Trooper Philip Lamonaco: Manhunt, Trials, and Firearms Legacy

Trooper Philip Lamonaco was a New Jersey State Police officer shot and killed during a traffic stop on Interstate 80 in Warren County on December 21, 1981. The two men in the car he pulled over, Thomas Manning and Richard Williams, were fugitive members of the United Freedom Front, a Marxist group behind a string of bombings and robberies across the Northeast. Their capture took more than three years, their prosecutions stretched across two decades, and the killing changed how New Jersey troopers are armed to this day.

Who Philip Lamonaco Was

Philip Joseph Lamonaco was born on January 21, 1949, and grew up in Union, New Jersey. He served in the United States Marine Corps during the Vietnam War and worked for the Armor Car Company of Union before enlisting in the New Jersey State Police on November 13, 1970, as a member of the 83rd State Police Class. His badge number was 2663.¹

Over eleven years he rotated through Troop “C” at Colts Neck, Troop “B,” Troop “E,” and the Division Headquarters’ Organized Crime Task Force. In 1979 he was named New Jersey State Police “Trooper of the Year.”² He was 32 when he died, married, and the father of two daughters, ages five and ten months, and a four-year-old son.¹

The Traffic Stop on Interstate 80

On the evening of December 21, 1981, Lamonaco stopped a Chevrolet near Mile Post 5W on Interstate 80 in Knowlton Township, close to the Route 94 interchange.³ The occupants were Thomas William Manning and Richard Charles Williams.

Lamonaco disarmed Manning during the stop and placed Manning’s weapon in his own belt. Williams then opened fire with a 9mm handgun, striking Lamonaco nine times. The trooper returned fire and wounded Williams before collapsing. A passing motorist found him face down in the snow and called for help. He died at the hospital.³⁴

Manning and Williams fled. Their Chevrolet was found about six miles away, stuck in a snowbank on Station Road in Knowlton Township. Investigators recovered fingerprints from both men and bloodstains from Williams on the passenger-side door, headrest, and armrest.³

Who the Killers Were

Manning and Williams belonged to the United Freedom Front, a revolutionary Marxist group that grew out of the Sam Melville/Jonathan Jackson Unit. Through the late 1970s and early 1980s, the UFF bombed military and government buildings and corporate offices including Union Carbide and IBM facilities across the Northeast, targeting what it called symbols of corporate capitalism, U.S. imperialism, and institutional racism.⁵

The group’s core members became known as the “Ohio 7” after five of them were arrested in Ohio in 1984. Alongside Manning and Williams were leader Raymond Luc Levasseur, his wife Patricia Gros Levasseur, Jaan Karl Laaman, Barbara Curzi Laaman, and Carol Manning, Thomas Manning’s wife.⁶

The Manhunt

Both men were already federal fugitives when Lamonaco stopped them, wanted for the UFF’s bombing and robbery campaign. The FBI identified them quickly, but finding them took more than three years. New Jersey State Police Superintendent Colonel Clinton Pagano drove the search personally, and it became one of the most intensive fugitive hunts in the agency’s history.³

The investigation took another life. Lieutenant Lester Amos Pagano, a 30-year veteran assigned to the Lamonaco detail, was killed on July 19, 1983, when his vehicle slid on a rain-slick road at the intersection of I-80 and Main Street in Wharton, New Jersey, and crashed through a guardrail. He was returning from following up on leads. He was 53, and had survived being shot in the spine while apprehending a murder suspect in 1959.⁷

Arrests and Trials

Richard Williams was captured on November 4, 1984, in a raid by an FBI strike force and a Cleveland police SWAT team in Portage County, Ohio. Thomas Manning was arrested on April 24, 1985, at a home in Norfolk, Virginia, along with his wife Carol.⁸ After Manning’s capture, Colonel Pagano said: “If there is a bottom line to this whole tragic incident, it’s that you do not murder a New Jersey State Trooper and expect to walk away from it.”⁹

Before either man was tried for Lamonaco’s murder, both were prosecuted in federal court in Brooklyn for a series of ten bombings. In April 1986, Manning was sentenced to 53 years in federal prison and Williams to 45 years.¹⁰

In June 1986, the two were extradited to New Jersey. Their murder trial ran roughly three months in Somerset County Superior Court before Judge Michael Imbriani.¹¹ Prosecutors said Williams was the triggerman. The defense argued self-defense, and Manning testified that he had killed the trooper and that Williams had not been at the scene.¹²

In January 1987 the jury returned a split verdict. Manning was convicted of felony murder, robbery, and escape, but acquitted of purposeful murder. He received a life sentence for the killing, on top of his 53-year federal bombing sentence. The jury deadlocked on Williams, and Judge Imbriani declared a mistrial.¹³

A separate federal case, brought in May 1986 by a Boston grand jury, charged Manning, Williams, and other UFF members with seditious conspiracy, racketeering, and racketeering conspiracy. The Springfield, Massachusetts, trial ran 19 months, the longest in Western Massachusetts history. The government dropped Manning’s charges and those against Jaan Karl Laaman and Barbara Curzi Laaman. Williams was acquitted of seditious conspiracy, and the racketeering counts against him ended in a mistrial and were then dismissed. Raymond Luc Levasseur and Patricia Gros Levasseur were acquitted of all remaining charges.⁶

Deaths in Federal Custody

Richard Williams died on December 7, 2005, at age 58 at the Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina, from complications of cancer and Hepatitis C. He had spent two decades in federal custody, and advocates had called for his release citing his declining health.¹⁴

Thomas Manning died on July 30, 2019, at USP-Hazelton in West Virginia after more than 34 years in federal prison. The Federal Bureau of Prisons said the cause was a heart attack. Fellow Ohio 7 member Raymond Luc Levasseur alleged years of medical neglect, including untreated infections and delayed surgeries, and said Manning had become wheelchair-bound after a procedure that removed most of his knee following an untreated infection.¹⁵

How the Killing Changed State Police Firearms

At the time of the shooting, New Jersey troopers carried Ruger Security Six revolvers. Superintendent Pagano ordered an immediate evaluation of the agency’s weaponry. The test program wrapped up by early 1982, and the State Police adopted the 9mm Heckler & Koch P7M8 semiautomatic pistol. Each trooper carried a nine-round pistol and four spare magazines, for a total of 41 rounds, up from the 30 rounds of spare ammunition previously carried in cartridge loops.¹⁶

The change was driven by a sense inside law enforcement that officers were being outgunned. Thomas Iskrzycki, president of the New Jersey State Police Fraternal Association, described the mood: “When one of the best guys we have gets shot, that means any one of us can be taken down.” The union used that fear to press for new equipment. Investigators later concluded that ammunition capacity was likely not the decisive factor in Lamonaco’s death. He was struck in areas unprotected by his body armor after being forced to the ground.¹⁶

Memorials

A seven-mile stretch of Interstate 80 has been renamed in Lamonaco’s memory, and the State Police marks his death each year.² On December 21, 2025, the agency held a ceremony at the site of the shooting in Knowlton Township for the 44th anniversary. Those in attendance included Superintendent Colonel Patrick Callahan, retired Colonel Rick Fuentes, and Lamonaco’s family, among them his wife Donna and his son, Captain Michael Lamonaco, who followed his father into the New Jersey State Police.¹⁷

1
State Troopers Fraternal Association. In Memoriam: Trooper II Philip J. Lamonaco
2
Officer Down Memorial Page. Trooper II Philip Joseph Lamonaco
3
NJ.com. 35 Years: Trooper Killed on I-80
4
Officer Down Memorial Page. Trooper II Philip Joseph Lamonaco – Reflections
5
University of Massachusetts. Raymond Luc Levasseur Collection Finding Aid
6
Encyclopedia.com. Ohio 7 Sedition Trial 1989
7
Officer Down Memorial Page. Lieutenant Lester Amos Pagano
8
UPI. Chronology of the Manning-Williams Case
9
Former Troopers Association of the NJSP. FTA Newsletter
10
The Morning Call. Trial Over Slaying Raises Emotions in NJ Community
11
NJ.com. Domestic Terrorist Convicted in Murder of NJ State Trooper Dies in Prison
12
The New York Times. Manning Tells of Killing Jersey Trooper
13
UPI. Split Verdict Reached in Killing of New Jersey Trooper
14
The Jericho Movement. Richard Williams (1947-2005)
15
Rosenberg Fund for Children. Tom Manning Memorial
16
RevolverGuy. Lessons From the Murder of Trooper Philip Lamonaco
17
WRNJ Radio. State Police Honor Trooper Killed in 1981 During Warren County Traffic Stop