Feds Say Protests Escalated To Arson Man Suspected In 8 Fires At Abortion Clinics
Federal prosecutors say a Wenatchee man’s abortion protests a decade ago escalated into a serial arson spree in which eight medical buildings were torched in four states.
Richard T. Andrews set fire to offices and clinics in Montana, Idaho, California and Wyoming, prosecutors claim in court documents.
He also may have targeted clinics in Spokane, according to notes seized from his car during a 1996 traffic stop.
Andrews, 59, is under house arrest in Wenatchee. He is charged with three of the eight fires, although Assistant U.S. Attorney Benjamin Wagner in Sacramento, Calif., wants to introduce evidence that Andrews is responsible for the entire string of fires.
Andrews has pleaded innocent. No trial date has been set.
Federal prosecutors in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming are awaiting the outcome of the California case before deciding whether to file additional charges. It is unlikely any charges will result from the alleged Spokane connection.
Investigators say the big break came when Andrews was stopped for erratic driving and searched by police in Vancouver, Wash.
Andrews refused to comment, and his lawyer, Kevin Gibbs of Seattle, is on vacation this week.
A former insurance agent, Andrews became a leader in the anti-abortion movement in the early 1980s, picketing clinics and hospitals in central Washington. He led a petition drive in 1986 to make it illegal to use state funds on abortions.
Andrews once bragged that providers in 21 Washington counties had bowed to pressure from his group, the Abortion Free Zone Movement.
In 1988, Andrews targeted the Puget Sound area, getting arrested several times while blocking entrances to women’s clinics.
But that effort was halted when several groups that support legalized abortions filed for an injunction that prohibited Andrews and other protesters from blocking access to the clinics.
Jim Anderson, a Spokane man who participated in the Seattle blockades, said he doesn’t condone violence against abortion providers but said he can see why someone might take that course.
“I’m not saying I advocate it, but a lot of people feel like our opportunity for nonviolent protest was crushed with (the injunction),” he said. “We felt like we were doing what God was asking us to do.”
Andrews, Anderson and others appealed, taking the case to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld the ruling in December 1991.
A few weeks later, prosecutors say, Andrews quit his insurance job, claiming a back injury. The first clinic fire occurred a month later, heavily damaging the Planned Parenthood clinic in Helena.
According to court documents, Andrews was ticketed for speeding in North Idaho the night before the fire.
The fire was reported just before 5 a.m. the next day. Arson investigators said it was started with two 5-gallon containers filled with gasoline and wrapped in black garbage bags.
The second fire on June 6, 1992, destroyed the Feminist Women’s Health Center in Redding, Calif. It also was started with red gasoline containers in plastic bags.
In 1993, similar fires with the same source of ignition occurred at medical clinics where abortions are provided in Missoula and Boise.
On Oct. 9, 1994, two fires were set - one in Chico, Calif., and one at the clinic in Redding. The fires both were discovered between 3:30 a.m. and 4:30 a.m.
Five-and-a-half hours later, Andrews was stopped for speeding near Bend, Ore., - 280 miles north of Redding. He was on U.S. Highway 97, the road prosecutors say he took part of the way to Kalispell, Mont., where another clinic fire was set two days later.
On Sept. 18, 1995, the last fire was started at the Emerg-A-Care Clinic in Jackson, Wyo.
All the fires were started in entranceways between 3 a.m. and 5 a.m. Agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms suspect they were the work of a lone arsonist.
A sharp-eyed Vancouver, Wash., policeman is credited with cracking the case after making a traffic stop on June 26, 1996.
Andrews was nervous to the point of being disoriented, according to the officer’s report. Andrews admitted being on several prescription drugs and failed a field sobriety test, prompting a negligent driving charge.
Officers searching his Chevy Cavalier found gloves, a ski mask, two butane torches, red 5-gallon gasoline containers in plastic garbage bags, a respirator and road flares.
Notes in the car contained directions to three clinics in Fresno, Calif. Another note contained the addresses of the two Planned Parenthood clinics in Spokane County and the driving times between Wenatchee and the clinics, according to prosecutors.
, DataTimes