ELF suspect dies in Arizona jail

A suspect in a 1998 Colorado arson case apparently killed himself in an Arizona jail on the night of Dec. 21, shortly before he was to be transported to Seattle to face federal charges. William C. Rodgers, 40, used a clear plastic bag from the jail commissary to suffocate himself, said Lt. Charles Wong of the Coconino County Sheriff's Office. Rodgers, who faced possible life imprisonment, was in federal custody, alone in his Flagstaff cell, when he was found dead on the morning of Dec. 22, Wong said. Authorities arrested Rodgers and five others earlier this month in a nationwide sweep–claiming that they were members of the Earth Liberation Front (ELF). Prosecutors claim they are responsible for a string of arsons in the West between 1998 and 2001. Although federal prosecutors publicly called Rodgers a suspect in the Vail ski resort fires in Colorado that destroyed several mountaintop buildings and caused $12 million in damage, he had not been charged in the case. Prosecutors even characterized Rodgers as the mastermind of the arson. Rodgers was formally charged with torching the federal Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service facility outside Olympia, WA, in 1998. His death sent shock waves through the Prescott, AZ, community where he ran a combination bookstore/community meeting spot called The Catalyst. He supported peaceful causes such as Food Not Bombs and an effort to prevent a Utah ski area from using recycled sewage water for snowmaking on the slopes of land sacred to Native Americans. Rodgers' case had drawn support from dozens in Prescott, who described him as a peaceful, warm-hearted man who promoted nonviolence. Don Roth, one of more than 50 of Rodgers' friends who attended a hearing for him on Dec. 16, said news of his suicide spread quickly. "Everybody is taking this very hard," Roth said. "None of us have any idea if he actually did anything." Several days before Rodgers' suicide, Chelsea Gerlach and Kevin Tubbs, two other defendants picked up in the FBI sweep, pleaded not guilty to the various charges they faced. Gerlach pleaded not guilty to a firebombing charge during a brief appearance on Dec. 19 in US District Court. Tubbs pleaded not guilty to arson charges stemming from the torching of a Department of Agriculture research office in Olympia, WA, and of 35 sport utility vehicles at a Eugene, OR, car dealership. Attorneys for Gerlach and Tubbs, who are charged with a series of environmental sabotage attacks in Oregon and Washington state, said they would seek the defendants' release based on a lack of hard evidence provided so far by the government beyond the statements of two informants who allegedly took part in the attacks. A federal prosecutor replied he would begin providing more than 1,000 pages of evidence by the end of the week.