Steven Nelson
US News & World Report
May 4, 2013
Forty years ago today, Joanne Chesimard allegedly shot and killed New Jersey state trooper Werner Foerster. She was convicted, but escaped from prison in 1979 and was granted asylum in Cuba, where she has been living since the 1980s. On Thursday, the FBI announced a $2 million reward for her capture and named her to the bureau’s “Most Wanted Terrorists” list.
“This case is just as important today as it was when it happened 40 years ago,” said Mike Rinaldi, a lieutenant in the New Jersey State Police, in a press release.
Chesimard was a member of the Black Liberation Army, a “radical left wing terror group that felt justified killing law enforcement officers” during the 1970s, Rinaldi said. “[T]his group conducted assaults on police stations and murdered police officers.”
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