New Plan In Works To Bring Pang Back Federal, State Officials Offer Few Details On “Unified” Strategy For Suspect’s Return

Clinton administration officials and King County, Wash., prosecutors agreed on a new legal strategy Wednesday for trying to bring to trial a man charged in a deadly Seattle warehouse fire.

Martin Pang, who fled shortly after the Jan. 5, 1995, blaze, is jailed in Brazil.

Deputy prosecutors Marilyn Brenneman and Tim Bradshaw confirmed a new “unified approach” in the state bid to bring Pang to trial, preferably on murder as well as arson charges.

They declined to elaborate. Justice and State Department personnel did not appear at the prosecutors’ news conference here. State Department officials referred calls to the Justice Department, where officials had no immediate comment.

Pang, 40, is accused of setting the fire that killed four firefighters. He is charged in King County Superior Court with arson and four counts of first-degree murder.

In mid-December, Brazil’s Supreme Court ordered him extradited to face the arson charge but said he couldn’t be charged with murder. In Brazil and most other countries, defendants cannot be charged with murder in arson cases unless the fire was intended to kill someone.

In a Dec. 22 letter, King County Prosecutor Norm Maleng told U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno the Seattle community was outraged by that response. According to Maleng, a Republican seeking his party’s nomination for governor, Reno called the U.S. ambassador to Brazil and offered to help King County prosecutors come up with a strategy that would allow them to keep the murder charges intact.

And on Wednesday, Reno “promised us her support 110 percent,” Brenneman told reporters outside the Justice Department.

Killed in the fire were Lts. Walter Kilgore and Gregory Shoemaker and firefighters James T. Brown and Randall Terlicker.

Pang, of the Seattle and Los Angeles areas, has been held at a federal detention center in Rio since his arrest there last spring.

Rep. Jennifer Dunn, R-Wash., has intro duced a resolution in the House that would put Congress on record urging Brazil to allow Pang to be extradited to the United States to stand trial for both arson and first-degree murder.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., also urged Reno in a letter Wednesday to help get Pang back to the United States.