Biography
Raymond Luc Levasseur was a leading figure in the United Freedom Front, which operated as an underground cell-style organization that claimed a revolutionary anti-imperialist politics. Federal authorities linked the group to bombings and to robberies used to finance its activities, and Levasseur became one of the best-known fugitives associated with that milieu.
Levasseur was arrested on November 4, 1984, in Ohio after years on the run. He was convicted on multiple federal offenses connected to the underground campaign and received a lengthy prison sentence (widely reported as 45 years). He ultimately served roughly two decades before being released on parole in 2004.
The Winter 1991 Breakthrough advertisement credits Levasseur and Tim Blunk, together with the editors of Jacobin Books, as editors of Hauling Up the Morning / Izando la Manana: Writings and Art by Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War in the U.S., published by Red Sea Press with an Assata Shakur introduction and William Kunstler prefatory note. This records editorial activity without changing his existing custody chronology. Source: https://www.freedomarchives.org/Documents/Finder/DOC501_scans/Break/501.break.20.win.91.pdf#page=41
Custody before the recorded sentencing admission
Prisons: Fortresses of Repression, PDF page(s) 6: The pamphlet names Ray Levasseur among five defendants brought to a Brooklyn arraignment in 1985 while in the custody of U.S. Marshals. This documents custody before the June 1986 sentencing-era admission currently recorded. It does not establish the initial detention day, continuity into the sentenced term, or a separate release date; no new exact endpoint or served total is inferred. This is an attributed contemporary advocacy account; its allegations of abuse are not additional judicial findings. The archive filename contains “84,” but the pamphlet includes 1985-1986 events and should not be treated as a document fixed to 1984.
Breakthrough’s Winter 1990 account dates the Springfield seditious-conspiracy acquittal of Raymond Luc Levasseur, Richard Williams and Patricia Gros Levasseur to November 30, 1989. Its collective report says the jury failed to reach a verdict on RICO charges, a mistrial was declared, and the government announced five days later that it would not seek another RICO trial. The report’s broad treatment of the RICO counts is preserved as an attributed contemporary account, without replacing more detailed count-by-count outcomes already recorded. The acquittal is not treated as release from other sentences, and no custody endpoint or numeric total changes.
The firstOctober1988 Can’t Jail the Spirit edition supplies this earlier episode. Levasseur’s first-person biography describes actual Tennessee state imprisonment, mostly in segregation, following a marijuana-sale prosecution, and explicitly dates actual release to1971 YEAR. Five years was the imposed sentence, not a verified complete actual-service counter. The beginning remains unknown and this is distinct from the later1984 arrest and federal imprisonment.
Levasseur’s 1993 reflection says he first reached Marion in August 1986, spent over three years away on a writ for the sedition trial, and returned in December 1989.
The Ohio Five’s March 25, 1985 statement reports placement in disciplinary cells upon arrival at New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center on March 20.
