Weather Underground Fugitives Marks, Willmott Give Up To FBI

CHICAGO - Two radical fugitives accused of buying plastic explosives in a plot to help a Puerto Rican separatist leader escape from federal prison surrendered to FBI agents yesterday after spending nine years living under disguised identities.

Trailed by lawyers and family members, Claude Daniel Marks, 45, and Donna Jean Willmott, 44, gave themselves up to FBI agents in Chicago.

Once linked to the Weather Underground and other domestic terror groups, Marks and Willmott eked out uneventful lives in Pittsburgh, showing none of the outward trappings of their old militancy, their lawyers reported. They raised families and worked under assumed names. Marks, once described as an expert in martial arts and weapons, even coached a Little League baseball team.

"First challenged to activism by the movements of the '60s, both of us have spent all our adult lives working to change the injustices that are a part of the very fabric of society," Marks and Willmott said in statement released by their lawyers.

Federal prosecutors and defense lawyers said the pair, who remained on the FBI's Most Wanted list for years after disappearing from Los Angeles in 1985, came forward under a tentative plea bargain.

Under the agreement, the pair would plead guilty to charges stemming from the aborted escape attempt, resulting in a maximum of 10 years in prison for Marks and a 5-year term for Willmott, if approved in court.

Marks smiled and waved at family members as he entered a federal courtroom before the start of an afternoon bail hearing. A clean-shaven man in dark trousers and deck shoes, he had shed the furtive, bearded image that long adorned his wanted poster. Willmott, a short woman wearing white running shoes and a sweater, sat nearby, puffing on an inhaler to ease breathing difficulties caused by a lung infection.

Marks' lawyer, Michael Deutsch, said the fugitives decided to come forward because they had grown weary of living "this type of life that has a great uncertainty to it. You're always wondering if you're going to be arrested."

Marks and Willmott were indicted along with five other radicals in 1986 in an alleged conspiracy to free Oscar Lopez, a leader of the Puerto Rican separatist group FALN (Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacion Nacional) from the federal penitentiary at Leveanworth, Kan., where he is serving a 55-year prison sentence.