United Freedom Front

American Marxist terrorist conspiracy (1975–1984)

The United Freedom Front (UFF) was a small American Marxist organization active in the 1970s and 1980s. It was originally called the Sam Melville/Jonathan Jackson Unit, and its members became known as the Ohio 7 when they were brought to trial. Mainly led by Raymond Luc Levasseur and assisted by Tom Manning, between 1975 and 1984 the UFF carried out at least 20 bombings and ten bank robberies in the northeastern United States, targeting corporate buildings, courthouses, and military facilities. The UFF claimed to oppose US foreign policy in Central America, as well as South African apartheid. In March 1984 the group detonated a bomb after a warning call at an IBM building in Harrison, New York reportedly for selling computer parts to the South African regime. The UFF's targets included South African Airways, Union Carbide, IBM, Mobil, courthouses, and military facilities. The UFF called in warnings before all of its bombings, attempting to avoid casualties. The group was most active in the early 1980s. The UFF's members lived undercover in middle class suburbs. The UFF funded most of its activities by bank robberies. From 1974 to 1983, the UFF, largely led by Levasseur and assisted by Manning, conducted ten bank robberies in the Northeast United States. Both Manning and Williams were charged with the murder of Lamonaco, allegedly shooting him eight times with a 9mm automatic pistol. Manning claimed he was alone in the car at the time of the shooting with the prosecution claiming Williams was present at the scene and shooter of Lamonaco. Two state troopers were wounded in the course of arresting Toure. On November 4, 1984, police apprehended Levasseur and Gros near Deerfield, Ohio, and Laaman, Curzi, and Williams in Cleveland. The Mannings were captured six months later in Norfolk, Virginia.

The UFF's members were tried repeatedly on various federal and state charges. In March 1986, seven of them (the so called "Ohio Seven") were convicted of conspiracy, receiving sentences ranging from 15 to 53 years. In 1987, all eight members were charged with sedition and racketeering. Eventually five accepted plea bargains, had charges against them dropped, or were tried separately, and the trial of the remaining three ended in 1989 with an acquittal for sedition for all three and acquittal for Patricia Levasseur (formerly Gros and now Rowbottom) for RICO Conspiracy and a deadlocked (hung) jury on the substantive racketeering charges. Thomas Manning and Richard Williams were given life sentences for the 1981 murder of state trooper Philip Lamonaco, and Laaman was convicted in the 1982 attempted murder of two state troopers. The activist defense lawyer William Kunstler represented UFF members in some of these proceedings. Toure, Curzi, Gros, and Carol Manning were released during the 1990s, and Levasseur was released in November 2004. Williams died in prison in December 2005, and Laaman was released in May 2021.

USA v. Patricia Gros: 84 CR 0222
USA v. Raymond Luc Levasseur et al. : 86 CR 180

In an episode of The FBI Files, "Radical Agenda" the FBI investigation of the United Freedom Front was featured and dramatized. In a made for television movie, In The Line Of Duty: Hunt For Justice, 1995, the murder of Trooper Philip Lamonaco was featured, as was the investigation into, and arrests of the members of the terrorist organization the United Freedom Front.