Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, September 16, 1993 TAG: 9309160142
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BOB BAUM ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: CORVALLIS, ORE. LENGTH: Medium
Back in 1970, she drove a getaway car for a gang of Vietnam War opponents who killed a policeman during a Boston bank robbery. She had evaded capture by hiding out in women's communes, then by starting a new life in Oregon in 1977.
And now it was time to take responsibility, she told her stunned audience, and turn herself in.
"It really floored me. Not the crimes so much for me but that she was able to hide it for so long," said a co-worker, Lynette Adkins.
The details emerged three days later, in a Boston courthouse on Wednesday. Metzinger's real name is Katherine Ann Power, 44, a fugitive who spent 14 years on the FBI most-wanted list until investigators declared the case unsolved.
"She reached a point in her life that she felt she needed to be truthful with the people that she knew," said another friend, Marilyn Schwader. "She wanted to reconnect with her family."
The decision to surrender was not a hasty one. Power decided months ago to begin negotiations with prosecutors. Charged with first-degree murder, she pleaded guilty Wednesday to reduced charges of manslaughter and armed robbery.
Her attorney, Rikki Klieman, indicated Power would spend more than five years in prison, but wouldn't say how much more. Authorities declined to say whether they would seek a lenient sentence. Sentencing was set for Oct. 6.
Power was reunited Monday with her parents and sister, Claudia. "We didn't know if she was alive or not," said her mother, Marjorie Power, 71, of Grand Junction, Colo. "We showed her all the family that she hasn't seen. We had scrapbooks and everything."
Power admitted her role in the robbery of Boston's State Street Bank on Sept. 23, 1970. She wasn't there when the robbers took $26,000 from the bank, shooting to death Officer Walter Schroeder Sr. She drove the "switch car," the second getaway car parked about a mile from the bank.
Investigators found a cache of rifles, detonators and ammunition in her apartment.
Those who knew her as Alice Metzinger in Corvallis - where she taught cooking at a community college, served as consultant to restaurants and cooked at M's Tea & Coffee House - described her as a kind, loving woman.
Until recently, she was co-owner of a restaurant-bakery in nearby Eugene. She sold her share and gave most of the profits to a hunger relief charity, said her therapist, Linda Carroll.
Before moving to Oregon, Power had used three or four different aliases, her attorneys said. Then she found the name of a baby who had died about the time she was born. Using the baby's name, Alice Louise Metzinger, she obtained a birth certificate, then a Social Security number and a driver's license.
She has a son, Jaime, who is 14 years old. He learned of her secret just weeks ago.
Over the years, Power had a son, Jaime, 14. She told him her secret just weeks ago.
A year ago, Power married her longtime companion, accountant Ron Duncan. They lived in Lebanon, where neighbors said they kept to themselves.
by CNB