Two Spokane men face conspiracy charge

Tue., Nov. 1, 2005

From staff and wire reports

Two Spokane men could face the death penalty after being accused in a federal indictment of kidnapping, raping and plotting to kill a Lapwai, Idaho, woman on the Nez Perce Indian Reservation in April.

Arnold E. Scott, 53, and Gerald L. Bainbridge, 44, are being held in the Bonner County Jail, awaiting arraignment Nov. 16 in U.S. District Court in Coeur d’Alene.

Last month, the U.S. attorney’s office amended the charges against the two to include conspiracy, which carries the possibility of a federal life sentence or death sentence.

The U.S. Department of Justice has jurisdiction on Indian reservations.

Scott and Bainbridge were accused by a grand jury of plotting the kidnapping, sexual assault and killing of a woman as they drove from Spokane to the Nez Perce reservation on April 22. Later that evening, according to the indictment, the two men began to carry out their plan, offering a ride home in their motor home to a Native American woman they had met in a Lapwai bar.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. attorney’s office said neither suspect was acquainted with the woman.

The two men took turns sexually assaulting the woman, who was bound with duct tape that the suspects had borrowed along their way, according to the indictment. Scott and Bainbridge allegedly told a witness who loaned them the tape that they needed it to repair a headlight on their mobile home.

The indictment also said that Scott borrowed a shovel with which to hit the woman over the head and bury her.

However, the day after her abduction, the woman escaped from the motor home and called police. Scott and Bainbridge were arrested that day by Idaho County sheriff’s deputies in White Bird, Idaho, 75 miles south of the reservation.

After their arrest, both suspects told authorities they did not know the woman was bound with duct tape in the back of the motor home, according to the indictment.

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