Free Republic

Software engineer Jennifer Kolar is to be sentenced this week in federal court for her role in Earth Liberation Front arsons, including one at the University of Washington. Her time in prison will be reduced because she turned state's witness, but that doesn't mitigate the fact she is now regarded as a snitch by peers and could be labeled a terrorist by the government.By Kim McDonald "Don't hang up," FBI Special Agent Jane Quimby told Jennifer Kolar on Dec. 10, 2006. "There were arrests and there is a target letter for you." She gave Kolar the name and number...

Wednesday, May 23, 2007 The horrors facing a first offender locked up with hardened criminals in the nation's high-security federal prisons highlighted testimony Tuesday in the sentencing hearing of Stanislas Meyerhoff, the first of 10 defendants to be sentenced in the Operation Backfire prosecution of radical underground environmental activists. The hearing is expected to conclude today in Eugene before U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken, who will decide Meyerhoff's prison term and rule whether his crimes were acts of terrorism, a ruling that could bring a stiffer sentence. Through the day, prosecution and defense lawyers dueled over whether Meyerhoff was an...

Defense attorneys expressed outrage Tuesday when federal prosecutors compared 10 Earth Liberation Front arsonists who are awaiting sentencing to Ku Klux Klan arsonists. The six men and four women, branded eco-terrorists, have pleaded guilty to charges related to 20 fires set in five Western states from 1996 to 2001 that caused $40 million of damage. Targets included the Vail ski resort, wild horse corrals, National Forest ranger stations, meat packing plants, research laboratories, lumber company offices and a tree farm. The 10 are to be sentenced starting next week. Federal prosecutors asked Judge Ann Aiken that a so-called terrorism enhancement...

Members of the ecoterrorism gang that torched buildings on Vail Mountain in 1998 will be sentenced in April, a federal judge ordered today. At a hearing in U.S. District Court in Eugene, Ore., two key members of the gang formally pleaded guilty to federal arson charges, although they already had admitted their role in the multimillion-dollar fires. They destroyed several mountaintop structures including the popular Two Elk Lodge, a restaurant that has been rebuilt. During the 10-minute hearing, Chelsea Gerlach and Stanislas Meyerhoff, both 29, acknowledged their guilt when asked by Judge Ann Aiken. Gerlach responded "yes," and Meyerhoff said,...

Jennifer Kolar and Lacey Phillabaum seem unlikely criminals. Well-educated young women passionate about environmental causes, they share a love of the outdoors and similar backgrounds. Both grew up in Spokane and attended the same public high school. Those who know Phillabaum call her bright, outspoken, sometimes in-your-face but never dull. She was a skilled debater in high school and college and once worked for a well-regarded non-profit that promotes sustainable agriculture. Kolar Kolar studied under one of the nation's top atmospheric scientists while pursuing a doctoral degree and had the makings of a good scientist, her adviser said, but her...

1998 Fires At Vail Ski Resort Cost $12 Million In Damage. Two people accused of setting the 1998 fire at the Vail ski resort will be sentenced in December on eight counts of arson stemming from the blaze that caused some $12 million in damage. Chelsea Gerlach and Stanislas Meyerhoff, both 29, were arraigned Wednesday in federal court in Eugene. They are to enter pleas and be sentenced on Dec. 14, when they are also to be sentenced for other arson-related crimes to which they pleaded guilty in July. Under plea deals, both agreed to have the Colorado charges transferred...

A federal grand jury in Denver has indicted four people on eight counts of arson for a series of eco-terrorism fires set at the Vail ski area in 1998. Those indicted are: Chelsea Dawn Gerlach, 29, Stanislas Gregory Meyerhoff, 28, Josephine Sunshine Overaker, 31, and Rebecca Jeanette Rubin, 33. Gerlach and Meyerhoff are presently in federal custody in Oregon, facing separate arson charges. The whereabouts of Overaker and Rubin are unknown. The Two Elks Lodge and other structures on Vail Mountain were burned to the ground on Oct. 19, 1998. Damage was estimated at $12 million. A group called the...

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — A federal grand jury in Eugene on Thursday indicted two more people in the 2001 arson at a Clatskanie tree farm, court officials said, bringing the number charged in the case to six. In all 14 people are charged in what government prosecutors describe as an arson conspiracy across several Western states over five years. Nathan Frazer Block, 24, and Joyanna L. Zacher, 28, were arrested Thursday in Olympia, Wash., after the 14-count indictments were handed up. Advertisement Government attorneys will seek their return to Eugene to face trial, said Karin Immergut, U.S. Attorney for Oregon....

Three environmental activists were cooking up plastic explosives and had planned to test a device the day they were arrested, federal prosecutors alleged Wednesday as they indicted them. The three face five to 20 years in federal prison if they are convicted of conspiring to use fire or explosives to damage property. The suspects planned assaults this spring in the name of the Earth Liberation Front, a 'loosey-goosey, sort of mist-of-the-fog kind of an organization' of environmental activists, U.S. Attorney McGregor Scott said. Eric McDavid, 28, Zachary Jensen, 20, and Lauren Weiner, 20, remain in jail. They could enter a...

After a delay of nearly a month, a Flagstaff woman accused of being connected with the 1998 firebombing of a logging company in Oregon has been released from jail. Kendall Tankersley, 28, also known as Sarah Harvey, was released from an Oregon jail Jan. 10 on $150,000 bond. She is back in Flagstaff, ready to begin taking two classes at Northern Arizona University. Tankersley, a former employee at the university, was indicted in November by a federal grand jury in Oregon. She is accused of attempted arson and arson, acting as a lookout, in connection with a fire at U.S....

FBI document says group's missions plagued by errors Even as the Earth Liberation Front - a shadowy group of eco-terrorists that took credit for the Vail fires of 1998 - has eluded authorities for years, newly released evidence suggests some of the group's efforts have been plagued by almost slapstick gaffes. In one case, members driving on a mission to burn down a federal research facility in western Washington stopped along the way to shoplift some needed supplies from a big box hardware store. The plan was interrupted when one of the members was arrested for stealing sponges and a...

An employee of Northern Arizona University was arrested and charged Thursday with being a member of an ecoterrorism group and setting fires... Her arrest, one of six across the country and two in Arizona, marks the culmination of a nine-year investigation by the FBI and dozens of other agencies into several arsons in the Pacific Northwest, many of which were claimed to be the work of the Animal Liberation Front and the Earth Liberation Front. Kendall Tankersley, 28, also known as Sarah Kendall Harvey, stood shackled and bound in front of U.S. Magistrate Judge Mark Aspey in Flagstaff as a...