Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced Joanne Chesimard, a member of the Black Liberation Army convicted in the 1973 murder of New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster, died Thursday at age 78.
She became one of the state’s most infamous criminals after Foerster’s murder and her subsequent escape to Cuba. New Jersey officials have sought to extradite Chesimard from Cuba for years; she topped the New Jersey State Police’s Most Wanted List until her death.
The Cuban ministry said she died in Havana of health complications and old age.
After graduating from college, she began using the name Assata Shakur. She and two other members of the Black Liberation Army were stopped by a pair of state troopers on the Turnpike on May 2, 1973. Chesimard was the subject of a multi-state manhunt at the time. Foerster and James Costan, another member of the BLA, died in the ensuing gunfight. State Trooper James Harper was also wounded.
Chesimard was convicted of murder and seven other felonies stemming from the shootout and sentenced to life in prison in 1977. She escaped from prison in 1979 with the help of the BLA and the May 19 Communist Organization. She made her way to Cuba, where she was granted political asylum in 1984.
The FBI and the New Jersey attorney general each offered a $1 million reward for her capture.
She was one of two activists convicted of the murder of Foerster; the other, Sundiata Acoli, was released on parole in 2022 after an appellate panel found the now-elderly man is not a threat.
This is a developing story.
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