25 Years on Run End for Murder Suspect

A onetime black radical charged in the killing of a Philadelphia police officer 25 years ago has been captured in a Chicago suburb by a police officer who was looking for a pickpocket.

An officer questioned the 49-year-old man at a bus stop in River Forest, Ill., on Thursday afternoon, then checked his Social Security number.

An approximate match indicated that the suspect was not Melvin Taylor, as his identification showed, but Richard B. Thomas, a member of a Black Panthers offshoot who is wanted in the 1970 murder of a police officer known fondly as the “Green Giant.”

Philadelphia Police Commissioner Richard Neal said he intends to bring Thomas back to Philadelphia for trial as soon as possible.

Thomas did not put up a fight, police said. When Officer Edwin Rann told him his identity had been figured out, Thomas almost seemed relieved, police said.

Thomas told police he had led a quiet life since the killing, getting around mostly on public transportation because he was afraid to get a driver’s license. At one point he lived in New York City. Lately, he said, he had been living in Maywood, Ill., a small suburb of Chicago, and doing construction work.

Thomas said he recently saw himself profiled on a television true-crime show and marveled at the likeness of a computer-aged picture flashed on the screen.

According to police, Thomas and five others, all members of an offshoot of the Black Panthers called the Black Unity Council, set out to blow up a police substation on the night of Aug. 29, 1970. They took up positions outside the substation but were interrupted by a police emergency wagon.

One of the men flagged down the wagon and shot Officer James Harrington in the jaw, shattering his teeth.

Thomas then entered the substation and shot Sgt. Frank VonColln five times in the back as the officer sat at his desk talking on the phone, his gun inside a drawer, police said.

Five grenades were left in the area but none exploded.

“These people were some very violent people,” Neal said. “It was an out-and-out assassination.”

The murder led police to raid three Philadelphia locations housing the Black Panthers. Three officers were wounded and 10 people were arrested when gunfire erupted at two of the sites.

It was a time of considerable racial strife in Philadelphia. Hours before VonColln’s shooting, the mayor had declared a state of emergency in black neighborhoods in North and South Philadelphia.

The five other men were sentenced to life for the shootings, and all remain imprisoned.

The arrest was at least the second for Thomas since the shooting. He was arrested in 1980 for a traffic violation but released before police learned his real identity.