Biography
Claude Daniel Marks appears primarily in two roles: first, as a long-sought fugitive associated by federal authorities with Puerto Rican nationalist militancy and a prison-break conspiracy; and later, as a participant in left-wing archival and prisoner-support work. Contemporaneous reporting described Marks and Donna Willmott as having been on the run for years and wanted in connection with an alleged conspiracy tied to a prison breakout plan involving Oscar López Rivera.
Marks and Willmott surrendered in Chicago on December 7, 1994 and were taken into custody. Separately, Marks is described by the Freedom Archives (a nonprofit archive) as a founder/director engaged in preserving materials from radical social movements and supporting political prisoners—an identity that, in that organization’s telling, followed his own period of incarceration connected to Puerto Rican solidarity work.
Marks was named to the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list on May 22, 1987 — fugitive #411. After more than seven years underground he surrendered with his partner Donna Jean Willmott in Chicago, Illinois on December 6, 1994. Both were charged with conspiring to use explosives to break FALN co-founder Oscar López Rivera out of USP Leavenworth in Kansas. Both pleaded guilty.
