Craig Welch

Jackie Wood and Joe Encinas recruit minority workers for the Forest Service. Photo by Craig Buck/The Spokesman-Review

Bill Wassmuth answers questions during the forum. Photo by Craig Buck/The Spokesman-Review

The federal government Tuesday settled its last case from Shoshone County's 1991 gambling raid for less than the cost of a good video poker machine. Six years after gun-toting FBI agents seized 200 gambling machines from 25 Shoshone County bars, the Wallace Elks Club has agreed to pay $3,375 to settle charges it once housed illegal gaming activities.

Kootenai County's raw septic waste is so nasty it can't be dumped at city sewage plants or the county landfill. Yet, winter after winter, private haulers carry it by the tankerful to an 80-acre site near Rathdrum's Round Mountain - up to 6,000 gallons a load, sometimes 30 loads a month. There, it's pumped into two small holding ponds that drain into the ground above the northern edge of the aquifer, the region's sole source of drinking water.

The same edgy, frightened victims will recall the horror of robberies at gunpoint. The jagged shards of metal that once held together bombs will make an encore appearance. Even the cryptic, religious missives about "Yahweh" and "Babylon" won't change. The same defendants. The same judge. Perhaps the same attorneys in possibly the same courtroom.

Jurors were deadlocked on some charges in Spokane's bombing and bank robbery trial Tuesday, but they agreed to continue deliberating at the judge's urging. A year to the day after the first Spokane Valley bombing and robbery, 11 jurors were at odds with the 12th over eyewitness testimony and the legal term "reasonable doubt." Tuesday marked the third full day of deliberations.

Jurors in Spokane's bombing trial deliberated for six hours Friday before breaking for the weekend. The 12 U.S. District Court jurors and four alternates are expected to resume deliberations Monday. Sandpoint residents Verne Jay Merrell, 51, Robert Charles Barbee, 45, and Robert S. Berry, 42, are charged with 12 felony counts stemming from bombings and robberies in the Spokane Valley last April and July and their arrest in October.

America is crumbling and a citizen revolution has begun. That's the message last year's Spokane Valley bombings were supposed to send, prosecutors told jurors in closing arguments Thursday.

Defense attorneys rested their case in Spokane's domestic terrorism trial Wednesday after calling a final, reluctant witness. Jeff Schoengarth was expected to tell jurors he overheard armed men at North Idaho's Aryan Nations compound whispering about vague criminal plans and carrying a U.S. Bank brochure shortly before the first of last year's Spokane Valley bombings.

For lack of a simple "I do," Verne Jay Merrell almost didn't. Merrell nearly missed a chance to testify in his own defense Tuesday morning because he refused to swear "to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God."

Merrell

A telephone lineman spotted Verne Jay Merrell near Sandpoint last July 12 - less than an hour before a Spokane Valley bombing 75 miles away, jurors heard Monday. And Robert Berry's siblings testified that two days after last year's April 1 bombing, Berry was with his family in Michigan - a 42-hour drive away.

Ron Rankin

Rodgers

Coeur d'Alene police officer Randy Miller frisks bank robbery suspect Shane L. Barlau. Photo by Craig Buck/The Spokesman-Review

An FBI expert believes jeans worn by robber are the same ones taken from Charles Barbee's home. File photo

Threatening notes left at the scene of two Spokane Valley bombings are nearly identical to a document found on the hard drive of suspect Verne Jay Merrell's home computer, FBI agents testified Monday. The differences: an introduction, a few pronouns and an ending, FBI computer expert Richard Macken told the U.S. District Court jury. "The text is identical," Macken said. But defense attorney Roger Peven said the differences could be crucial because Merrell, a Sandpoint resident with strong anti-government and white supremacist views, wrote for a newsletter that circulates to 5,000 Idaho readers.

Buckshot used in last year's Planned Parenthood bombing came from the same source as pellets seized from suspect Robert Berry's business, an FBI chemist testified Friday. Earlier testimony in the trial of three Spokane bombing suspects revealed buckshot had been taped to a pipe bomb that exploded at the Spokane Valley clinic July 12 to create more shrapnel.

Armed with a machine gun, hand grenades, revolvers and rifles, Spokane's three bombing suspects drove from their Sandpoint homes to Portland last October, a federal jury was told Thursday. They stole a Ford Aerostar van and made repeated U-turns on side streets to see if they were being followed, FBI agent David Bedford testified.

The government's star witness owned some of the guns used in Spokane's bombings and robberies last year, defense attorneys suggested in court Wednesday. And key witness Christopher Davidson Jr. was the one who sent threatening letters to a newspaper and Planned Parenthood after their offices were bombed last April and July, the defense asserted.

A militia member testified Tuesday that neither his group nor Spokane's bombing suspects desire to overthrow the government, as prosecutors contend. They trained with weapons only for self-defense, said Delbert Hathaway, a 58-year-old Sandpoint barber.

Christoper Davidson Jr. is the government's star witness.

Spokane's three bombing suspects were betrayed Monday by one of the few institutions they still hold dear - family. Defendant Robert Berry's brother told a jury he watched the suspects spray-paint a gun, color ski goggles black and burn a tote bag authorities believe was used in a robbery minutes after a bombing last July.

Lead's greatest riddle may be in its dose. In 1974, lead in Arlene Yoss' blood was 16 times higher than what is now considered safe - the highest ever recorded in a child.