(CNSNews.com) – It was April 1996, just a few days before the one-year anniversary of the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, when Sgt. Larry Crady and other officers of the Shawnee County, Kan., Sheriff’s Department were briefed on a potential threat from the Freemen, an anti-government extremist group then in a standoff with the FBI in rural Montana.
“We had some involvement with some members of this particular group before, as well as some intelligence information regarding them and their beliefs,” Crady would later testify. “Also, we were in a state of heightened awareness because of the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing and their possible involvement.”
Soon after the briefing about the Freemen, Crady was on patrol in the Southwest neighborhood of Topeka, when an individual flagged him down. The individual told Crady he knew of a vehicle that had illegal tags—the kind used by the Freemen—and that the man driving the vehicle worked at the Wilch Manufacturing Company.
On the morning of April 16, 1996, Crady drove through the Wilch parking lot and found a dark brown 1983 Dodge Aries with homemade tags. The tags read: “Sovereign, Private Property, Immunity Declared At Law, Non-Commercial, American.”
Crady then parked his patrol car on the street next to the Wilch parking lot and waited for the car’s driver to emerge. He was soon joined by Sheriff’s Deputy Jack Morgan and Detective Scott Holladay.
Shortly after noon, a man got into the Dodge Aries and drove it out onto Southwest 42nd Street. Crady pulled up behind the Aries, turned on his lights, and signaled the driver to pull over.
The driver turned off the street into the private parking lot of an office building that was originally occupied by Stauffer Communications and is now the branch office of a West Virginia-based publishing company.
Crady told the driver he wanted to see his license, registration and proof of insurance. The driver said he did not have any of these documents. Instead, he handed Crady a West Indies driver-identification card.
The name on the card was Scott P. Roeder, the man who 13 years later would be charged with murdering Dr. George Tiller, an abortionist known for doing late-term abortions at his Wichita clinic.
On April 16, 1996, after running some checks, Sheriff’s Sgt. Crady decided to arrest Roeder for three offenses: driving with a suspended license, operating an unregistered vehicle and driving without liability insurance. He handcuffed Roeder and put him into the backseat of his patrol car.
Crady then removed the home-made tags from Roeder’s car and asked Roeder if he had any preference for what tow service should be called to move his car. Roeder, Crady would later testify, said, “No.”
Roeder also told Crady that he did not have a key to the trunk of the car.
As Crady transported Roeder to the county jail, Deputy Morgan and Detective Hollaway were tasked with taking an inventory of the car’s contents—or at least those contents that weren’t locked in the trunk--before it was towed. This was standard operating procedure for the Shawnee County Sheriff’s Department.
Shortly after beginning the “towing inventory” the officers informed Crady by radio that they had found some troubling items stuffed under the driver’s seat of Roeder’s car--a hunting knife, rifle and pistol ammunition and an electronic blasting cap.
“I contacted the dispatcher immediately and told them to advise the officers in the area and any other personnel in the area to turn off all electronic devices because of the danger of an explosion, him having found a devise of that type,” Crady later testified.
“We ceased the inventory search because after finding the blasting cap we were afraid there may be more blasting caps inside the car,” Morgan later testified. “We felt it would be safer to stop our procedure at the time and call someone with more experience in the area.”
Larry Collins, a bomb technician with the Metropolitan Topeka Airport Authority (MTAA), was contacted. After inspecting the car, Collins determined it was safe to tow it to an open tarmac at Forbes Field. He was familiar with the kind of blasting cap found under the driver’s seat in Roeder’s car.
“A blasting cap is a very sensitive high explosive devise that is used as a detonator to start an explosive train,” Collins later testified. “It kicks a larger explosive off that would require something more than just a time fuse.”
Collins also said Kansas state law required anyone in possession of an electric blasting cap to have a permit issued by the state fire marshal.
After booking Roeder, Crady returned to the parking lot at the Stauffer building but discovered that the Dodge Aries had already been towed to the Metropolitan Topeka Airport Authority’s Forbes Field after Morgan, Holloway, and Collins decided the vehicle posed a danger to the neighborhood.
By the time Crady arrived at the airfield, Kansas Highway Patrol trooper John Jones had joined the group with a bomb-sniffing dog.
“From there, since, once again, we were unable to get into the trunk, we went ahead and had Trooper Jones from the Kansas Highway Patrol come out with his bomb dog and have the dog check over the remainder of the car,” Collins later testified. “Another reason why we had suspicion was because there was items that would normally be in the trunk, like the spare tire and the tire rack and things like that, were in the backseat.”
Trooper Jones had his dog circle the vehicle several times. Each time, the dog would leap up and put his paws on the trunk of the car, indicating there was something inside.
“We became concerned because of the type of alert the dog had made toward the trunk of the vehicle, and in discussion, chose at that time that when we opened the trunk, we were going to do it in a manner safe to all the officers involved,” Crady testified.
They used a remote device that Collins called a “disruptor.” It was, Collins explained, a “short-barreled, heavy 12-gauge board diameter cannon used to disrupt bombs.”
Inside the trunk, they found more items used in bomb making. These included what looked like a cannon fuse, batteries, about 12 feet of time fuse and one pound of black rifle gun powder.
The trunk also held a Chinese or Russian-style rifle, a gas mask and gas mask canisters.
One of the two batteries in the trunk had copper wire connecting the terminals to a clothespin switch.
One thing they did not find anywhere in the cab or trunk of Roeder’s Dodge Aries was the permit a person needs to possess an electric blasting cap.
After the search of the vehicle was complete, the law officers decided to search Roeder’s home, which they were given permission to do that evening by Roeder’s father, with whom the suspect lived.
James V. Carlson, a special agent with the U.S. Treasury Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, took part in the search.
In a closet of the home, Carlson found a two-page document from the “Underground Cookbook,” which explained how to make a clothespin time-delay switch.
Carlson would later testify that clothespin time-delay switch is used “For an explosive device, a bomb.”
In addition to the three traffic violations, Roeder was charged with criminal use of explosives, a felony in Kansas.
Following a preliminary hearing on May 2, 1996, a trial was set for June 3. But on June 3, Ronald F. Evans, the public defender assigned to Roeder, told the court his client wanted to waive a jury trial and “stipulate”--or agree--to the facts presented under oath by the law enforcement officers who testified in the preliminary trial.
Evans also said that his client was not pleading guilty to any of the charges.
Judge James P. Buchele found Roeder guilty of all four counts—the three traffic violations, and the explosives charge.
“I believe that when you consider the circumstances of all that’s involved here, that this is a case in which the sentencing guidelines do not apply,” said Judge Buchele when sentencing Roeder. “A blasting cap is one thing, but a blasting cap coupled with a battery and wires and clothespins and the instructions on how to make a bomb makes this more than what is generally contemplated in the statute that you’ve been convicted of.
“My finding is that the circumstances are that there is a threat of danger to the public in the event that—and an indication in the past that you have not been willing to conform your conduct to the laws of the State of Kansas,” said Judge Buchele.
Buchele then fined Roeder $500 for the traffic violations, and sentenced him to 16 months in jail, plus 24 months probation for the explosives charge. He then “paroled” Roeder, releasing him immediately. Roeder had only served two months in jail since his arrest.
The prosecutor had wanted Roeder to spend more time incarcerated.
“If the court will remember, and I’m sure the court does because it heard the preliminary hearing, the blasting cap was found under the driver’s seat of the car,” Brown said. “And then in the trunk of the car there was a crudely rigged device that could have gone off as a bomb.
“There was gunpowder,” Brown said. “There were live batteries that were hooked up to a homemade triggering device, and there was testimony at the preliminary hearing that if everything was rigged up correctly, that that bomb could have gone off.
“Also, your honor, I think the court needs to take into account in its subsequent search of the defendant’s house, the officers also found other documents which were not introduced at the preliminary hearing, but those documents had to do with how to construct fertilizer explosives, how to construct hand grenades, how to make homemade land mines and launcher tubs, pocket rockets, shotgun grenades, watch delay timer and exploding and armor piercing ammo,” Brown said.
Roeder appealed his conviction in the Court of Appeals of the State of Kansas. The government provided him with an appellate attorney, Janine Cox, to make his case.
In her brief to the appellate court, Cox argued that law enforcement officers had violated Roeder’s rights under the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution.
“Mr. Roeder argues that the impounding of his was (sic) vehicle was unlawful and violated his rights against unreasonable searches and seizures under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, the Kansas Constitution and under the prevailing case law in this state,” Cox said in the argument.
On behalf of the state, Brown argued in his brief to the appeals court that the law enforcement officers’ action was reasonable and justified.
“For this court to require law enforcement officers to leave a vehicle without license tags or insurance, whose ownership is unknown, in a private parking lot or on a public street on the word of one who claims ownership but cannot furnish evidence of the same is so unreasonable as to be ridiculous,” Brown wrote.
A three-judge panel of the appeal’s court--the late Kaye Royse, Jerry G. Elliott and Barry A. Bennington—agreed with Roeder.
They filed their opinion on Dec. 24, 1997.
“There is evidence in the record suggesting the search was motivated by the desire to uncover evidence of other criminal activity,” the opinion said. “Officer Crady testified there was a heightened awareness of possible militia activity due to the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing. He was also aware the license plate indicated ownership by a member of the ‘Freeman,’ an anti-government group. There was also testimony that Crady wanted the car impounded for evidence.”
The judges dismissed the state’s argument that the court would be putting unreasonable barriers in the way of law enforcement if they accepted Roeder’s Fourth Amendment argument.
“The state argues that suppression of evidence would only serve to create one more exception to the technical labyrinth through which law enforcement officers must navigate in order to carry out an otherwise simple arrest,” the opinion said. “But as we read [the precedents] Teeter, Fortune and Boster, we have no choice but to rule the motion to suppress should have been granted.”
The court reversed Roeder’s conviction and remanded the case to the lower court. The prosecution appealed to the state supreme court, which declined to hear the case. There was no further prosecution of Roeder based on the 1996 charges against him.
Thirteen years later, Roeder allegedly walked into a Kansas church where Tiller was serving as an usher and fatally shot the abortionist. He is now charged with murder.
A preliminary hearing in the case is set for June 30 in the Sedgwick County Kansas District Court.
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