40th Anniversary Of Brinks Robbery Marked With Ceremony, Outrage

NYACK, NY — Marking the infamous Brinks robbery of 40 years ago, hundreds of people met at Rockland County's memorial Wednesday for an event filled with not only sadness but frustration.

Diane O'Grady, widow of Nyack police Sgt. Edward O'Grady, Jr; Constance Frazier, cousin of Nyack police officer Waverly "Chipper" Brown; and Michael Paige, whose father Peter Paige, was the Brinks guard killed in the robbery, were among the attendees (see photos on lohud.com).

The frustration is due to the fact that David Gilbert, 76, now in the 38th year of his 75-years-to-life prison sentence, could go before the state parole board next week because former Gov. Andrew Cuomo granted him clemency. Gilbert was one of the drivers in the deadly Brinks robbery carried out by members of the Black Liberation Army and Weather Underground in 1981.

The domestic terrorists stole $1.8 million from a Brinks armored truck at the Nanuet Mall on Oct. 20, 1981, killing Paige in a shootout. Nyack police tried to stop the robbers at the Route 59 entrance to the New York State Thruway shortly afterward. O'Grady and Brown were killed in the gunfight and Detective Arthur Keenan was wounded.

Gilbert is among the last surviving people still imprisoned for the crime often seen as a last gasp of '60s radicalism. Kathy Boudin was paroled in 2003. Marilyn Jean Buck was released from a federal prison in Texas a month before dying of cancer in 2010. Judith Clark was granted parole in 2019.

There's a separate effort to secure the release of the ringleader, Mutulu Shakur, 70, who is at a federal medical center in Kentucky with advanced-stage bone marrow cancer, and who was denied parole in 2018.

Each time, it brings pain and frustration to Rockland.

SEE:

• Rockland Leaders Express Outrage At Clemency For Brinks Driver
• Killer's Death Stirs Memories of a Deadly October Day in Rockland
• Brinks Robbery Mastermind Denied Parole
• Prosecutor Son Seeks Father's Release In Fatal Brink's Heist