http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/06/nyregion/06buck.html
By MARGALIT FOX
Published: August 5, 2010
Marilyn Buck, who served more than two decades in prison for her role
in the 1981 Brink's armored-car robbery in Rockland County, N.Y., in
which three people were killed, died on Tuesday at her home in
Brooklyn. She was 62.
The cause was uterine cancer, according to the Plaza Jewish Community
Chapel in Manhattan.
Because of her illness, Ms. Buck was released from the Federal
Medical Center, Carswell, in Fort Worth, on July 15. She is survived
by three brothers.
The Brink's robbery endures in the national memory as a powerful
example of a politically motivated act gone violently awry. Carried
out by a coalition of radical groups that included the Weather
Underground and the Black Liberation Army, the holdup netted nearly
$1.6 million, which was recovered immediately.
Two police officers and a Brink's guard were fatally shot in the
course of the holdup, which unfolded in and around Nanuet, N.Y., on
Oct. 20, 1981.
A former private-school honor student, Ms. Buck drove one of the
getaway cars that day. In the ensuing melee, she accidentally shot
herself in the leg and was described in later years as walking with a
noticeable limp.
One of the last suspects to be apprehended in the case, Ms. Buck
lived as a fugitive until 1985, when she was arrested outside a diner
in Dobbs Ferry, N.Y., little more than 10 miles from the site of the robbery.
Ms. Buck, who publicly called herself an "anti-imperialist freedom
fighter," was often described in the news media as the Black
Liberation Army's only white member. Law enforcement officials called
her the group's quartermaster, whose job it was to procure everything
from armaments to automobiles to safe houses.
In 1988, Ms. Buck was convicted of racketeering, armed robbery and
murder. The conviction covered both the Rockland County holdup and a
1981 armored-car robbery in the Bronx in which a guard was killed.
It also covered the escape from prison in 1979 of the Black
Liberation Army leader Joanne Chesimard, which Ms. Buck had helped
carry out. (Ms. Chesimard, who had been convicted of killing a New
Jersey state trooper, eventually made her way to Cuba.)
Ms. Buck was sentenced to 50 years' imprisonment. In earlier trials,
several other defendants, including Kathy Boudin, a prominent member
of the Weather Underground, were convicted on various charges
relating to the Rockland County holdup.
In 1990, under a plea agreement, Ms. Buck was sentenced to an
additional 10 years for having taken part in the bombings of
government buildings, including the United States Capitol, during her
time as a fugitive. The Capitol bombing, in 1983, did more than
$250,000 in damage.
Marilyn Jean Buck was born on Dec. 13, 1947, in Midland, Tex., and
reared in Austin; her father was a veterinarian and an Episcopal
priest. Ms. Buck studied briefly at the University of California,
Berkeley, where she became passionately interested in antiwar and
civil rights causes. After transferring to the University of Texas,
she left school to work for the left-wing organization Students for a
Democratic Society.
In 1973, Ms. Buck received a 10-year sentence for acting as a gun
runner for the Black Liberation Army; four years later, while on
furlough from a West Virginia federal prison, she disappeared. At the
time of the Brink's robbery, she was still being sought in connection
with that disappearance.
While in prison for the Brink's holdup, Ms. Buck wrote poetry and
essays, winning several honors from the PEN American Center's Prison
Writing Program. She also translated a volume of poetry, "State of
Exile," by the Uruguayan writer Cristina Peri Rossi, published in
2008 by City Lights Books.
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