security guard Peter Paige — were gunned down in cold blood.
Clark drove the getaway vehicle; she and her fellow Weather Underground “revolutionaries” had just robbed an armored car of $1.8 million when they were captured.
At her trial, she boycotted the proceedings after demanding, and winning, the right to represent herself and was sentenced to a minimum of 75 years.
Now she’s exhausted all her appeals — so her only hope of being released before 2056 is a pardon or executive clemency.
So enter the Times to make an undisguised plea for forgiveness. Clark, we learn, is no longer the angry young radical. Indeed, she now tries to minimize her past — explaining that she was in a “terrified, frozen state” during the heist and “harbored secret doubts” about her deliberately off-putting legal tactic.
Her real sin, she seems to suggest, wasn’t her role in abetting the murders of three men but her effective abandonment of her infant daughter.
Now, she says, “In prison, I learned who I was” and she’s now become a new person. She’s earned college and post-graduate degrees and counsels and educates fellow inmates.
Wonderful — sounds like she’s right where she can best serve society.
We understand Clark’s frustration: Most of the other Brinks figures are free, including all of the other women.
But while making the most of one’s life behind bars may bring one peace, it’s hardly a compelling case for freedom.
After all, Edward O’Grady, Chipper Jones and Peter Paige never got the chance to improve their lives — thanks in no small measure to Judith Clark’s extremism.
The Times’ sob story notwithstanding, Judith Clark today is precisely where she belongs. And where she needs to stay.