On May 2, 1973, New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster was assassinated in merciless butchery by members of the domestic terrorist group known as the Black Liberation Army (BLA). His murder was not quick. His murder was not painless. His murder was savagery. He was ambushed, riddled with bullets, beaten during a desperate struggle, and finally executed by the personification of the devil himself on the asphalt of the New Jersey Turnpike…with his own service weapon. The brutality of his killing was so gruesome that the most experienced and hardened investigators were and still are shaken. The haunted echoes of that night still send shivers through countless traumatized law enforcement officers more than fifty years later.
On September 29, 2025, the Chicago Teachers Union published this abhorrent glorification of Joanne Chesimard, the fugitive cop killer who called herself Assata Shakur. The post was not just wrong. It was a profane atrocity. To elevate her as a “freedom fighter” is to spit on the bloodstained brain soaked asphalt of the New Jersey Turnpike and to trample on the memory of a hero who fled tyranny, embraced America, and gave his life in this country’s service.
That man was New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster. His soul left his body, yet name remains alive.
Foerster was born in communist East Germany in the aftermath of World War II. He escaped that repressive Stalinesque Soviet style system as a hopeful young man. Werner Foerster emigrated to the United States, served in the United States Army, and later worked as a welder before fulfilling his calling in law enforcement. In 1970 he joined the New Jersey State Police serving posts in Toms River, Fort Dix, Keyport, and New Brunswick. He was 34 years old on the night he was killed. Werner Foerster was Rosie’s husband. Werner Foerster Eric’s father. Werner Foerster was immigrant who chose America as his home. Werner Foerster pledged his life to this nation’s defense.
By his side was Trooper James Harper, younger but no less brave. Harper was a steady partner and remains a symbol of quiet courage.
At 12:45 a.m. Harper pulled over a Pontiac on the Nee Jersey Turnpike near East Brunswick. Inside were three militants of the Black Liberation Army. The BLA was a subversive faction of terrorists that had declared open war on law enforcement. Their stated goal was to kill cops. The driver was Sundiata Acoli. In the front passenger seat sat Joanne Chesimard. In the back, Zayd Malik Shakur.
Harper noticed inconsistencies in Acoli’s paperwork just as Foerster arrived as backup. Calm and deliberate, Foerster frisked the driver and pulled from Acoli’s coat a magazine clip and a hidden pistol. The driver was armed! Lifting it for Harper to see Foerster called out the words that lit his fatal powder keg: “Jim, look what I found.”
Sudden and intensely, gunfire showered and shattered the silence of that night. The sharp cracks of pistols echoed down the Turnpike, bouncing off the guardrails like thunderclaps in the night. Harper felt the bullet rip into his shoulder, the searing heat cutting through flesh and bone. He was barely breathing but thankfully, he was alive. He stumbled backwards with his ears ringing and his vision swimming. The acrid stench of gunpowder filled the cool night air, stinging through his nostrils, and burning his throat.
Werner Foerster was face-to-face with the assailants. The rough grip of evil hands clawed at him. Pulling. Punching. Wrenching. He felt the loose grit of broken asphalt under his boots as he struggled to stay upright. He could taste blood in his mouth as another shot slammed into his chest.
Again.
And Again.
His lungs filled with fire. He fell, his body jerking while his soul departed as round after round of gunfire tore through him. And then came the silence. As he lay gasping, his cheek pressed against the cold, oil-stained pavement, the click and then deafening roar of his own revolver taken from him during the struggle pressed to Werner Foerster’s head.
Two shots.
A flash.
Werner Foerster’s world went black. His blood and brains ran warm against the stone, mixing with gasoline and the faint scent of burned rubber. That was the when Werner Foerster’s soul left his body.
Harper was half-conscious as he clawed at the ground. His fingers were scraped raw from the jagged pavement. He could taste iron on his tongue and felt his own blood filling his mouth. His nostrils stung with the thick copper stench in the air. Each breath rattled like broken glass in his chest. Yet he heroically raised his revolver, firing through blurred vision, while crawling, and dragging himself across the blacktop. The world was spinning but Harper’s will to survive anchored him.
When the first officers arrived at the scene they were aghast and what they saw stunned them into silence. They saw Foerster’s body crumpled beside his cruiser, his uniform shredded, his life extinguished. They saw Harper, pale and trembling, his blood pooling around him. They smelled the lingering smoke of discharged weapons, the sickly odor of spilled blood, the metallic tang of death. Those first officers heard Harper’s ragged breaths, the only sound of life left at the scene. The New Jersey Turnpike was, on that night, no longer a highway. It was a slaughterhouse.
The manhunt was immediate and merciless. More than hundred officers poured into the area. Traffic was stopped and cars were pulled over in the efforts to capture the suspects. Helicopters thumped overhead, their spotlights carving through the darkness. Bloodhounds bayed as they picked up the scent of fugitives they were chasing in the woods with their handlers. County sheriffs, local police, state troopers, and federal agents pressed shoulder to shoulder in a unified hunt. Within thirty six hours Acoli was captured, Chesimard taken into custody, and Zayd Shakur killed in the flight. Justice had begun, though Chesimard’s later escape to Cuba mocked it.
The murder of Werner Foerster did not end at that highway shoulder or on that night. It ripped across the entire country. Police precincts from New York to Los Angeles felt the shockwave. Officers’ wives wept at the thought that it could have been their husbands. Their children were afraid and cried. Citizens watched with horror and outrage coupled with sadness and fear as the flag was lowered in Werner Foerster’s honor. This was not just about one slain officer – it was an attack on every badge, every Sacred oath, every family, and an entire country who depended on the thin blue line.
Werner Foerster’s funeral was a sea of gray uniforms, a tide of solemn faces saluting their fallen brother. His widow and child, crushed with grief, received him in death.
And then there was James Harper, the man who survived when by all rights he should have died. Harper’s recovery was slow and agonizing. Multiple surgeries, months of rehabilitation, and a lifetime of pain became his reality. The bullet wounds healed, but the scars – both physical and invisible – never faded. For the rest of his life he lived with the memory of that night. The sound of Foerster’s final struggle. The sight of his partner lying lifeless on the blacktop. The smell of gunpowder and blood forever etched in his mind.
Yet Harper endured. He returned to testify in court, to tell the story of what happened when his partner was murdered and he was left for dead. His testimony was not just evidence. His testimony was a promise that Werner Foerster would not be forgotten, that the truth of the Turnpike would echo through the halls of justice, and that Werner Foerster’s name would live on. And it does.
On the witness stand, Harper’s voice was steady though scarred: “I saw Werner fall. I saw them take his gun. I saw him shot where he lay. And then I felt myself hit. I thought I would die there with him. But I lived. And I am here to tell you they killed him. They executed him.”
With his words, James Harper carried his fallen brother in blue, Werner Foerster, into history. His survival was not only his but also was a living monument to his partner. Werner Foerster. His partner’s name would be remembered, revered, respected, regarded… and a refusal to let the killers erase Werner Foerster’s life from our lips as his legacy was enshrined in blood.
This was not a revolution. This was not justice. This was slaughter. Werner Foerster, who had escaped communism to serve America, was executed on her soil by people who cloaked viscous murder in the language of a perverse oasis liberation. Harper, who was nearly killed himself, bore witness to the savagery that drenched the Turnpike.
And today, the radical left demonstrates the unmitigated gall to exalt Joanne Chesimard as though she was noble. She was not! She was a predator. She was the executioner who pressed a Foerster’s own stolen revolver to his head and pulled the trigger. She is evil.
The Turnpike remembers. The blood remembers. And no amount of academic lies or union propaganda will wash away the truth: Werner Foerster and James Harper stood as guardians, and they were attacked by sick and twisted militant radicals who waged war on every American who values law, order, and civilization.
Men such as these officers should be lionized, remembered for their valor and sacrifice. You can read more about Trooper Foerster’s service and ultimate sacrifice on his Officer Down Memorial Page.
I’ve heard it is said that you die twice; once when your soul leaves your body and the second time – a bit later on – when someone speaks your name for the last time. Never stop speaking Werner Foerster’s name.
We owe him that.
