“I’m very much concerned about my failure to render a condolence,’’ he said during a Globe interview in a locked hospital room at a medium-security prison in Shirley. He also said he wanted to address one of the patrolman’s daughters: “I’m terribly sorry that her father got shot, and that on behalf of myself and other people concerned, I would ask them to accept my heartfelt condolences.’’
After spending the day curled up on the starchy sheets of a bed in the health unit of MCI-Shirley, the balding inmate sat up, straightened his pajamas, and donned a pair of thick prison-issued glasses. His words were labored, his hearing fading, his hands shaking as he recalled the day that led to his final arrest, after years of other crimes.
Still, he had a lucid memory of the morning of Sept. 23, 1970, when he helped a radical group from the Weather Underground rob a Brighton branch of the State Street Bank and Trust Co.
“I wish we never would have gone to the bank that day,’’ he said of the group’s failed effort to finance their movement against the Vietnam War.
He recalled the dismal haul - $26,585 - and the others who participated in the infamous robbery, including Stanley Bond, who died two years later, when a bomb he built to escape the maximum-security prison in Walpole detonated prematurely; Robert Valeri and Michael Fleisher, who both testified against Gilday and were released after serving short sentences; Susan Saxe, who was on the lam for five years before she was arrested and sentenced to seven years in prison; and Katherine Anne Power, who eluded authorities until 1993, when she turned herself in and served six years in prison.
When asked whether he would acknowledge his guilt in the shooting of Schroeder, who was responding to the robbery, Gilday took a long pause.
READER COMMENTS »
View reader comments » Comment on this story »