Ecoterror suspects held without bail
Published 9:00 pm Friday, December 9, 2005
EUGENE, Ore. – A Virginia college student was ordered held without bail Friday on federal charges claiming he was part of a group of radical environmentalists who toppled a high-tension electric line and firebombed a lumber mill office and tree farm.
Dressed in jail fatigues and shackled around the ankles, Stanislas “Jack” Meyerhoff, a student at Piedmont Community College in Charlottesville, Va., responded in a quiet voice, “Yes, your honor,” when asked if he understood the 17 counts of arson, conspiracy and destruction of property that could send him to prison for life.
Meyerhoff, 28, was one of six people arrested Wednesday in five states on federal charges they took part in a series of attacks in Oregon and Washington state from 1998 to 2001.
The Earth Liberation Front and Animal Liberation Front took responsibility for some of the attacks, but authorities have not said any of the people arrested were directly connected with either group. A seventh person has been indicted but not yet arrested.
On the other side of the continent, Meyerhoff’s alleged accomplice, who was arrested in New York City, also had a court hearing Friday.
That suspect, 31-year-old Daniel Gerard McGowan, was denied bail and will be brought to Oregon by U.S. marshals, said McGowan’s attorney, Martin Stoler. McGowan has been charged with arson and possession of an incendiary device, he said.
Meyerhoff and McGowan are accused of torching the office of a lumber company in Glendale, Ore., on Jan. 2, 2001, and the offices of a tree farm in Clatskanie, Ore., five months later.
In addition, Meyerhoff is accused of planning and carrying out an attack on a Bonneville Power Administration high-tension electric line tower about 25 miles east of Bend on the night of Dec. 30, 1999. Indicted for the same crime are Chelsea D. Gerlach, 28, who was arrested Wednesday in Portland, and Josephine Overaker, who remains at large.
Also hit in the spree of attacks were a lumber mill in Medford and a plant research facility in Olympia.
Details about the suspects’ lives are beginning to emerge.
Among the two arrested in Arizona is Sarah Kendall Harvey, who has also used the name Kendall Tankersley. She has previously pleaded guilty twice to misdemeanors concerning an anti-logging protest and a railroad trespass.
Harvey, 28, was arrested Wednesday and charged with a December 1998 fire at U.S. Forest Industries in Medford, Ore.
Harvey began working this fall at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff after stints with two nonprofit organizations in Tucson and before that, a nonprofit group in Eureka, Calif.
In a job application, Harvey acknowledged having pleaded guilty in 1997 to three misdemeanors after being arrested “at a nonviolent anti-logging protest.” She said she was “making pancakes and serving them to other protesters.”
A 1999 conviction was for trespassing on Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway property, she said.
Another Arizona resident who has been indicted is William C. Rodgers, 40, of Prescott. He was charged with a June 1998 arson at an animal and plant inspection facility in Olympia. Rodgers runs a bookstore in Prescott.
