The Associated Press
EWING TOWNSHIP, N.J. - Authorities posted a $1 million reward Monday for a Black Liberation Army member convicted of fatally shooting a New Jersey state trooper 32 years ago, and added the woman to the FBI’s domestic terrorist list.
Joanne Chesimard escaped from a women’s prison in Hunterdon County in 1979, after she was convicted of the 1973 slaying of Trooper Werner Foerster. She made her way to Cuba and was granted political asylum.
New Jersey officials have failed to persuade Cuba to hand over Chesimard, 57, who goes by the name Assata Shakur.
At a news conference Monday, State Attorney General Peter C. Harvey, State Police Superintendent Col. Rick Fuentes and deputy U.S. attorney Lee Solomon announced the reward and the addition of Chesimard’s name to the FBI’s domestic terrorist list.
Foerster had responded as backup when another trooper had stopped Chesimard and two companions for a faulty tail light on the New Jersey Turnpike on May 2, 1973.
Shots soon rang out and Foerster was hit. As he lay on the ground, authorities said, Chesimard took his gun and fatally shot him in the head and neck.
A New York television station taped an interview with Chesimard in Havana in 1998, in which she denied killing Foster and said she lived in fear of the New Jersey State Police. New Jersey officials said she was lying.
Her brother-in-law was killed in the 1973 gun battle and another man, Clark Squire, was arrested. Squire is serving a life sentence in a Pennsylvania prison and was denied parole last August.