Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, October 7, 1993 TAG: 9310070198
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ANNE STUART ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: BOSTON LENGTH: Medium
In a small, packed courtroom, a 14-year-old boy stoically watched his mother, former anti-war radical Katherine Ann Power, sent to prison for eight to 12 years for her part in the bank holdup she had told him of just weeks ago.
Sitting one row closer to the judge were the eight surviving children of police Officer Walter Schroeder Sr. They took the whole row, with their mother in the middle, dressed in a black suit and a white lace shirt.
They knew too well of the crime, a holdup to finance the radical cause. Their father had died in the robbery.
"We wish and pray that this process had been completed 23 years ago so that we could try to complete the healing process and continue with our lives," said Clare Schroeder, the oldest daughter and herself a police officer, who spoke to the court for the family.
Wednesday's courtroom drama finally brought closure to the pain of two families.
For the Schroeders, it was an end, as Clare Schroeder called it, to a "constant revisiting of our pain and sorrow."
For Power's parents and six brothers and sisters, the moment was bittersweet. Long lost to the underground, where she hid from prosecution, daughter and sister has returned only to disappear again, into prison.
Power's husband, Ron Duncan, chin quivering, face flushed, wiped back tears as his wife addressed the court:
"Twenty-three years ago, I undertook a course of action that resulted in the death of another human being. I cannot possibly say in words how sorry I am at the death of Officer Schroeder. My whole adult life has been a continuing act of contrition."
Power's parents and siblings also dabbed at their eyes. They left the courtroom quickly after the sentencing without talking to anyone.
The Schroeders wept, too, as Clare told the court about the day her father died, one day after the bank heist, and how she broke the news to them.
"I remember walking from house to house where my brothers and sisters were staying with relatives. Each time, I cried again. It took me almost all day to tell everybody," said Clare, who was 17 at the time.
Power crisscrossed the country before settling near Corvallis, Ore., teaching and working as a chef under the alias Alice Metzinger. She married Duncan, her longtime companion, a year ago. Power, 44, turned herself in to Massachusetts authorities last month.
"Katherine participated in a criminal act 23 years ago, but the Katherine I love and cherish is no criminal. The Katherine who is crazy in love with her son, he who feels the bitterness of her absence as I do, is not a criminal," Duncan said in a letter to the court.
Elsewhere in the letter, he said, "Her absence will be as a winter storm to us, leaving us in cold, deadening numbness."
Power's family spoke of the pain of coming separation; Schroeder spoke of growing up without a father.
"He was not there to take them fishing or camping," she said. "He did not attend their Little League games, or school recitals. He wasn't there to teach my brothers how to throw a football, or how to change a flat tire.
"We felt our father's absence at every family event. He wasn't there at our high school or college graduations. He wasn't there to give away the bride at any of my sisters' weddings."
Duncan's letter described the impact of the crime on the family Power had created in Oregon. "So many lives destroyed by that war," he wrote. "After more than two decades, the tremors may smash my life as well as the life of my son."
But in court, Judge Robert Banks sternly rejected any notion that the social upheaval of the times justified or excused Power's participation in the crime.
"Your acts went far beyond the acts of the responsible people of the 1970s who, through their voices, led demonstrations - in a lawful manner objected to the actions of their government and the society in which they lived," Banks said. "Lawful acts by responsible people. Yours were criminal in every sense of the word."
The Schroeder family, too, rejected any effort to place the crime in the context of anti-war fervor. "Robbing banks and murdering policemen were criminal acts then, and they are criminal acts now," Clare Schroeder said. "Murdering a policeman in Boston to bring peace to Southeast Asia was utterly senseless then, and it is just as senseless now."
Through it all, Power's son, Jaime Metzinger, sat quietly in court in a gray suit and red tie, looking down and showing little emotion. Later, as his father was being interviewed in a hotel room, the boy sat apart, looking tired and sad.
For him, the story had just begun.
by CNB