On December 21, 1981, New Jersey State Trooper Philip Lamonaco was shot and killed in a gunfight after stopping a car on Interstate 80 carrying Tom Manning and Richard Williams. The killing made the underground network the object of a massive manhunt and, for the movement, produced its hardest cases. Manning, who maintained he fired in self-defense after Lamonaco shot him, was convicted of murder in 1987 and sentenced to life; Williams's first trial ended in a hung jury, and he was convicted at a 1986 retrial.
Both men spent the rest of their lives in prison as recognized political prisoners of the prison-movement generation — Williams died in custody in 2005, and Manning, an accomplished painter whose work toured with political-prisoner art exhibitions, died at USP Hazelton in 2019, still serving the New Jersey life term alongside his federal sentences.