Sterling Hall Bombing - 40 Years Ago

Forty years ago, anti-Vietnam War radicals bombed Sterling Hall on the UW-Madison campus, killing 33-year-old researcher Robert Fassnacht.

Give peace a chance?

Sure.

Of those involved in the bombing and subsequent murder, only Leo Burt remains a fugitive.

For 40 years, Burt has evaded the law. He's never paid for his crimes.

MADISON, Wis. -- University of Wisconsin student Leo Burt approached his former journalism instructor at the student union one day in August 1970.

The intense 22-year-old thanked the man for encouraging him to write for a left-wing student newspaper, where he covered the Vietnam War protests raging on campus and where his politics had become radicalized. And he said goodbye because he was planning to live underground in Canada for reasons he wouldn't share.

"Only 10 days later, there he was on television," the instructor, Jack Holzhueter, recalled. "And I was shocked to know that Leo had participated in this event."

Forty years after a powerful bomb exploded on the Madison campus, Burt remains the last fugitive wanted by the FBI in connection with radical anti-Vietnam War activities. He vanished almost immediately after the bombing, and is now what one former prosecutor calls "Wisconsin's state ghost."

This week, the university will mark the anniversary by opening a recording booth in the library, where people can relate their memories of the event for inclusion in the university archives and in a documentary theater project. A small plaque honoring Robert Fassnacht, the 33-year-old scientist killed in the blast, is the only permanent sign on campus that the bombing happened.

Burt and three other radicals parked a stolen van packed with fertilizer and fuel outside the university's Army Math Research Center in Sterling Hall and lit the fuse in the early morning hours of Aug. 24, 1970. The bomb attack, the nation's most powerful until the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, killed a graduate student who was doing research in the middle of the night, injured others and caused millions of dollars in damage. The bombers fled to Canada.

Three of the four men were captured in the 1970s after trying to live underground; they were convicted, served short prison terms and resumed their lives. One, Karl Armstrong, operates a juice stand near the bombing site. His brother, Dwight, died of lung cancer in Madison in June. David Fine has worked as a paralegal in Portland, Ore.

...But nobody knows what happened to Leo Burt, an Irish Catholic kid from the Philadelphia suburbs who came to Wisconsin on an ROTC scholarship and joined the rowing team. He would now be 62.

Those who knew Burt are growing increasingly skeptical the student they remember as hardworking, smart and disciplined will ever be found.

"The FBI's guess is as good as mine as to where he is, if he's even alive," Armstrong said. "I have absolutely no clue."

Asked how Burt was able to elude authorities when he and his brother could not, Armstrong laughed. "Well, maybe because he's a smarter guy," he said, explaining that Dwight Armstrong had confided in others about their identities.

Armstrong said the FBI should offer Burt amnesty to turn himself in since history has proved the war in Vietnam a failure. He said the bombing "was the right thing to do at the time" in response to the shooting of protesters at Kent State and they did not intend to harm anyone.

...Holzhueter, the instructor who had urged Burt to write for the Daily Cardinal, said he remains haunted by Burt's disappearance.

"Whatever Leo did, it was principled," he said. "He was a man of great integrity. Some would say he was a killer and stop there, but he was far more complex than that."

The bombers aren't heroes. I don't see how anyone can view them in that light. There's nothing heroic about them or what they did. It's sick to romanticize them or their actions.

Holzhueter is pretty screwed up himself to call Burt "a man of great integrity." Such a man doesn't bomb a building.

Burt and his fellow bombers are homegrown terrorists. Period.

If Burt is still alive, I wonder what he does on the anniversary of the bombing. Does he look back and believe he did the right thing in August 1970? Is he like Dwight Armstrong in that respect, unrepentant? Is he dead, like Dwight Armstrong?

It's so strange that these radicals thought it was a good idea to wage war because they were against the war.

It's creepy to think that Burt, this terrorist, may still be alive and living among us. Maybe he hangs out with fellow terrorists Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn. Maybe he's in Canada with other fugitives of his era. Maybe on August 24th he celebrates that magical day in his life when he became famous.

Burt isn't "Wisconsin's state ghost."

I think "Wisconsin's state terrorist" is a more appropriate label.


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From the Wisconsin State Journal: Sterling Hall bombing: 40 years later, Robert Fassnacht's family opens up