FBI Ups Its Efforts to Find 'Highly Intelligent' Fugitive

Donna Borup, accused of '81 acid attack on cop, has been on the lam for almost 40 years
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted May 16, 2019 9:50 AM CDT
Search Intensifies for Suspect in 1981 Acid Attack on Cop
A wanted poster for Donna Borup.   (FBI)

The FBI is intensifying efforts to locate a woman accused of blinding a police officer with acid in 1981, offering up to $100,000 for information leading to her arrest. Donna Borup was a member of the May 19th Communist Organization, a group calling for the violent overthrow of the US government, when she allegedly threw acid in the face of Officer Evan Goodstein of the Port Authority Police during an anti-apartheid protest at New York's JFK Airport on Sept. 26 of that year. "I don't remember feeling any pain like that ever in my life," Goodstein, blinded in one eye, recalled in a 2017 episode of The Hunt With John Walsh, per CNN. "There's no higher priority than looking for somebody that hurt one of our own," Bill Sweeney of the FBI's New York Field Office tells ABC News.

Borup was initially arrested on charges of first-degree riot and first-degree assault and released pending a 1982 trial. When she later failed to appear before the court, she was hit with an additional charge of unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. Almost 40 years later, PAP Superintendent Ed Cetnar says he's confident Borup will eventually be caught. "That's going to be a great day," he tells ABC. The New Jersey native reportedly has ties to Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and Canada. She may also have fled to Central America, per ABC. She's described as white, 5'4" to 5'6", with brown or graying hair. According to the FBI, she also goes by aliases Rebecca Ann Morgan and Donna Austopchuk and is "thought to have a photographic memory and is highly intelligent." (More FBI stories.)

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