TYSON TRISH / STAFF PHOTOGRAPHERNew Jersey State Police Col. Rick Fuentes stands in front of an updated reward billboard during Thursday's press conference at the FBI building in Newark.
FILE PHOTOJoanne Chesimard is photographed in Cuba.
She’s been known as a cop killer, an angry black activist and New Jersey’s most notorious fugitive from the law since the 1970s. As of Thursday, Joanne Chesimard is now also officially considered one of the country’s most-wanted terrorists.
The addition of Chesimard, 65, to a list that has been maintained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation since 9/11 put a new spotlight on a case that has rankled every level of law enforcement for decades.
Chesimard took the alias of Assata Shakur and surfaced in 1984 as an exile in Cuba, where she has continued to profess her innocence and attract sympathy from supporters who question the official account of the 1973 murder of Trooper Werner Foerster, who was shot, execution-style, after he stopped Chesimard and two others for a faulty tail light. Thursday was the 40th anniversary of the murder.
Law enforcement officials said Thursday they have no evidence that Chesimard, a onetime leader of the Black Panthers and the Black Liberation Army, poses any new threat to the United States. Instead, they said, the danger she represents — because of her connections to radical groups abroad and her privileged position in Cuba — has remained constant over the years.
"To this day, from her safe haven in Cuba, Chesimard has been given the pulpit to preach and profess, stirring supporters and groups to mobilize against the United States by any means necessary," Colonel Rick Fuentes, superintendent of the New Jersey State Police, said at a press conference.
Chesimard is the 46th fugitive to be added to the list and the first woman, putting her among the ranks of Osama bin Ladin, Boston gangster James "Whitey" Bulger and members of international groups that include Hezbollah and the Taliban. Bulger was arrested in 2011.
Aaron T. Ford, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI’s Newark Division, did not say why the government waited to give Chesimard the designation other than pointing out that she "has been proven to meet all the metrics" for inclusion.
"She’s a danger to the American government, and she was part of an organization that used threats to try to intimidate, force and coerce government actions," Ford said.
He added that the FBI also considers whether an investigation would benefit from the exposure generated by the list, which is distributed internationally.
Ford’s appearance at the podium served as an unspoken reminder of how much the country has changed since the days of the Chesimard case, when some black militant groups pegged police officers as agents of government oppression. Ford, who was recently named head of the Newark bureau, is African American.
Chesimard was convicted of Foerster’s murder in 1977, four years after the shoot-out on the New Jersey Turnpike. The case was delayed because she became pregnant while in custody.
Law enforcement officials said Chesimard fired the first shot at Trooper James Harper, wounding him in the shoulder, and then pursued both officers with a fusillade of gunshots until she was also wounded.
Foerster, already hurt in his right arm and abdomen, was executed with his own service weapon on the roadside. Chesimard’s jammed handgun was found at his side.
James Coston, who was shooting from the backseat, was mortally wounded during the fight and was found next to the abandoned vehicle.
