Berry’s Brother Testifies Against Bombing Suspects

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.

Loren Berry also testified that he later hid a shotgun from the FBI at the request of his brother’s teenage son, Curtis.

“(Curtis) told me he had visited his dad in jail and that Rob had instructed him to dispose of it,” Loren Berry said. “I gave it to a friend of mine to hide.”

Loren Berry eventually led FBI agents to the Winchester 1300 shotgun - the same type a federal firearms expert determined was used in the July 12 robbery.

But during cross-examination, Berry admitted he was a heavy drinker, once getting drunk and breaking into a neighbor’s machine shop to use the phone.

By the time his brother was arrested in October 1996, Berry was drinking up to a case of beer a day.

“I feel awful, I feel torn up,” Loren Berry said. “I love my brother so much.”

Robert Berry, 42, Verne Jay Merrell, 51, and Charles Barbee, 45, are on trial in U.S. District Court in Spokane, charged with bombing a newspaper office, Planned Parenthood clinic and a U.S. Bank branch, all in the Spokane Valley. The defendants are also accused of twice robbing the bank - in April and July.

Prosecutors contend the three North Idaho men are white separatists, motivated to commit the crimes by a hatred of government, banks, abortion and the media.

Defense attorneys admit the men hold radical religious and anti-government beliefs, but say they were set up by an informant out to collect a $130,000 reward.

That informant - Post Falls gun dealer Christopher Davidson - is expected to testify today.

The prosecution’s key witness Monday was Loren Berry, a 41-year-old divorced Air Force veteran. An alcoholic still fighting and living with his ex-wife, Berry said his older brother tried to help him put his life together.

Robert Berry offered help before, once giving Loren $800 in cash, another time paying $1,400 to put him - unsuccessfully - through alcohol rehabilitation, the witness said.

Last summer, Robert Berry paid Loren’s way from Michigan and gave him a job in his Sandpoint truck-repair shop.

There, Loren Berry worked and joined his brother’s family on week-long camping trips, called “tabernacles.”

“Early in the evening they’d sit around the campfire and read Scriptures, mostly Old Testament stuff,” Loren Berry said.

But that summer, he saw and heard unsettling things.

He testified that he saw Robert Berry paint a Ruger revolver black, then remove the paint with solvent a few days after the July 12 robbery.

Barbee, who hung out at the shop, spent an afternoon in early July coloring the headband on a pair of Scott ski goggles with a black Magic Marker, Loren Berry testified.

Berry also testified that he watched all three defendants weld jagged strips of metal into star shapes, then fill a bucket with them and toss them across the room. The stars presumably could be strewn on roadways to puncture tires, but Berry said the defendants didn’t explain how they’d be used.

“I asked Jay (Merrell) and he told me I didn’t want to know,” the witness said.

Loren Berry said a canvas bowling bag he watched his brother burn was identical to one caught on videotape by bank security cameras during the robbery.

Late at night on July 12, hours after the bombings and robbery, Robert Berry came into the repair shop and asked Loren if he’d heard about the Planned Parenthood explosion.

“He proceeded to say whoever did that was a good guy and on the right side,” Loren Berry testified.

In the shop the next day, Barbee made a comment to Loren Berry about “Brian,” a man authorities believe is the missing fourth bomber.

“He (Barbee) said Brian was a good guy, but he was clumsy because he slipped getting into the van,” Loren Berry testified.

Robert Berry quickly pulled Barbee away, Loren Berry testified.

“He took Chuck aside like he was saying something he shouldn’t have been saying in front of me,” Loren Berry told the jury. “I guess Chuck spilled the beans or something.”

Barbee, Berry and Merrell are charged with a dozen felonies and face up to $3 million in fines and mandatory life sentences if convicted.

, DataTimes