Tom Manning

Thomas William Manning (June 28, 1946 – July 29, 2019) was an American Marxist militant convicted of killing New Jersey State Police trooper Philip J. Lamonaco during a traffic stop in 1981. Along with Raymond Luc Levasseur, he co-founded a small revolutionary Marxist group known as the United Freedom Front (UFF), which bombed a series of US military and commercial institutions and committed bank robberies in the 1970s and early 1980s.

After his release in 1971, he met and married a woman named Carol Ann (maiden surname unreported), and together they eventually had three children, who were born around 1973 , 1980 , and 1981 .

United Freedom Front

In 1975, Manning's friend Raymond Luc Levasseur co-founded the Sam Melville/Jonathan Jackson Unit along with Manning, Pat Gros, and Carol Manning. This eventually became known as the United Freedom Front. From its founding in 1975 until the arrests of its final active members in 1984, the UFF carried out various political bombings and bank robberies in the northeast United States. The bank robberies were initially conducted to support the bombings and later to support their "life on the run". Altogether, the group consisted of at most eight people, and was eventually accused of nineteen bombings and attempted bombings and ten bank robberies. The killing launched the largest manhunt in New Jersey police history, and ended with the arrests of Raymond and Patricia Levasseur, Richard Williams, Jaan Laaman, and Barbara Curzi on November 4, 1984, and Tom and Carol Manning, on April 24, 1985. All were associated with the United Freedom Front. Manning pleaded self-defense at his trial. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison on February 19, 1987. By 2009, Manning had arrived at ADX Florence in Fremont County, Colorado.

Manning's projected release date was September 28, 2020, but he died in prison in Bruceton Mills, West Virginia, on July 29, 2019, aged 73.