Domestic Terrorism at the University of Wisconsin

1970 was a turbulent year in American history. The country was embroiled in the Vietnam conflict and the war had spread into neighboring Cambodia. Richard Nixon was in the White House, and student anti-Vietnam protests raged on every campus, including the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

It all came to a head with the National Guard killings of four student protesters at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio.

The New Years Gang

Spurred by the tragic event at Kent State, a radical University of Wisconsin group "The New Years Gang" held an emergency meeting. The "Gang" consisted of four members: brothers Karl and Dwight Armstrong, David Fine, and Leo Burt. The Gang's mode of operation was violence aimed against property, not people.

After Kent State, they decided to target the campus's controversial Army Mathematics Research Center at Sterling Hall. The Center was a Department of Defense-funded facility where advanced and secret weaponry research took place. In the Gang's view, the weapons developed there were to be used against the Vietnamese civilian population.

After the Kent State killings, Wisconsin chancellor Edwin Young requested a National Guard and police presence on the Madison campus, and had cancelled final exams, sending students home for the summer early. Because of the enforced summer break, The New Years Gang had determined that Sterling Hall would be unoccupied.

The Explosion

On August 24, 1970, the plotters parked a stolen Ford van in front of the campus building. The vehicle was packed with 2000 pounds of ammonium nitrate soaked in jet fuel. Unknown to the Gang, five people were inside Sterling Hall.

While the bomb exploded and succeeded in destroying a large part of Sterling Hall, it also injured three people and killed one: 33-year-old Robert Fassknacht, a graduate student and father of three young children.

The supreme dark irony was that the Army Mathematics Research Center, the Gang's intended target, had only suffered minor damage.

The Escape

Upon hearing of the casualties, the four bombers fled Madison.

Karl Armstrong was captured months later in Canada. His brother Dwight was also captured in Canada, but four years later. David Fine was captured in California. As of 2007, Leo Burt is still at large (or dead?).

Until the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the Sterling Hall bombing was the largest act of domestic terrorism in the history of the United States (not counting the 19th century's Chicago Haymarket bombing, that is).

Aftermath

In the late 1980s, the Army Mathematics Research Center went out of business. The Armstrong brothers went back to Madison after serving eight years in prison. After serving seven years, David Fine went to law school (and lives in the Pacific Northwest). Leo Burt, however, is still on the FBI's most wanted list, complete with age-enhanced photographs and a $50,000 reward for information leading to his arrest.

In 2007, the University of Wisconsin finally unveiled a plaque in memory of grad student and father Robert Fassnacht, a lifelong pacifist according to friends and family.

SOURCES:

"30 years ago, bomb shattered UW campus", Sharif Durhams and Peter Maller, Milwaukee Journal

http://www.madison.com/library/LEE/sterlinghall.html

"UW honors Robert Fassnacht", Bob Hacque, WRN

Wisconsin History Museum