Susan Saxe

Associated Press

Susan Saxe, radical, to go on trial

PHILADELPHIA

Susan Edith

Saxe, a 26-year-old antiwar revolutionary. goes on trial in federal court today on charges of participating in a 1970 Philadelphia bank holdup.

She also is accused in the killing of a Boston policeman during a second 1970 bank robbery, and Massachusetts officials say she'll probably stand trial for that later this year.

Today's trial of the former Albany, N.Y., resident and Brandeis University honor graduate centers on the theft of $6.240 from the Bell Savings and Loan Association here on Sept. 1. 1970.

Witnes es allege she remained outside holding a gasoline bomb while Stanley Bond. of Cambridge. Mass.. robbed the bank. Bond, who was convicted in the holdup. was killed in prison while attempting to make a bomb.

The Boston robbery occurred 25 days later. Patrolman Francis Schroder, the father of nine children, was shot in the getaway. Bond, William Gilday, 45, of Worcester, Mass., and Richard Valeri, 26, Somerville, Mass., were convicted in the holdup.

Still sought in the Boston case and also named as the driver of the getaway car in the Philadelphia holdup, is Katherine Ann Power. 25. Denver, Colo.. the only woman now on the FBI's "10 most wanted list."

Valeri, who was scheduled to be a key prosecution witness in the case here, walked away from a nearby Chester County prison farm Wednesday.

Valeri had testified against the other two men at their 1971 Boston trial and also reportedly cooperated with the officials in the prosecution of an Evanston, Ill., bank robbery committed in the interval between the Philadelphia and Boston robberies. Susan Saxe also was indicted in the Evanston robbery.

Authorities allege the three holdups were to finance revolutionary activities of the Weather Underground, then violently protesting American involvement in Vietnam and Cambodia.

Susan Saxe describes herself as "a lesbian, a feminist and an Amazon” and stoutly protests her innocence. She was picked up last March 27 while walking with a woman friend on a downtown Philadelphia street.

1