Jane Lauren Alpert (born May 20, 1947) is an American former far left radical who conspired in the bombings of eight government and commercial office buildings in New York City in 1969.
[1] Arrested when other members of her group were caught planting dynamite in National Guard trucks, she pleaded guilty to conspiracy, but a month before her scheduled sentencing jumped bail and went into hiding.
[2][3] After four and a half years of wandering the country working at low-level jobs under false names, she surrendered in November 1974 and was sentenced to 27 months in prison for the conspiracy conviction.
[4] In October 1977 she was sentenced to an additional four months imprisonment for contempt of court, for refusing to testify at the 1975 trial of another defendant in the 1969 bombings.
According to Jane, "Skip (Andrew) survived, with above-average intelligence, but almost blind, with respiratory difficulties and permanently stunted physical growth.
[12] She wrote for Rat, a New York City underground newspaper, and had become involved with the Black Panther Party by the time she met Sam Melville in 1968.
Alpert learned that Melville was killed at Attica Prison, in New York, in 1971 and wrote an epitaph that was published in the Rat.
[18] Alpert watched the bomb go off from a distant building and felt that the 2 A.M. eruption brought the revolution an inch or two closer.
[12] After four years of wandering the country working at low-level jobs under false names, she surrendered in November 1974 and was sentenced to 27 months in prison for the conspiracy conviction.
In October 1977, she was sentenced to an additional four months imprisonment for contempt of court, for refusing to testify at the 1975 trial of Patricia Swinton, another defendant in the 1969 case.
[12] The New York Times wrote: "Jane Lauren Alpert, who pleaded guilty May 4 to being part of a conspiracy to bomb Federal office buildings here last fall, was declared yesterday to have forfeited her $20,000 bail.
"[23] Jane Alpert turned herself in on November 17, 1974, at the Office of the United States Attorney in New York City[24] after being underground for four and a half years.
"[14] Alpert affirmed her ongoing commitment to political activism and did not offer regrets about the actions she had undertaken in the past.
[27] Alpert also differentiated between her self now and her self then in her surrender statement; she explained her role in the bombings as "craziness", and suggested that her relationship with Sam Melville was a catalyst for her actions.
[29] Alpert acknowledged her feminism, which provided evidence that she would not engage in the same activities now that she did then because of a heightened awareness of power relationships in the male-female interactions.
[29] At Alpert's surrender her attorney said, "She is no longer in the grip of the mistaken ideology which caused her to flee; the war is over and the man with whom she was in love and for whom she pleaded guilty is now dead.
"[29] Writes The New York Times reviewer Eden Ross Lipton:[15] And in November 1974, anticipating the post-Watergate easing of judicial attitudes toward radicals, Jane Alpert turned herself in.
"[30] Alpert became a fugitive in May 1970, a few days before her scheduled sentence for conspiracy to bomb military and war related corporate buildings in Manhattan.
"For now, I only want to set the scene of my renewed acquaintance with the Weather Underground by saying that when it occurred, I was decisively through with the left and had, at least mentally, rededicated myself to the cause of a revolution made by and for women.
[14] Alpert wrote the book to set the record straight about her personal role in the bombings of New York City buildings in 1969 and her life underground in the early 1970s.