Raymond Luc Levasseur went underground with a revolutionary Marxist organization in 1974 and spent a decade in armed resistance against the American state. Vietnam vet Raymond Luc Levasseur was part of a revolutionary Marxist organization in the 1970's and 1980's called the 'United Freedom Front' along with Thomas Manning and Richard Williams. Raymond Luc Levasseur enrolled at Austin Peay University, he began to act on his political convictions, joining the Southern Student Organizing Committee -- "the first truly revolutionary people I had ever met" -- and absorbing a range of new ideas from the student rights and labor movements to the antiwar movement and Black liberation struggle, deepening the radicalization that had begun in Vietnam. After parole in 1971 from a Tennessee state prison on drug dealing charges, Levasseur returned home to Maine, where he lived with his mother and held jobs as a manual laborer, first making cement blocks and pipes, and then working as a carpenter in Kennebunkport Maine. Fed by the unrelenting political turmoil of the time -- particularly the assassination of Soledad Brother George Jackson and the rebellion at Attica Prison -- Levasseur returned to political work, beginning with the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. But his experiences in prison, informed by the writings of the Black Panthers and Malcolm X, led him to recognize the centrality of prisoners to any social justice struggles, and by the fall of 1972, he helped form the Portland-based Statewide Correctional Alliance for Reform (SCAR), which organized survival programs for families of the imprisoned designed to "meet the needs of the people who suffer most from class and racist oppression. All of this Levasseur activity is the basis for groups like Antifa to form in Portland OR, Raymond Luc Levasseur was the straw that stirred the drink in violent political activism.
Moving to Munjoy Hill in Portland, Levasseur became part of a close-knit circle that would become the core of the United Freedom Front, including Pat Gros (later his wife), fellow veteran Tom Manning, and Manning's wife Carol. Convinced that the time for direct action had come, and that violence would be necessary, Levasseur and his associates split from more reluctant members of SCAR and opened Red Star North Bookstore in August 1974, selling radical literature and running a Marxist study group in the evenings, while being subject to intense police surveillance and threats of violence. With tensions at a high pitch in the fall 1974, Manning introduced Levasseur to his brother-in-law, Cameron Bishop, an SDS organizer from Colorado who had gone underground five years previously after receiving a federal indictment and spot on the FBI's list of Ten Most Wanted fugitives for the January 1969 bombing of power transmission lines serving a defense plant near Denver, Colorado. Bishop and Levasseur found a common cause in forming a guerrilla unit to "engage in armed attacks on the enemy state and its institutions." To fund their organization, they sought to "expropriate" money from banks, but their first attempt in March 1975 never fully got off the ground. Arrested while scouting banks in East Greenwich, RI, Bishop was quickly identified by fingerprints and returned to Colorado to face the old sabotage charges, while Levasseur, charged with weapons violations, skipped bail.Raymond Luc Levasseur has the following criminal record: arrested February 7, 1969 in Tennessee for sale of marijuana, sentenced to a term of five years incarceration at the Tennessee State Penitentiary, Nashville, Tennessee; arrested March 12, 1975 (with Cameron David Bishop) at East Greenwich, Rhode Island for (1) possession of sawed-off shotguns (4 counts), (2) carrying a pistol without a license, (3) conspiracy to commit robbery of an armored car, and (4) receiving stolen goods. For nearly a decade, the United Freedom Front used thorough planning, false identification papers, and frequent moves from state to state to evade one of the largest FBI manhunts in history. In 1983, the Boston FBI office formed formed Bos-Luc Joint Terrorist Task Force to pursue Levasseur and his comrades. On Nov. 4, 1984, their run came to an end when FBI agents arrested Levasseur and Gros after pulling over the van they were driving with their three daughters near Deerfield, Ohio. Fellow UFF members Barbara Curzi, Jaan Laaman, and Richard Williams were taken in custody shortly thereafter in Cleveland, and the Mannings were captured several months later in Richmond, Virginia.
THE LAMONACO MURDER
On December 21, 1981, a lone New Jersey State Trooper on Interstate 80 in Warren County, New Jersey, stopped a vehicle occupied by two males. The stop appeared to be routine. The New Jersey State Trooper, Phillip J. Lamonaco, was shot to death by the occupants of this vehicle. The murder weapon was a 9mm automatic; trooper Lamonaco had been shot eight times. A short time later, the vehicle was discovered a short distance away from the shooting. Subsequent investigation disclosed that the two occupants of the vehicle were Thomas Manning and Richard Williams. Manning was tied to the vehicle through a driver's license which had been left in the vehicle. Although the driver's license was in a false name, the photograph on the driver's license was that of Manning. Manning was also connected to the automobile by fingerprints. Williams was tied to the vehicle through fingerprints found on items left in the car when it was abandoned.
On January 19, 1982, the New Jersey State Police obtained a warrant charging Richard Charles Williams with the murder of New Jersey State Police officer Phillip J. Lamonaco, in violation of New Jersey State Penal Law Section 2C; 11-3 (murder). On January 21, 1982 Federal warrants were issued at Newark, New Jersey charging Richard Charles Williams and Thomas William Manning with violation of the Unlawful Flight to Avoid Prosecution Statute, 18 U.S.C. § 1073.
On January 13, 1982 members of the Pennsylvania and New Jersey State Police executed a search warrant on Levasseur's recently vacated residence located in Germansville, Pennsylvania. Investigation provided information from witnesses living in the area that Levasseur and his family began residing at the Germansville residence on or about October 22, 1981. Certain items of revolutionary literature were located within Levasseur's residence along with empty ammunition boxes for 9mm and .223 caliber ammunition. Manning's and Williams' fingerprints were also found in the residence.
Marshall's Creek and Germansville, Pennsylvania, the location of the Levasseur residence, are rural communities surrounding the Allentown, Pennsylvania area. The search of Manning's residence additionally located numberous newspaper articles relating to the attempted armed robbery of the Brinks Armored Car in Nanuet, New York on October 20, 1981, during which two police officers and one Brinks guard were slain. Included within these newspaper articles were various handwritten notes evaluating the robbery attempt. Levasseur served twenty years of a 45-year prison sentence, approximately thirteen years of them in solitary confinement, before being released on parole in 2004.
Copyright Protection: Bill Warner Investigations Sarasota Fl Original Articles @billdetective
No comments:
Post a Comment