Fifty years ago, on January 24, 1975 our family and countless other innocent people were shattered by terrorists.  Many of the convicted, unrepentant terrorists were disgracefully granted Presidential clemency.  Others remain guests of the regime in Cuba.  Terror victims deserved better.  The fight for justice continues.

Our father, thirty three year-old Frank Connor, and three other innocent men were murdered, while scores were injured and maimed, when the Marxist Puerto Rican terrorist group Armed Forces for National Liberation (“FALN”) blew up New York’s historic Fraunces Tavern during a crowded lunchtime. The FALN appointed themselves my father’s judge, jury, and executioner. 

Our mother Mary planned a family dinner for that very night to celebrate my brother’s recent eleventh and my ninth birthday.  Mourners ate the family dinner after my dad’s funeral.  Our family stuck together depending on our faith, our love for our father and for each other.

FALN communique # 3 found near the Fraunces bombing read, “We FALN…take full responsibility for the especially detornated (sic) bomb that exploded today at Fraunces Tavern with reactionary corporate executives inside…You have unleashed a storm from which you comfortable Yankis cannot escape…”  Frank Connor was hardly a “reactionary corporate executive” but a thirty three year old first generation American husband, son and father of two from working class Washington Heights, New York City, the same neighborhood as some of the terrorists. 

Unlike his friends who became cops and firemen, his mother Margaret, an Irish immigrant, night shift facilities worker at what is now JPMorgan, got him a “safe” job at the Morgan Bank out of high school.  Dad graduated from college at night when we were kids. 

Fraunces Tavern was targeted by the FALN (who sought to impose a Cuban-style Marxist regime in Puerto Rico) for its proximity to Wall Street and for its storied reputation as the birthplace of American liberty. Alexander Hamilton and the Sons of Liberty met there. General George Washington bade farewell to his officers at Fraunces after the Revolutionary War.

Between 1974 and 1983, the FALN claimed responsibility for over 130 bombings in the U.S. and Puerto Rico. Though never prosecuted specifically for the Fraunces bombing, the unrepentant terrorists served only 18 years of prison sentences ranging from 55 to 70 years. As Hillary Clinton geared up for her 2000 New York Senate run and was looking to connect with New York’s Hispanic community, Bill Clinton granted clemency to the FALN, a blatant political gesture orchestrated by then–deputy attorney general Eric Holder. One, leader Oscar Lopez Rivera, was so dedicated to his cause and his comrades that he refused the 1999 Clinton clemency, although in 2017 he accepted an unprecedented second presidential clemency from Obama / Biden. It was one of Obama’s last acts as president.

Adding to the injustice were New York City politicians’ failed attempt in 2017 to bestow a “Freedom Hero” award to the Marxist Lopez, and Hamilton director Lin-Manuel Miranda’s honoring Lopez despite the fact that Fraunces Tavern was frequented by the real Hamilton.

William Morales, chief FALN bomb-maker (currently being given safe haven in Cuba), was not offered Clinton nor Obama clemency. Morales likely built the deadly devices used at Fraunces and New York’s Mobil Oil building, where, in August 1977, 26 year old Charles Steinberg was horrendously murdered.

On July 12, 1978, which would have been my dad’s 37th birthday, Morales blew off part of his face and nine of his fingers when a bomb he was crafting exploded in his Queens bomb factory. The apartment contained explosives, incendiary mixtures, tools, FALN communiqués, and even the copy machine used to make the FALN communiqués, including the January 24, 1975, communiqué found nearby the Fraunces bombing.

Morales was captured, tried, convicted, and sentenced in 1979 to up to 99 years in New York State and Federal prison but escaped from Bellevue prison hospital with the assistance of other radicals who called themselves the Revolutionary Armed Task Force. During the state trial, Morales boasted: “No jail is going to hold me forever. They can put 1,000 of us in jail. They are not going to hold us forever. That’s what I have to say.”  Sadly Morales was right.

Through a FALN investigation run by the Chicago Terrorist Task Force, Morales was located in Puebla, Mexico, in 1983. When the Mexican police closed in, he and an accomplice killed a Mexican police officer. Morales was arrested, charged with being an accessory to murder, and imprisoned in Mexico.

In 1988, ignoring President Reagan’s extradition demands, the sympathetic Mexican government allowed Morales to travel to Cuba, where he remains a guest of the regime along with scores of murderous and felonious fugitives such as Victor Gerena and Black Liberation Army murderer of New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster, Joanne Chesimard (AKA Assata Shakur).

Incredibly over the past decade Cuba, a state sponsoring convicted terrorists, has been removed and added to the US State Sponsor of Terrorism (SSOT) List by alternate US Administrations.  On his first day back in office this week President Trump rightfully revoked the Biden administration’s last-minute decision to remove Cuba from the SSOT list as Trump did in 2021 after President Obama first removed Cuba from the list.

On July 1, 2015, President Obama announced the establishment of formal relations with Cuba before actually visiting the Marxist state in March 2016. As Obama announced his Cuba visit, I was immediately contacted by media who knew our family’s longstanding fight for justice. Ironically, I answered those requests from Joint Base Guantanamo, Cuba. You see, I am also a 9/11 family member, eyewitness to the attacks and one of the 9/11 family members fortunate enough to observe the pretrial hearings at GTMO — at the invitation of my cousin Jean Schlag Nebbia, whose brother, our father’s godson Steve Schlag, was murdered on 9/11/2001.

At the time, I couldn’t help but lament the difference in the handling of the murders of Steve and my dad. For Steve, The United States went to war. For my dad, we released his murderers and opened relations with his patron Cuba. 

Unfortunately we are now heading down the same path with Steve’s murders as we have with those who murdered our father.

Obama like Biden, in his last days in office, offered the aforementioned second clemency to FALN leader Oscar Lopez Rivera; a terrorist I faced and kept in prison at his 2011 parole hearing much like facing Khalid Sheikh Mohammed the others at GTMO.

Along with the untold heroes of law enforcement who dedicated their lives to bringing justice to terrorists, our family, has fought for justice for 50 years through the pain of terrorism and betrayal of the disgusting politicization of our father’s murder.   As we expressed in our new documentary film Shattered Lives, this has been a painful, generational struggle affecting the lives of Frank Connor’s future grandchildren and daughters in law.  

Now, finally, we have the chance for a semblance of justice, The Frank Connor and Trooper Werner Foerster Justice Act, (which calls for the immediate extradition or return to the United States of convicted felon Joanne Chesimard, William “Guillermo” Morales, and all other fugitives who are receiving safe haven in Cuba…) introduced into the senate in 2024 by then Senator and new Secretary of State Marco Rubio.  The Act is expected to be reintroduced to the new senate by co-sponsor Senator Rick Scott. Similar legislation, The Walter Patterson and Werner Foerster Justice and Extradition Act was introduced by Congressman Chris Smith in the House.

Our family and law enforcement have fought for justice for terror victims, for Morales’s extradition to the U.S. for decades. It’s been an exhausting struggle that we pray will end with signing into law The Frank Connor and Trooper Werner Foerster Act. 

While these terrorists will receive ultimate judgement by a greater power, I urge Americans to request that their representatives, senators, Secretary of State Rubio and President Trump join with us in securing the return of these terrorists to face American Justice.

My father’s horrific death has haunted our family for generations. I promised my mom that we would get Morales back during her lifetime. She’ll be 87 soon.

We are in an ongoing war against terrorists. Let’s win that war.