William Morales
Biography
FALN member severely injured in a 1978 premature bomb explosion at a Queens, NY safehouse that took both of his hands and most of his face. Convicted on federal weapons and explosives charges, he made a dramatic escape from Bellevue Hospital prison ward in 1979, was recaptured in Mexico in 1983, and was eventually released to Cuba where he remains in exile. Documented in PFOC Breakthrough magazine.
The full custody chronology, per the curator: born February 7, 1950, in New York City, Morales was a member of the Fuerzas Armadas de Liberacion Nacional Puertorriquena (FALN). On July 12, 1978, a device exploded while he was working with explosives in an East Elmhurst, Queens apartment, costing him catastrophic injuries to both hands, his face, and one eye; investigators recovered 66 sticks of dynamite and a large quantity of bomb-making material, and he was hospitalized under guard at Elmhurst General Hospital and remained continuously in custody. On February 28, 1979, he was convicted federally of possession of pipe bombs and possession or interstate transportation of pipe bombs and a sawed-off shotgun — ten years plus five years of probation per FBI records — and in April 1979 New York State sentenced him to 29 to 89 years in the Queens explosives and weapons prosecution (the exact state sentencing day awaits a primary court record). Held at the federal Metropolitan Correctional Center and then the Bellevue Hospital prison ward for treatment and the planned fitting of prosthetic hands, he escaped on May 21, 1979 — cutting through the security screen of a third-floor prison-ward window and descending on a makeshift rope of elastic bandages — after approximately 313 days in American custody; on June 1, 1979, federal authorities charged him with unlawful interstate flight. Mexican authorities recaptured him near Puebla on May 26, 1983, after armed confrontations in which a Mexican police officer and two of his associates were killed; convicted in Mexico over the officer's death, he received an eight-year sentence. On June 24, 1988, Mexico released him and placed him on a flight to Cuba rather than granting the pending American extradition request, and he has lived in Cuba since.
