The Justice

Media Credit: Photo courtesy of the Robert D. Farber University Archives & Special Collections Department A student sit-in during early 1970 shows the idealistic air at Brandeis at that time. Some of this activism went violent when months later three students used criminal means to protest.

On Sept. 23, 1970, Brandeis University woke up to another day of classes, cool fall weather and news of a murder and bank robbery at the hands of three of its students.

There were five people suspected of murder and robbery, three of whom were associated with Brandeis. According to the Sept. 29, 1970 issue of the Justice, the suspects included Robert Valeri, 21, a student at Northeastern University; William Gilday, 41, also a student at Northeastern; Kathy Power '71, 21, a senior at Brandeis; Susan Saxe '70, 20, a Brandeis graduate and admitted Brandeis graduate student; and Stanley Bond, 25, also a Brandeis student. The five were accused of murdering Boston patrolman Walter A. Schroeder during a robbery that gained the group $26,000 from a Brighton, Mass. bank. Schroeder, 42, had nine children; he died from a gunshot wound in the back.

Although Brandeis was not new to revolutionary activity-it was home to the National Strike Information Center, and 60 students took over Ford Hall in a 1969 protest-the incident drew much negative attention. Still, according to the Sept. 29, 1970 issue of the Justice, then-University president Charles Schottland expressed "his and the University's 'abhorrence' for the 'criminal' savagery of the slaying and affirmed Brandeis's academic mission." Schottland also emphasized that "the three students [had] recently 'severed all relationships' with Brandeis."

Neither Power nor Saxe seemed like the typical murder suspect. Power had graduated at the top of her Catholic Denver high school and had served as an administrative aide to the Brandeis Student Council. Saxe transferred from Syracuse University and graduated from Brandeis magna cum laude in June 1970, according to the Sept. 29, 1970 issue of the Justice.

Gilday, Valeri and Bond, however, had been paroled from the Walpole State Prison within 90 days of each other the previous spring. In the Justice, Schottland said that Bond, an honorably discharged Vietnam War veteran, was accepted into Brandeis "because his record seemed such an excellent one for school."

Continued...

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