ALBANY – The woman who served as the getaway driver in the infamous Brinks armored car robbery in Rockland County in 1981 in which three men, including two police officers, were shot dead, had her sentence commuted on Friday by Governor Andrew Cuomo.
The robbers, who belonged to a group run by the Black Liberation Army, shot and killed Brinks armored truck guard Peter Paige and Nyack Police officers Sgt. Edward O’Grady and Officer Waverly Brown.
Judith Clark, 67, was convicted of murder and robbery in 1983. She has served over 35 years of her 75 years to life sentence.
Clark received one of the longest sentences of her six co-defendants, the majority of whom are either dead or no longer in custody.
Clark is now eligible to appear before the parole board in the first quarter of 2017.
Rockland County Executive Edwin Day, who called Clark “a domestic
terrorist,” blasted the decision to commute her sentence as “a
vicious slap in the face” to law enforcement, the victims’
families and every person touched by the murders.
Day is a former detective commander in the NYPD and a past chief of detectives in the Baltimore Police Department.
Orange County Sheriff Carl DuBois was a young Middletown city police officer and attended police academy in neighboring Rockland County at the time of the holdup. He called the governor’s action a travesty of justice.
“I don’t know what it is here in New York it’s unbelievable,”
DuBois said. “This person should be serving life in prison. The
three people that were killed in that armored car robbery – and
they were stealing money, probably to kill more people in the future or
to make bombs – to have her sentence commuted is a travesty of justice.”
The governor said while at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, Clark made “exceptional strides in self-development.” She earned a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree from Mercy College and has an extensive prison programming record including teaching pre-natal parenting course in the nursery program, founding an HIV/AID education program, training service dogs in the Puppies Behind Bars Program, and serving as a college tutor.
She also maintained a perfect disciplinary record and lives in honor housing.
