| Raymond Luc Levasseur | |
| Birth Date: | October 10, 1946 |
| Birth Place: | Portland, Maine, U.S.[1] |
| Added Date: | May 5, 1977 |
| Caught Date: | November 4, 1984 |
| Number: | 350 |
| Status: | Captured |
Raymond Luc Levasseur (born October 10, 1946) is the former leader of the United Freedom Front, a militant Marxist organization that conducted a series of bombings and bank robberies throughout the United States from 1976 to 1984, in protest to US intervention in Central America and around the world, racism, and the South African apartheid regime.[2] [3] [4]
Levausseur was born in Southwest Maine, to French-Canadian immigrant parents from Quebec. Growing up, he experienced both poverty and bigotry, being called "frog," "papist," "lazy" and "stupid"—ethnic slurs and stereotypes targeting his French-Canadian background, French language, and Catholic upbringing.[5]
Levausseur, his parents, and grandparents all worked in textile mills: "My grandparents went to work in the textile mills at 13 and 14. My mother and father went into those mills at 16. My turn came at 17, when I misrepresented my age to a mill boss in order to work on a machine making shoe heels. From the earliest years I'd watched my family and predominantly French Canadian neighbors enter and leave the mills. Now I followed them into an exceedingly unpleasant experience." In an essay written from Marion Prison in 1992 called "My Blood Is Quebecois," Levaussuer recalls how, to him, "[my] French and class identity were inseparable," and "the roots of my political vision and militancy extend deep into life as a French Canadian worker." A year later, Levausser left Maine for Boston, where he found work as a dockworker.
In 1965, Levasseur enlisted in the United States Army, and was sent to Vietnam two years later, for a 12-month tour of duty. This experience radicalized him—where the treatment and ridicule of the Vietnamese people and culture reminided him of the white supremacy he'd experienced growing up. He began to feel strong opposition to fighting against the Vietnamese, whom he felt were struggling for their right to self-determination.
After returning from Vietnam, Levasseur moved to Tennessee, where he began attending college. There, he joined Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) and began working with the Southern Student Organizing Committee (SSOC), organizing for civil rights and against the war.
In 1969, Levasseur was arrested for attempting to sell six dollars' worth of marijuana to an undercover police officer. Levasseur was given the maximum penalty of five years in prison. He was sent to the Tennessee State Penitentiary, where he spent two years in solitary confinement, before being released on parole. It was in prison that Levasseur began reading about Sacco and Vanzetti, Malcom X, and political theorists on revolutionary nationalism and socialism, and became inspired by the activities of the Black Panther Party and the Front de Libération du Québec.
After his release in 1971, he moved back to Maine, where he attended the University of Maine, began working as a drug counselor and joined the Statewide Correctional Alliance for Reform (SCAR), a prisoners'-rights organization. It is while working with these activist groups in Maine, that Levasseur met his future wife, Pat Gros.
In 1975 Levasseur co-founded the Sam Melville/Jonathan Jackson Unit with Tom Manning, Pat Gros (Rowbottom), and Carol Manning which eventually became known as the United Freedom Front. From 1975 to 1984, the UFF carried out tens of bank robberies in the Northeast United States to support UFF bombing activities and later, to support themselves as fugitives.[6] [4] From 1975 to 1979, Levasseur and Manning robbed Brink's armored trucks to support intermittent UFF bombings.
From 1980 to 1981, Levasseur and Manning were not active, settling into a more stable lifestyle. In 1981, Levasseur and Gros move to a farmhouse outside Cambridge, New York living under fake identities. Levasseur recruited new members Richard Williams, Jaan Laaman, and Kazi Toure. With the new members, the UFF resumed bank robberies to support their bombing operations.
In 1983, it is believed by Levasseur that UFF associate Richard Williams shot and killed New Jersey State trooper Philip J. Lamonaco during a traffic stop.[7] [8] Tom Manning later claimed he fired the gun that killed Lamonaco in self defense.[9] The death of Trooper Lamonaco lead to several years of Levasseur, Gros, Manning, and other UFF associates living "on the run" from the FBI and state law enforcement agencies. A series of accidental "run-in's" occurred in 1982, and after each, the group would immediately abandon their current living situation, move, and take on new fake identities. Each move required further bank robberies to replace belongings abandoned after prior moves. Intermittently, Levasseur and the UFF conducted bombings targeted at corporations and institutions supporting the South African apartheid regime and US foreign policy in Central America.[10]
On November 4, 1984, members of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI's) elite Hostage Rescue Team (HRT) arrested Levasseur, 38, and Gros, 30, after their van was halted in Deerfield, Ohio.[4] According to the special agents, Levasseur kicked an agent but otherwise surrendered without a struggle. A 9-millimeter pistol was found in the van, and the couple's three children, who were in the van, were turned over to juvenile authorities.[4]
Levasseur and six of his comrades were eventually convicted of conspiracy in 1986 and sentenced. In 1987 Levasseur and all seven members of the UFF were charged with seditious conspiracy and violations of the RICO act.[11] The trial ended in an acquittal on most charges and a hung jury on the rest.[10]
After the conspiracy charge in 1986, Levasseur was sentenced to 45 years in prison, and was sent immediately to Control Unit of the supermax prison, USP Marion.[12] While there, he refused to work for the prison labor corporation UNICOR producing weapons for the U.S. Department of Defense.
In 1994 he was transferred to ADX Florence in Colorado. In 1999 he was transferred to the Atlanta Federal Prison, where he was released from solitary confinement for the first time in 13 years. Soon afterwards, he began to publish his writings on the website Letters from Exile.
Levasseur was released from prison on parole in November 2004, having served nearly half of his 45-year sentence.[13]
