[News] Toronto librarian accused of being wanted Panther

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Toronto librarian accused of being wanted Panther
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20040729/COLDCASE29/TPNational/TopStories

By JEFF GRAY AND JONATHAN FOWLIE

UPDATED AT 3:25 PM EDT Thursday, Jul 29, 2004


He worked as a researcher among the quiet stacks of the Toronto Reference 
Library for more than a decade, supporting a wife and children. But 
55-year-old Douglas Freeman -- whose real name is Joseph Coleman Pannell -- 
is accused of hiding a secret, violent past.

Mr. Pannell, police in Chicago say, is a former member of the Black Panther 
Party wanted for attempted murder in the shooting of a police officer four 
times at point-blank range in 1969 at the height of the radical group's 
notoriety.

On Tuesday night, those past allegations caught up with Mr. Pannell. Around 
8:30 p.m., a special Toronto fugitive squad arrested him outside the 
library as he approached his car.

Eight officers and two police dogs were deployed, but at a press conference 
yesterday, RCMP Corporal Tony Gollub said Mr. Pannell did not resist 
arrest. He even told police he had been "preparing for this day for over 30 
years . . . and he was still surprised."

RCMP Sergeant Warren Gherasim said the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation 
and Department of Justice contacted authorities in Canada in the past few 
weeks.

They asked them to search for matches to Mr. Pannell's fingerprints, which 
were taken when he was arrested in Chicago in 1969.

Sgt. Gherasim said the prints matched those in Canadian records taken for 
what he would only call "a customs offence" committed by Mr. Pannell, known 
then as Douglas Freeman, in 1983. Investigators then traced him to his 
workplace, he said.

Little is known about Mr. Pannell's life in Canada, although police said he 
has a spouse and children here. He apparently lived in Montreal for several 
years before moving to Toronto and getting a job with the Toronto Public 
Library. Police said yesterday that he had an Ontario driver's licence in 
his assumed name.

Several employees at the Toronto Reference Library said yesterday they had 
never heard of Mr. Freeman. And yesterday, the library's e-mail system did 
not appear to list his name. A spokeswoman would confirm only that the 
library is co-operating with police.

On March 7, 1969, 21-year-old patrolman Terrence Knox was driving his 
marked car in the Kensington District of Chicago when he saw a 19-year-old 
man on the street.

"I stopped him and asked him why he wasn't in school," the retired officer 
recalled yesterday afternoon in an interview, "and for some reason he 
decided to shoot me."

Mr. Knox said the 19-year-old pulled out a 9-mm gun and shot several times 
into the window of the squad car, hitting the Chicago officer in the right 
arm and severing a major artery.

Chicago press coverage at the time said Mr. Pannell was originally from 
Washington and that he was AWOL from the U.S. Navy, a detail Mr. Knox 
confirmed yesterday.

Mr. Knox, who at 21 was the youngest Chicago policeman to have been shot, 
said that he blacked out almost immediately and that his last memory of the 
incident is of watching the teenager back away from the car.

Still, he has been told a great deal about what happened that day, and said 
yesterday he was thankful for the quick work of a nearby officer on a 
motorcycle who stopped to help.

"[He] put his finger in my arm to stop my artery from pumping blood out," 
Mr. Knox said last night. "Had he not done that I know I would have been 
dead on the street," he added, explaining he had seen photos showing the 
immense pools of blood at the scene.

Despite that prompt help, however, Mr. Knox came very close to losing his 
life that day.

"According to the police, I was given the last rites at the hospital," he 
said, still clearly affected by the incident. "When you are told you're 
dead and you live from 1969 on, every day is a blessing."

Doctors, who at first thought they would have to amputate Mr. Knox's arm, 
performed experimental surgery, using different parts of his body to fix 
the injuries.

However, the officer, who retired in 1977, said that to this day the 
injuries are quite painful and that he has only minimal feeling in the 
bottom part of his right arm because of all the nerve damage.

When asked whether he has any message for the man accused of shooting him 
so many years ago, Mr. Knox simply said "I hope I never have an opportunity 
to say anything to him other than in the court system."

Mr. Knox said he first heard of the arrest on Tuesday night by phone. "It's 
very good for me and it's very good to see the cold case squad in Chicago 
working with the FBI and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and Interpol," 
he said.

Although the case is more than 35 years old, Mr. Knox said it has never 
left him. "He's been in my mind every day," he said. "Whoever's been shot 
never forgets it."

When asked how else the incident has changed his life, Mr. Knox quipped, 
"I've never asked another man in my lifetime why he wasn't in school."

News reports show that Mr. Pannell was arrested after the shooting and 
charged with attempted murder and aggravated battery. He was freed on a 
$5,000 cash bond, which was later forfeited when he failed to show up in 
court in May of 1971.

In 1973, Mr. Knox, then a member of the intelligence division, arrested Mr. 
Pannell, and he put up $10,000 of $100,000 bail. Mr. Pannell vanished 
again, however, failing to show up in court on Dec. 21, 1973, again 
forfeiting his bail.

In an unusual ruling the next year, a judge awarded Mr. Knox the $10,000 
bond money that the accused man forfeited when he fled. Mr. Knox had filed 
a civil suit against Mr. Pannell in absentia.

The Black Panthers, founded by activists Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in 
Oakland in 1966, was a revolutionary black nationalist movement that 
rejected the integrationist vision of the more mainstream civil rights 
movement.



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