As Cathy Wilkerson wrote later, “The whole townhouse rose up a foot or two, shattering bricks and splintering wooden beams, and then was transformed into dust and rubble, shuddering into a deep pit in which a ruptured gas main burst into flame.”
A fully nude Boudin and half-dressed Wilkerson ran into the street. Stunned next door neighbor Dustin Hoffman surveyed the destruction. Hoffman’s wife covered up Boudin and Henry Fonda’s ex-wife took the girls in.
Three members of the Weather Underground weren’t as lucky as Wilkerson and Boudin. Authorities found the “headless body of a young woman, missing both hands and a foot, and riddled with roofing nails.” That was Diana Oughton, Boudin’s fellow Bryn Mawr alumna. Two other terrorists were killed, Terry Robbins and Ted Gold; Robbins body was so completely demolished that he was only identified when the Weathermen announced his loss weeks later.
The pipe bombs were put together with nails and dynamite. They had been intended to be detonated at a dance at New Jersey’s Fort Dix for non-commissioned officers and their wives or girlfriends. One can only imagine the sickening horror if the bombs had been unleashed on their planned targets–working class NCOs and women–instead of the bomb makers themselves.
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