Charles Pernasilice, Haunted by the Violence at Attica, Dies at 70

A single eyewitness put Mr. Pernasilice at the scene, but during the trial Mr. Clark easily dismantled the man’s credibility. The judge ordered the charge reduced to attempted assault, even though, as Mr. Clark insisted, no evidence supported that claim either.

Both Mr. Pernasilice and Mr. Hill were convicted in 1975. Mr. Hill was released on parole in 1979 and died in 2013. Hugh L. Carey, who succeeded Mr. Rockefeller as governor, pardoned Mr. Pernasilice in 1976.

Many observers felt that the two men never had a chance against a justice system that seemed hellbent on revenge; Tom Wicker, a reporter for The New York Times who covered Attica and wrote a book about the uprising, said the trial was “not fairly conducted.”

Mr. Pernasilice tried to build a new life. He got married and had children. But he couldn’t hold down a job. He started going by his birth father’s surname, Hoblin. He tried to forget how he had choked on tear gas, run barefoot over broken glass, dodged bullets and seen men killed.

“The retaking destroyed his life, just emotionally destroyed his life,” Heather Ann Thompson, a historian at the University of Michigan who won a Pulitzer Prize for her book “Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy” (2016), said in a phone interview. “He’s just a very tragic figure who reminds us about what the horror of what Attica really was.”

Mr. Pernasilice took his family from place to place, often on a boat, home-schooling his children, keeping the world at arm’s length. But he was emotionally erratic and prone to bad decisions. Time and again he ran afoul of the law, at which point the local police would learn who he really was, meaning it was time to move on.

He became verbally abusive. He would lash out at friends. His marriage fell apart. His wife, Robin, divorced him in 2010. His two children, Paige and Dylan, stopped seeing him. He kept sailing, alone, aboard the Cheshire Cat. He turned away from even the few friends who hung on, like Mr. Edwards.

No one knows why he made Washington, a small city on the Pamlico River in North Carolina, his last port of call. But he knew the area well. Just 60 miles to the east is Ocracoke Island, where as a child he had spent so many happy days.