Biography
Karleton Lewis Karl Armstrong was a 23-year-old University of Wisconsin-Madison student in 1970 and the principal organizer of the August 24, 1970 ammonium-nitrate truck bombing of Sterling Hall on the UW-Madison campus. The four-man New Years Gang — Karl, his younger brother Dwight Armstrong, David Fine, and Leo Burt — had identified the Army Mathematics Research Center on the second through fourth floors of Sterling Hall as the principal U.S. academic provider of strategic-bombing target analysis for the Vietnam War. The 2,000-pound ANFO truck bomb detonated at 3:42 a.m.; the building was largely empty but a graduate-student researcher, Robert Fassnacht, was working in a basement laboratory and was killed. Three other people were injured.
Karl fled to Canada and lived underground for nearly two years before being arrested in Toronto in February 1972. He was extradited to the United States, pleaded guilty in September 1973 to second-degree murder and other charges, and was sentenced to 23 years in Wisconsin state prison. He served 7 years and was paroled in 1980. He has spent his life since in Madison.
The University of Wisconsin–Madison Archives finding aid distinguishes Armstrong’s Canadian arrest from his March 8, 1973 extradition to the United States. Its chronology records a September 28 guilty plea, a November 1, 1973 twenty-three-year Wisconsin sentence before Judge William Sachtjen and a separate April 18, 1974 ten-year federal sentence before Judge James Doyle. These are imposed terms, not thirty-three years served; the guide does not establish concurrency or a physical discharge day. Its February 17, 1972 Canadian-arrest date conflicts with the existing February 15 entry and remains a research discrepancy. Source: https://cms.library.wisc.edu/archives/wp-content/uploads/sites/21/2022/07/Math-Research-Center-finding-aid-June-2022.pdf#page=3
