Diana Oughton - The Townhouse Explosion

The Townhouse Explosion

On Monday, March 2, 1970, in Keene, New Hampshire, a Weatherman purchased two 50-pound cases of dynamite from the New England Explosives Corporation. Sometime that week, the dynamite was moved from Keene to Greenwich Village, New York, where it was taken to the house at 18 West Eleventh Street. Oughton left Detroit and joined the group at the house. On Friday of the same week, Oughton and Robbins were in the basement assembling a nail bomb when it detonated. Cathy Wilkerson, who was in the townhouse at the time, describes her experience during the explosion, "the idea that Terry and Diana were both in the subbasement overwhelmed everything else. As I forced my attention there and to them, my lungs expanded instantaneously to draw in air and dust so I could call out."

Wilkerson and Kathy Boudin, another Weatherman in the townhouse at the time, were the only two to escape. When they ran out into the street, someone asked if there was anyone else in the house. Thinking that Ted Gold, the other Weatherman in the townhouse, had gone to the store, Wilkerson replied that no, there was no one left inside. She knew that Terry and Diana were gone.

Four days after the explosion, detectives found some of Oughton's remains near a workbench in the rubble-filled basement of the devastated townhouse. At the end of another week, a detective discovered the tip of the little finger from the right hand. A print taken by a police department expert was matched later that day with a set of Oughton’s prints in the Washington files of the FBI. The prints they had on file were from Oughton’s arrest in Chicago on October 9, 1969 during the "Days of Rage".

It took four days to find Oughton’s remains, not only because of the amount of destruction the bomb had caused—the townhouse was destroyed—but also because of the dynamite found in the wreckage. While searching through the rubble, detectives found four lead pipes, each 12 inches (30 cm) in diameter and packed with dynamite. The street was cleared, the bomb-removal truck was summoned, and the search continued with considerable caution. Before the day was over, detectives found four cartons containing 57 sticks of dynamite, 30 blasting caps, and some cheap alarm clocks with holes drilled in their faces for the attaching of wires. It was understood later that the bombs were to be detonated at a non-commissioned officers' dance at Fort Dix.

The doctor who examined Oughton's remains said that she had been standing within a foot or two of the bomb when it exploded. It may, in fact, have gone off in her hands. Ayers has raised the possibility that Oughton may have intentionally detonated the explosion, and it has been reported that a vicious argument occurred throughout the previous day and night in which Boudin favored using antipersonnel bombs, and that Oughton had misgivings.

When Brian Flanagan reflects on his time as part of the Weather Underground Organization, he has this to say: "I was regretful over about 5 percent of what we did." He added, "I think 95 percent of what we did was great, and we'd do it again." "And what was the 5 percent? The town house." When pressed, Flanagan said that he regretted "the deaths of the three Weathermen Ted Gold, Diana Oughton and Terry Robbins and the plan to bomb the dance at Fort Dix and the library at Columbia University, which could have taken lives."

The Townhouse Explosion was the tragic and dramatic culmination of the grim political direction in which Weatherman had been headed. Laura Whitehorn, a former member of Weatherman, said "We were out of touch with what was going on, and we lost sight of the fact that if you’re a revolutionary, the first thing you have to try to do is preserve human life."

Weather Underground Organization dedicated their book Prairie Fire to Oughton.