Biography
Richard Thomas was a member of Philadelphia’s Black Unity Council and one of six men whom prosecutors identified with a group called “The Revolutionaries” in the 1970 Cobbs Creek case. He went underground after being accused of taking part in a plan that prosecutors said led to the killing of Fairmount Park Police Sergeant Frank Von Colln and the wounding of Officer Joseph Harrington. Thomas remained underground for twenty-six years before his arrest in suburban Chicago in March 1996. At trial, Thomas maintained that he had fled because he feared being railroaded or shot by police. Unlike the five codefendants who received life sentences, he was acquitted by a Philadelphia jury on November 3, 1999. The prosecution and acquittal occurred against the backdrop of Frank Rizzo’s crackdown on Black political organizations and federal COINTELPRO repression.
