The Weather Underground was a far-left Marxist militant organization first active in 1969, founded on the Ann Arbor campus of the University of Michigan. Originally known as the Weathermen, the group was organized as a faction of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) national leadership. Officially known as the Weather Underground Organization (WUO) beginning in 1970, the group's express political goal was to create a revolutionary party to overthrow the United States government, which WUO believed to be imperialist.
The Zodiac Killer is the pseudonym of an unidentified serial killer who operated in Northern California in the late 1960s. The Zodiac murdered five known victims in the San Francisco Bay Area between December 1968 and October 1969, operating in rural, urban, and suburban settings. He targeted three young couples and a lone male cab driver. The case has been described as "arguably the most famous unsolved murder case in American history," and has become both a fixture of popular culture and a focus for efforts by amateur detectives.
Kathy Boudin was an American radical leftist who served 23 years in prison for felony murder based on her role in the 1981 Brink's robbery. Boudin was a founding member of the militant Weather Underground organization, which engaged in bombings of government buildings to express opposition to U.S. foreign policy and racism. The 1981 robbery resulted in the killing of two Nyack, New York, police officers and one security guard, and serious injury to another security guard; Boudin was arrested attempting to flee after the getaway vehicle she occupied was stopped by police. She was released on parole in 2003. After earning a doctorate, Boudin became an adjunct professor at Columbia University.
David Gilbert is an American radical leftist who participated in the deadly 1981 robbery of a Brinks armored vehicle. Gilbert was a founder of the Columbia University chapter of Students for a Democratic Society and became a member of the Weather Underground. Gilbert, who served as the getaway driver in the robbery, was convicted under New York's felony murder law in the killing by co-defendants of two Nyack, New York police officers and a Brink's security guard.
Bernardine Rae Dohrn is a retired American law professor and a former leader of the far-left militant organization Weather Underground in the United States. As a leader of the Weather Underground in the early 1970s, Dohrn was on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list for several years. She remained a fugitive, even though she was removed from the list. After coming out of hiding in 1980, Dohrn pleaded guilty to misdemeanor charges of aggravated battery and bail jumping.
The San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) is the municipal law enforcement agency of the City and County of San Francisco, as well as the San Francisco International Airport in San Mateo County. In 2000, the SFPD was the 11th largest police department in the United States.
The Days of Rage were a series of protests during three days in October 1969 in Chicago, organized by the emerging Weatherman faction of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).
Jeff Jones is an environmental activist and consultant in Upstate New York. He was a national officer in Students for a Democratic Society, a founding member of Weatherman, and a leader of the Weather Underground.
The San Francisco Police Department began operations on August 13, 1849 during the California Gold Rush in San Francisco, California, under the command of Captain Malachi Fallon.
The Greenwich Village townhouse explosion occurred on March 6, 1970, in New York City, United States. Members of the Weather Underground (Weathermen), an American leftist militant group, were making bombs in the basement of 18 West 11th Street in the Greenwich Village neighborhood, when one of them exploded. The resulting series of three blasts completely destroyed the four-story townhouse and severely damaged those adjacent to it, including the then home of actor Dustin Hoffman and theater critic Mel Gussow. Three Weathermen—Ted Gold, Diana Oughton and Terry Robbins—were killed in the blast, while two survivors, Kathy Boudin and Cathy Wilkerson, were helped out of the wreckage and subsequently fled.
John Gregory Jacobs was an American student and anti-war activist in the 1960s and early 1970s. He was a leader in both Students for a Democratic Society and the Weatherman group, and an advocate of the use of violent force to overthrow the government of the United States. A fugitive after 1970, he died in 1997 in Canada.
William Charles Ayers is an American retired professor and former militant organizer. In 1969, Ayers co-founded the far-left militant organization the Weather Underground, a revolutionary group that sought to overthrow what they viewed as American imperialism. During the 1960s and 1970s, the Weather Underground conducted a campaign of bombing public buildings in opposition to U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. The bombings caused no fatalities, except for three members killed when one of the group's devices accidentally exploded. The FBI described the Weather Underground as a domestic terrorist group. Ayers was hunted as a fugitive for several years, until charges were dropped due to illegal actions by the FBI agents pursuing him and others.
Dianne Marie Donghi is a French former member of Students for a Democratic Society and Weatherman (organization).
Howard Norton Machtinger is a former director of Carolina Teaching Fellows, a student teacher scholarship program at the University of North Carolina. He is an education and civil rights activist, a teacher, a forum leader, and a political commentator. Machtinger is a former member of Students For a Democratic Society and Weatherman.
Initially called "The Proud Eagle Tribe," the communiqué from the Women's Brigade of the Weather Underground pledged to "build a militant women's movement that commits itself to the destruction of Amerikan imperialism" and exploit "the man's chauvinism" as a "strategic weakness."
The Doodler is an unidentified serial killer believed responsible for between six and sixteen murders and three assaults of men in San Francisco, California, between January 1974 and September 1975. The nickname was given due to the perpetrator's habit of sketching his victims prior to stabbing them to death. The perpetrator met his victims at gay nightclubs, bars and restaurants.
The murder of Cheri Jo Bates occurred in Riverside, California, on October 30, 1966. Bates, an 18-year-old college freshman, was stabbed and slashed to death on the grounds of Riverside City College. Police determined the assailant had disabled the ignition coil wire and distributor of Bates' Volkswagen Beetle as a method to lure her from her car as she studied in the college library. The murder itself remains one of Riverside's most infamous cold cases, and has been described by some locals as a murder which "stripped Riverside of its innocence".
San Francisco Express Times was a counterculture tabloid underground newspaper edited by Marvin Garson and published weekly in San Francisco, California from January 24, 1968, to March 25, 1969, for a total of 61 issues, covering and promoting radical politics, rock music, arts and progressive culture in the Bay Area. It was a member of the Underground Press Syndicate, and sold for 15 cents.
The Prairie Fire Organizing Committee is an American far left organization that evolved from the Weather Underground.
