{"id":9795,"date":"2019-12-11T08:33:52","date_gmt":"2019-12-11T16:33:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/?p=9795"},"modified":"2019-12-13T08:39:09","modified_gmt":"2019-12-13T16:39:09","slug":"ecoterrorist-admits-firebombing-25-years-ago","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/animalliberationpressoffice.org\/NAALPO\/2019\/12\/11\/ecoterrorist-admits-firebombing-25-years-ago\/","title":{"rendered":"Ecoterrorist admits firebombing 25 years ago"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>RJ Wolcott\u00a0<\/a>
\nLivingston Ledger<\/p>\n

EAST LANSING \u2013\u00a0In the early morning hours of Feb. 28, 1992, Rodney Coronado crept onto Michigan State University\u2018s campus. He wiggled his way through a first-floor window of Anthony Hall before kicking down the door to the office of Richard Aulerich. The MSU researcher spent decades studying nutrition and the decline of the natural mink population. Coronado believed Aulerich\u2018s\u00a0research was funded by the commercial fur industry.<\/p>\n

Inside Aulerich\u2018s office, Coronado built a pyre using wooden desk drawers, research papers and a makeshift firebomb. He recorded his actions on video, donning a mask to protect his identity.<\/p>\n

Coronado set the timer on his makeshift bomb before walking out. He had confidence in his work; he\u2018d perfected the technique\u00a0while carrying out half a dozen prior attacks against other universities and fur farms on behalf of the Animal Liberation Front.<\/p>\n

\u201cI won\u2019t sugar coat it; we were about psychological warfare,\u201d Coronado, who was in his mid-20s at the time, said. \u201cWe wanted researchers like Aulerich never to know when they came to work and opened their office door whether there had been an attack. We wanted them to live in fear.\u201d<\/p>\n

Around 5:30 a.m., the firebomb detonated, and flames overtook Aulerich\u2019s office, spreading to three nearby offices. Two students who were inside the building at the time fled unharmed but alerted officials to the fire. Decades of research by Aulerich and others turned to ash as firefighters made their way to the building.<\/p>\n

The front page of the Lansing State Journal Feb. 29, 1992. A firebomb attack the day before caused significant damage and destroyed decades of animal research.\u00a0(Photo: Courtesy \/ Lansing State Journal Archives)<\/p>\n

\u201cIf it hadn\u2019t been discovered, the fire would have spread and easily could have burned the whole building down,\u201d said Fred Poston, who was the dean of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources at the time.<\/p>\n

Coronado denied for years he\u2019d ever been to East Lansing, let alone on MSU\u2018s campus or inside Anthony Hall. When he pleaded guilty in 1995,\u00a0Coronado maintained he wasn\u2019t the person who carried out the attack.<\/p>\n

Twenty-five years later, Coronado admits he was solely responsible. He said he has no reason to lie anymore.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are no looming criminal charges against me, \u201cCoronado said. \u201cI\u2019m as free as any person in this country can be.\u201d<\/p>\n

He was sentenced to four years and nine months in prison for the attack and was ordered to pay $2.5 million in restitution, including $1.3 million to MSU. The rest was assigned to go to the other universities or farms damaged by Coronado and his fellow Animal Liberation Front members.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a price to be paid for this kind of terrorist activity,\u201d U.S. District Judge Richard Enslen told Coronado during sentencing on Aug. 11, 1995.<\/p>\n

Coronado has paid back $2,375 in restitution, according to court records.<\/p>\n

Karen Chou, an MSU researcher who lost a decade of work as a result of the firebombing attack on MSU in February 1992.\u00a0(Photo: Courtesy \/ Michigan State University)<\/p>\n

Inside a bustling coffee shop in Grand Rapids last month, Coronado spoke unabashedly about his past. The braided, jet black hair he sported in the 1990s is now cropped short with a scattering of gray. The ecoterrorist spent four years in prison for his crime\u00a0and claims to have no interest doing something today that would send him back.<\/p>\n

The attack was catastrophic for Aulerich and another animal researcher, Karen Chou. Aulerich lost 32 years\u2019 worth of research, while Chou lost a decade of her work studying the use of animal sperm as a substitute for live\u00a0animals in toxicology testing. Neither Aulerich nor Chou would discuss the incident.<\/p>\n

It also left emotional and institutional scars at MSU. The fire caused more than $1 million in damages, according to the State Journal archives. MSU Police Chief Jim Dunlap, who worked for the department at the time of the incident, declined to comment. MSU Police say disclosing the\u00a0location of MSU\u2018s mink farm, which still operates today,\u00a0is a security risk and declined to allow the State Journal to visit the facility.<\/p>\n

\u2018An emotional kind of response\u2018<\/h3>\n

Debra Pozega Osburn\u00a0learned of the attack via a radio newscast early on the morning of Feb. 28. Her boss called shortly after, asking that she come into work as soon as possible. She\u2018d been the head of MSU\u2018s news bureau less than a month prior to the attack.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe knew right away the severity of what had happened,\u201d Pozega Osburn said.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0smell of oil and smoke permeated the hallways after the attack, even after the smoke stopped billowing from the building.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe felt very much that this was an attack on what our university stands for: to be a free and open place where all kinds of ideas have value,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

University officials learned later that day the mink farm MSU maintained\u00a0had also been hit. Cages were opened, animal tags were destroyed and graffiti deriding the mistreatment of animals was emblazoned on the walls.<\/p>\n

Coronado now admits he carried out that attack, as well. He went to the farm before he broke into Anthony Hall and freed two mink from their cages. He came back after setting up the firebomb to retrieve them, setting them free in a nearby wooded area.<\/p>\n

Pozega Osburn and\u00a0her staff spent the day relaying what information they had by phone calls and faxes. The fax lines were disrupted by animal rights activists, she said, who clogged the machine with pages upon pages of propaganda.<\/p>\n

At least one of those came from Coronado.\u00a0That morning, the Animal Liberation Front, or ALF, claimed responsibility in a press release. ALF\u00a0was designated a domestic terrorist organization by the FBI.\u00a0Coronado admits he\u00a0wrote the press release, and a half dozen others in the six months before he targeted MSU claiming responsibility for attacks from Oregon\u00a0to Montana.<\/p>\n

Poston had just arrived at work\u00a0when he first learned of the fire. He remembers the attack gave pause to researchers, who themselves worried about being targeted by radical activists.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey became more interested in locking their doors and battening down the hatches, but it was an emotional kind of response,\u201d Poston said.<\/p>\n

MSU held a news conference in the afternoon. Pozega Osburn met with Aulerich to prep him for talking to media.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe feel we\u2018re doing nothing wrong. If the university desires, we will go on,\u201d \u00a0Aulerich said at the news conference. The former researcher has rarely publicly discussed the incident in the years since.<\/p>\n

On the run<\/h3>\n

\"\"<\/a>Coronado was quick to leave Michigan, heading to the East Coast that day to meet up with fellow activists.<\/p>\n

(Use the map below to follow Coronado\u2018s path to MSU and where he went after.\u00a0Story continues below the map.<\/strong>)<\/p>\n

In the months that followed, federal authorities joined MSUPD in attempting to track down Coronado, according to Tim Verhey, a prosecutor with the U.S. Western District Court in Grand Rapids. He\u2019d only been on the job about 18 months prior to the attack.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe quickly realized it was an organized group hitting places across the U.S.,\u201d Verhey said.<\/p>\n

Coronado was suspected in an attack on June 10, 1991, on animal research facilities at Oregon State University where a fire was started. Touting it the launch of Operation Bite Back, ALF threatened in a press release to continue \u201cuntil the last fur farm is burnt to the ground.\u201d<\/p>\n

Between June and December 1991, five other sites, including private fur farms and research facilities at Washington State University, were hit by ALF. Those attacks ranged from vandalism and burglary to firebombing. One attack completely destroyed the Malecky mink farm in Yamhill, Oregon.<\/p>\n

Federal authorities raided a storage locker rented by Coronado in Oregon in the spring of 1992. Authorities found a typewriter inside that helped tie Coronado to ALF and past attacks.There were other clues that led authorities to Coronado as well, Verhey said.<\/p>\n

In attempting to ship a package containing documents from Aulerich\u2019s office plus the tape of him setting the explosive, Coronado used a fake routing number. Once authorities had the package, they were able to trace it back to Coronado with the help of a handwriting analyst. And the typewriter\u2019s ribbon helped them identified a letter written by ALF claiming responsibility for a prior attack, cementing Coronado as the group\u2019s spokesman.<\/p>\n

Coronado spent the next two years evading federal authorities while living on Native American reservations as far north as the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in portions of North Dakota and South Dakota and as far south as Tuscon, Arizona. It was in Arizona where authorities ultimately caught up with Coronado, who was arrested on Sept. 28, 1994.<\/p>\n

Buy Photo<\/p>\n

The front page of the Lansing State Journal on Aug. 12, 1995 following Rodney Coronado’s sentencing. Coronado was sentenced to 57 months in jail and $2.5 million in restitution for his role in the attack on Michigan State University.\u00a0(Photo: Courtesy \/ Lansing State Journal archives)<\/p>\n

Coronado was indicted on July 15, 1993, on seven counts, ranging from conspiracy to commit crimes against the United States to malicious destruction and arson. He faced up to 50 years in federal prison. After an unsuccessful attempt to flee, while handcuffed, from federal authorities in Grand Rapids, he cut a deal. In exchange for pleading guilty for arson at Anthony Hall, charges for the attacks in other states were dropped.<\/p>\n

He now admits participating in all six attacks and his role as spokesperson for ALF.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had to ask, could I live with myself with what I had seen and move on, or would I answer the call of my heart to do more?\u201d Coronado said about his frame of mind at the time. \u201cIn 1991, at 25 years old, feeling invincible like 25-year-olds do, I decided to go for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

A different kind of activism<\/h3>\n

Now 50, Coronado said he no longer considers himself a radical activist. He doesn\u2019t regret doing what he did in the early 1990s, saying his motivations came from a genuine belief in the need to fight animal abuse.<\/p>\n

Rodney Coronado continues his activism through Great Lakes Wolf Patrol, a non-profit that seeks to hold hunters accountable when tracking and hunting wolves.\u00a0(Photo: Courtesy \/ Joe Brown)<\/p>\n

\u201cIn my heart, I was deeply troubled. I wanted to do everything I could to try to stop it.\u201d<\/p>\n

A descendant of the Pascua Yaqui\u00a0tribe of Native Americans, Coronado\u2019s love for animals started early in life. PBS documentaries on wildlife and commercial whaling convinced him of the importance of animal welfare. At 19 years old, the Southern California native joined the Sea Shepherds, an organization with a mission of fighting\u00a0commercial whaling.<\/p>\n

In November of\u00a01986, Coronado and another member of the group boarded two whaling ships docked near Iceland and opened valves inside, allowing water to pour in and sink the ships.<\/p>\n

Upon returning to the United States around 1990, Coronado turned his attention to fur farming. His initial project was working undercover on a fur farm, capturing video of animal abuse he later turned over to \u201c60 Minutes\u201d for a story. That project was successful, Coronado said, but left him feeling like he needed to do more. That led to Operation Bite Back.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt we had to do something more to impact business, but I knew it would be at a high cost of public acceptance,\u201d Coronado said. \u201cThe public was not ready to accept destruction or economic sabotage in peace time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Much of his time in the 2000s was spent on animal rights causes. He was arrested twice, once for demonstrating how to build an explosive device like the one he used at MSU, and for violating parole by sending a friend request to another activist on Facebook. His profile had grown too large, he said, and anything he did was scrutinized by authorities who knew his past.<\/p>\n

Coronado moved to Grand Rapids a few years ago to be closer to his son. While he was active in promoting animal rights causes, he still felt the itch to be involved directly.<\/p>\n

In 2013, Coronado founded Great Lakes Wolf Patrol, a nonprofit organization dedicated to ensuring people followed the rules when it comes to hunting wolves and other species in the region. He goes into the woods in Wisconsin and Minnesota, often alone, and occasionally comes face-to-face with gun-toting hunters, many of whom aren\u2019t interested in hearing from the convicted felon.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m very much into moving forward and finding sustainable ways to address very real conflict in society preventing us from evolving and changing,\u201d Coronado said.<\/p>\n

Coronado said attacks like those he planned and executed in the 1990s run counter to his mission as an activist today. He teamed up with Joe Brown, a film professor at\u00a0Marquette University,.<\/p>\n

\u201cChanging attitudes is done with communication,\u201d Coronado said. \u201cOur efforts are damaged when you push someone against a\u00a0wall and antagonize with direct action.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the new outlook, Coronado said he\u2018d still release every single mink from its cage at MSU if he could get away with it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RJ Wolcott\u00a0 Livingston Ledger EAST LANSING \u2013\u00a0In the early morning hours of Feb. 28, 1992, Rodney Coronado crept onto Michigan State University\u2018s campus. He wiggled his way through a first-floor window of Anthony Hall before kicking down the door to the office of Richard Aulerich. The MSU researcher spent decades studying nutrition and the decline … <\/p>\n

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