Jury Deliberates On Brian Ratigan’s Fate Prosecutors Allege Ratigan Is The Fourth Man In Domestic Terrorism Plot

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.

Ratigan also is accused of carrying firearms during violent crimes and conspiring with Charles H. Barbee, Robert S. Berry and Verne Jay Merrell to commit the crimes.

Those three former Sandpoint men have been convicted of the Valley bombings and robberies on April 1 and July 12. They face mandatory life imprisonment when they are sentenced next month.

Ratigan took the stand in his own defense, acknowledging that he knows the three men, but denying any involvement in the crimes.

In closing arguments, defense attorney Terry Ryan said there is no credible evidence tying Ratigan to the crimes.

The prosecution’s case is built largely around testimony from Robert Berry’s brother, Loren Berry, and Ratigan’s friend, Warren Day, of Clark Fork, Idaho.

Ryan said the two witnesses concealed evidence and lied to the FBI and a federal grand jury.

But Assistant U.S. Attorney Joseph Harrington said the testimony from Day and Loren Berry is backed up by other witnesses and evidence.

Day and Loren Berry testified that Ratigan confessed to them shortly after his friends were arrested last October near Yakima.

If Ratigan is innocent, why did he move his family from Sandpoint to a rented house near Colville in the middle of the night last January, Harrington asked the jury.

And why did Ratigan begin using an alias, Lee Phalan, even giving phony names to his wife and two young sons?

About that time, Harrington said, Ratigan likely would have known that his neighbor and friends in the Sandpoint area were talking to FBI agents and appearing before a grand jury in Spokane.

Harrington also asked jurors to remember the testimony of Ratigan’s mother, Jayne Tillotson of Albany, N.Y., and an incriminating letter she received from him.

In the letter sent from jail, Ratigan tells his mother not to cooperate with the FBI and federal prosecutors, and urged her to change her story.

She bought him and his family one-way train tickets to New York, leading to his arrest at the Amtrak station in Spokane on March 13.

“The reasonable, common-sense inference is that Brian Ratigan was the fourth man involved in the Spokane bombings and bank robberies,” Harrington told the jury.

Ryan said Ratigan moved from Sandpoint because the area was flooded with FBI agents, and he didn’t want any contact with a government he distrusts.

Concluding the prosecution’s case Monday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Rice said Ratigan isn’t being tried for his whiteseparatist, anti-government beliefs.

But those beliefs, Rice said, offer a possible explanation for the bombings and robberies.

, DataTimes MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: THE CHARGES Brian Ratigan is 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.