Bill Morlin

The U.S. Secret Service is putting the squeeze on four men linked to the passing of a phony $20 bill at a children's lemonade stand in Spokane last summer. The counterfeiters also passed 148 other bogus bills - for everything from tacos to auto supplies. Secret Service agents said the bills, ranging from $5 to $50 denominations, are of poor quality.

The president of the Spokane chapter of the Hells Angels said Wednesday that his motorcycle club had "nothing whatsoever" to do with a large methamphetamine ring. Witnesses at a three-day hearing in U.S. District Court testified that the Hells Angels and fellow biker club the Gypsy Jokers were the behind-the-scenes enforcement arm of the dope ring.

A drug user worked off his debts for methamphetamine and cocaine by becoming a bill collector and enforcer for a Spokane dope ring, a federal judge was told Monday. Jack Thomas Lamere testified he committed assaults, head shavings and other "taxings" throughout the Spokane area last year.

FROM FOR THE RECORD (Sunday, October 5, 1997): Correction No immunity: Cheryl M. Rogers of Spokane has not been granted immunity from drug charges stemming from a police raid of her home. An article in Saturday's paper stated otherwise.

He was abducted at gunpoint, sprayed with paint, tortured with a candle and threatened with death - all over a $370 drug debt, a Spokane man testified Thursday. "I thought I was going to die that day," Bart Ottosen recalled in describing his abduction to U.S. District Judge Robert Whaley. When he was finally released, Ottosen said, he feared people he bought drugs from would track him down and kill him if he told police about the September 1996 beating.

A bank robber who got away on a mountain bike was sentenced Wed nesday to more than three years in prison. Marc R. Michelson, 25, and co-defendant Travis A. Joy, 28, earlier admitted their involvement in hold-ups of two Spokane banks in March.

William Ratigan leaves the U.S. Court House in Spokane after the conviction of his son, Brian Ratigan, Tuesday. Photo by Dan Pelle/The Spokesman-Review

A federal jury continues its work today of deciding whether Brian Ratigan was the fourth man involved in domestic terrorism in the Spokane Valley. Deliberations began Monday, following closing arguments in the trial of the 38-year-old former Army sniper accused of committing five federal crimes. He's charged with the July 12, 1996, bombing of a Planned Parenthood clinic in the Valley and the armed robbery of a U.S. Bank branch, minutes later.

1. Danny Lee 2. Chevy Kehoe

Brian Ratigan confessed to being the masked terrorist who nervously placed a bomb outside a Spokane Valley family planning clinic last year, his friend told a jury Wednesday. Ratigan acted on his religious beliefs that abortion is a sin when he lighted the pipe bomb outside a Planned Parenthood clinic on July 12, 1996, Warren Day testified. "He told me he was the one who carried the bomb," Day said.

Brian Ratigan led a "prayer meeting" of friends last year who discussed breaking three domestic terrorists out of the Spokane County Jail, a federal court jury was told Tuesday. Loren Berry said the impromptu meeting was held in North Idaho shortly after the arrests last Oct. 8 of three Sandpoint men on bombing and robbery charges. Prosecutors say Ratigan, now on trial in U.S. District Court, was the fourth member of the white separatist, terrorist group.

Domestic terrorism is a major threat to Spokane, but officials say they are ill-prepared to respond to a disastrous attack. "Our community is not well-prepared for acts or threats of terrorism, whether chemical, biological or environmental," Mayor Jack Geraghty wrote to state and federal emergency planners earlier this year. "This situation must be addressed." It now is.

Ragigan

Spokane businessman John Earl Petersen is accused in court records of conspiring with four officers of Montana bank to embezzle $10.5 million. Photo by Dan McComb/The Spokesman-Review

Going for as much as $1,750 a pound, it became one of the biggest cash crops in apple-rich Okanogan County. It was supposed to be a secret business, but a lot of people knew about the marijuana crop, and more than 30 people were involved. Sales were brisk for more than a decade, especially exports to Canada across a crossing called Nighthawk.

The fourth man accused of involvement in domestic terrorism last year in the Spokane Valley goes on trial today in U.S. District Court. Brian Ratigan is charged with the July 12 bombing at the Valley's Planned Parenthood clinic and a robbery minutes later at a nearby branch of U.S. Bank.

Easy

A Pakistani national responsible for smuggling $3.8 million worth of heroin into Spokane will serve 14 years in federal prison. Abdul Wahid was arrested on March 26, 1996, in Spokane after negotiating the sale of the heroin with a man who turned out to be an undercover Drug Enforcement Administration agent. The seizure of 121 pounds of heroin was the biggest ever in Spokane, and even surpassed the 112-pound seizure years ago in New York that led to the movie, "The French Connection."

Three North Idaho men convicted earlier this year of domestic terrorism crimes in the Spokane Valley lost their bid for a new trial Thursday. U.S. District Court Judge Frem Nielsen ruled the trio got a fair trial and there are insufficient legal reasons to grant them another one. The three - Charles H. Barbee, Verne Jay Merrell and Robert S. Berry, all formerly of Sandpoint - face mandatory life imprisonment.

The former girls basketball coach at Northwest Christian High School in Spokane will serve 10 months in prison for growing marijuana. After he's released, Jack M. Clayburn, 46, also must serve five months of home detention during four years of supervised release. During that time, Clayburn must submit to random searches of himself, his home and car, and take periodic urinanalysis tests for drugs.

Investigators are building a federal racketeering case against Chevie Kehoe and his associates for alleged involvement in crimes in several states. The crimes include attempted murders of police in Ohio, killings in Idaho and Arkansas, a kidnapping-extortion in Colville, Wash., and the theft of weapons. Three witnesses from Spokane, including Kehoe's brother, Cheyne Kehoe, recently testified in secret before a federal grand jury in Little Rock, Ark.

Kirby Kehoe

1. Ties that bind. "Lovelace is love binding," says Norda Lovelace, right, who travels to Sandpoint every Sunday to visit her husband, confessed killer and white separatist Faron Lovelace, who is being held in isolation until his trial in September. Photo by Dan McComb/The Spokesman-Review 2. Norda Lovelace and her dog, Heidi, visit all that remains of the remote mountain camp she shared last summer with her husband, Faron Lovelace. 3. Norda Lovelace acknowledges her husband has "sinned." Photo by Dan McComb/The Spokesman-Review

An FBI agent used a fingerprint and results from a sophisticated computer to track down a man considered a suspect in a half-dozen Spokane-area bank robberies. Dawayne D. Butler, 32, of Spokane, is scheduled to appear today at a detention hearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge Cynthia Imbrogno. He is charged with the July 29 robbery at Farmers & Merchants Bank, 10808 E. Sprague, and also is a suspect in five other recent bank robberies in the Spokane area, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Earl Hicks. Butler has not been charged with those other robberies.