Susan Saxe Arrested In Philly

Susan Saxe, a 26-year-old fugitive radical who has stayed on the FBI's ten most wanted list for the past four and a half years, was arrested March 27 in Philadelphia. Saxe, along with another fugitive, Katherine Power, is charged with robbery and murder in connection with a 1970 Boston bank robbery in which a guard was killed. She is also charged with interstate flight to avoid prosecution.

Saxe, who had been living under the names of Val Woolf and Arlene Hellman, was held in lieu of $350,000 bond pending arraignment on April 7. She is also wanted in Pennsylvania on bank robbery charged, so it is not yet clear where she will stand trial. Although the FBI claims that Saxe's arrest was just a result of persistence and good luck, there is speculation that it was the result of information obtained through an informer, an FBI plant, or a telephone tap, and that more arrests will follow.

Before the bail hearing, Saxe supporters, including members of the Women's Health Collective in Philadephia, issued statements charging the FBI with harassment, stating the agency had used its search for Saxe and Power to infiltrate feminist communities in Connecticut and Kentucky. In New Haven and Hartford, Connecticut, and Lexington, Kentucky, people who have refused to talk to the FBI have been subpoenaed by grand juries, granted "immunity" and then put in jail after refusing to testify. Eight people are currently in jail due to this tactic, which violates the 5th Amendment.