I wanted to interview Ayers for one reason: My enduring interest in whatever became of Leo Burt, Madison’s most famous fugitive. Burt is more than that: He’s the great unfinished story of my half century in this city.
Ayers had been underground for 11 years; Burt has now been a fugitive for nearly 38 years, since he and three others (all eventually apprehended) set off a bomb targeted at the Army Math Research Center in Sterling Hall on the UW-Madison campus. The 1970 blast killed a young researcher, Robert Fassnacht, and caused millions of dollars of damage.