Accomplice to 1970 bombing was a fan of Flyers - and Karl Marx

Just 17, with a slight frame, baby face, and the nickname "Buzzy," David Fine seemed like a misplaced high schooler when he arrived at the University of Wisconsin in the fall of 1969.

But the Wilmington native was hardly an innocent. By the time he reached turbulent Madison, Fine already had attracted considerable attention from the FBI.

At Wilmington Friends School, he had been a student organizer, participated in civil rights and antiwar protests, and worked with the radical Students for a Democratic Society.

"As I recall, David had two great loves," said Michael Mally, a retired Inquirer photographer now living in Tucson, Ariz., who was one of Fine's freshman roommates. "The Philadelphia Flyers and Karl Marx."

The FBI's interest would intensify in the summer of 1970. On Aug. 24, Fine and three accomplices set off a deadly bomb at the University of Wisconsin's Sterling Hall, an event CBS News called "a new and dangerous escalation of the radicals' battle to destroy American society."

Two of the bombers were from the Philadelphia area. Fine and Havertown's Leo Burt, a fellow staffer on the university newspaper, the Daily Cardinal, fled to Canada. Burt has never been found. Fine was captured six years later in San Rafael, Calif. He pleaded guilty to several charges, including third-degree murder, and served nearly three years in prison.

His prosecutor, Assistant Wisconsin Attorney General Michael Zaleski, termed Fine "something of a Johnny-come-lately."

According to a 1987 deposition, Fine was the last recruit for the plot. Four days before, he admitted, Burt had told him of the plan to bomb the university's Army Mathematics Research Center.

"I was told that the explosive had been procured and the truck had been stolen," Fine said. "I guess, at that point, it was really ready to go. The participants were concerned that they did not have enough manpower to do exactly what they wanted to do. [They] needed a fourth person."

After the massive truck bomb was activated, Fine phoned Madison police and warned them to evacuate the building. Before they could, the blast killed a 33-year-old physicist named Robert Fassnacht and injured three people.

Fine did not respond to Inquirer requests for an interview. He is 62, married, and working as a paralegal in Oregon. He hasn't spoken publicly since 1989, when he returned to Madison for a 1960s radicals' reunion.

"Regardless of why the bombing happened and the feelings people had about the [research center] and the war in Vietnam, that in no way justifies the death and the destruction," he said at that time. "So I have a lot of regrets about that . . . and always will.

"In 1969, I think a lot of us were active not because it was fun or exciting, but because we were getting kind of desperate about the war in Vietnam. It was just horrible beyond imagination."

The intellectually precocious son of a Wilmington carpet salesman and a dental hygienist, Fine went to Wilmington Friends, where he edited the student newspaper, the Whittier Miscellany, and, according to investigators, read Marx and Lenin and gravitated to militant causes.

Outspoken and self-assured at 16, Fine addressed a Wilmington Antiwar Committee meeting. He joined in demonstrations, boycotts, and rallies.

When captured in 1976, he was using the alias "William Lewes" and denied he was David Fine. Authorities confirmed his identity through dental records.

FBI agents said Fine was "totally uncooperative." The true criminals, he told them, "were those who waged a genocidal war."

After prison, Fine returned home and in 1981 earned a degree from the University of Delaware in political science. He chose the University of Oregon's law school, investigators said, because he thought gaining entry to the bar might be easier in that traditionally liberal state.

In 1984 he passed the bar exam. When Oregon denied him a license, he appealed. The state's Supreme Court rejected it in 1987.

His role in the bombing "was equal to that of the others," the opinion explained, "and he was in full support of the reasons behind the bombing."

According to campaign-contribution records, he has donated $1,500 to the 2014 reelection campaign of Sen. Jeff Merkley (D., Ore.).

His Facebook page is notable for its numerous cat photos. It also contains political posts about various liberal causes and, occasionally, "fascist Republicans."