KSRO, Newstalk Radio AM 1350, Monday, April 15, 2002. Host Pat Thurston. Guest: Steve Talbot.
Thurston: Steve Talbot is a reporter and documentary filmmaker who works at KQED. He produced the film “Who Bombed Judi Bari?” He made some pretty startling revelations last Friday night on KQED television about the Judi Bari case. He’s here to talk with us. … We’ve talked about the Judi Bari case before with Mary Moore. Judi Bari was a Northcoast activist who was car-bombed in 1990. Let’s bring Steve Talbot on the air to discuss this. Was it 1991 you did the documentary?
Talbot: Yes, the bombing was on May 24, 1990 in Oakland and I made the documentary one year later.
Thurston: Wow! So you got involved very quickly?
Talbot: I did, because actually I had been hired by Mother Jones magazine to write an article about Judi Bari and Earth First! and the demonstrations they were holding that summer of 1990, Redwood Summer they called it. I did that piece for Mother Jones and then I segued right into doing the documentary for KQED.
Thurston: So you were already involved with the Redwood Summer project when the bombing happened?
Talbot: Yes. I was involved as a reporter.
Thurston: We’ve talked with Mary Moore when the trial opened up in Alameda County. The estate of Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney are suing the Oakland Police Department and the FBI. My understanding is the grounds of their lawsuit simply has to do with the false arrest, the defamation that they suffered, and the civil rights and equal protection under the law that they were denied. Because no real investigation was done into who bombed Judi Bari. But aren’t they seeking monetary damages? Aren’t they seeking, as a part of the award in the event they prevail — and I can’t imagine them not prevailing — are they asking for an investigation to find out who committed this act?
Talbot: As I understand it, and I’m not an expert on the actual case at this point, Yes, they are asking for damages, and they are asking for an apology, and they asking that an investigation take place. I think that certainly that latter point is really justified. But as you stated, the case is pretty narrowly focused. Over the years there have been a lot of charges and counter charges. At one point Bari and Cherney were saying that the FBI had put the bomb in their car. Or was involved in some grand conspiracy against them, which I don’t believe the evidence supports. But on the narrow charge of, Did the FBI and the Oakland Police Department rush to judgment? Did they say things that later proved to be inaccurate, as far as where the bomb was placed, and as far as whether nails that were attached to the pipe bomb that exploded matched more or less identically? They said at one point that nails that were found elsewhere in her car and at her home in Redwood Valley… Those statements proved to be incorrect, and as you know the District Attorney in Alameda County decided not to pursue any charges against Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney at the time. So I think, a) it’s a minor legal miracle that they managed to get this case to trial after all these many years, but I think they have a case. They can argue that. What I have been discussing with people lately is that the problem is that this case does not get to the heart of the matter, as to who put that bomb in her car. If it wasn’t Judi Bari’s and Darryl Cherney’s, if it was not an Earth First! bomb that exploded, who put the bomb in her car? That question, I’m afraid, is not going to be answered by this trial.
Thurston: When you produced the documentary, Who Bombed Judi Bari, I understand that you were probably the first person publicly to raise the question that one of the suspects… that it could potentially have been a case of domestic violence, that it could have been Judi’s ex-husband Mike Sweeney.
Talbot: That’s right. It’s not the way I approached the case, I must say. I’m sympathetic to the environmental movement. I’m even sympathetic to a lot of what Earth First! has been doing, although they clearly had done some illegal acts as well, and taken part in other activities I would not have supported. But I was sympathetic to Judi. I thought she was a victim in this case. The more I got to know her I felt more strongly about that. So I went in looking at possible people from the logging community who might have gone after her. And she also was very outspoken in favor of abortion, and I looked very seriously — we have some religious fundamentalists in northern California who had threatened her and other people because they were pro-abortion. So I looked very hard at that. And only because various people who were very close to her, close friends, members of her legal team, political allies, and eventually, this is the key point, Judi herself, who came to me — all of them in confidence at the time — and said, Look, we appreciate your doing this investigation. The media have basically been hostile to us. You’re at least giving us a fair shake listening to what we have to say. You’re doing a serious investigation. You have private investigators working with you and so forth. And we’re glad that you’re looking at the timber industry. However, Judi has been physically abused by her husband on occasion, a man named Michael Sweeney, and he actually had raped her, and then Judi told me at the time in confidence that he had also fire-bombed an airfield in Santa Rosa and she had given me a very elaborate description of how she… they had only been married a year or so — or actually together a year or so, they weren’t actually married yet. She was pregnant with her first child. She was about to give birth in a couple of months, and she came upon him, she told me, constructing an arson device, very complicated, electrical wiring, light sockets, flammable materials, in their house on the edge of this airfield, and that he in fact on October 3rd, 1980, set this device off. It exploded, set of a huge blaze at the Santa Rosa airfield. It was a fire that destroyed a giant old World War II hangar, damaged and destroyed several small planes at the airfield, and nearly killed the flight instructor who was sleeping in the hangar at the time. So it was officially ruled an arson by police and fire investigators, but they never solved it. Judi Bari told me in 1991 as I was investigating this case, kind of late in the game in my investigation, that Michael Sweeney, her ex-husband, had indeed fire-bombed the Santa Rosa airfield and that he had been threatening and abusive to her. So that came as an enormous shock to me. It took me aback. My team of investigators began at that point to look seriously at Michael Sweeney.
Thurston: And I understand he was the one person who was uncooperative and wouldn’t be interviewed for the documentary.
Talbot: That’s right. We talked to a lot of very hostile people. People who did not want us asking them questions about this case. But I must say that everyone, from the logging community, people in the anti-abortion movement, other people who were involved in Earth First!, various people who had had suspicions raised about them, even when people were not anxious to have us asking questions of them, they spoke to us. And the only person who was hostile from the very beginning — in fact when I first called him he slammed down the phone as soon as I introduced myself — and never talked to us ever was Michael Sweeney.
Thurston: I believe Judi was not his first wife. Did he have a history of abuse with other women?
Talbot: Well, what I can say at this point is that he was married to a woman named Cynthia Denenholtz, who as I understand it, and I’m not positive about this, but as I understand it she is now a judge in Sonoma County. They had been married, they had been students at Stanford together. They’d been active in left-wing politics. They had been involved with a group that had a history of violence, in fact a group that was called Vinceremos, not the Vinceremos Brigades that went to cut sugar cane in Cuba, but a group that was kind of a wannabe Black Panther group. And they were involved, based in Stanford, egged on by a professor there named H. Bruce Franklin, into breaking a prisoner out of jail in southern California, shooting a prison guard in the process. The escapee was eventually captured in a high speed chase on the Bay Bridge in the early 70s. Various people were rounded up and went to jail. Bruce Franklin somehow managed to walk away and became a tenured professor at Rutgers, although he left Stanford. And there’s no evidence that Michael Sweeney himself was directly involved in any of *that*, but he was a member of this group, and so was his wife. And then they moved up to the Santa Rosa area. She left him, divorced him, and in court documents she did complain that he was harassing her, mainly by filing legal papers against her at very inopportune and difficult times in her life. There were some suggestions of abuse, but I could never confirm those.
Thurston: One thing I think is important to get out is that a lot of what you’re talking about now, you revealed for the first time on KQED Friday evening on television. This was not information that you had revealed previously, particularly that Judi had told you about the abuse. As a matter of fact, my understanding is that after the documentary, Who Bombed Judi Bari, aired, Judi became very angry with you and she said some pretty nasty things about you, didn’t she?
Talbot: That’s right. It was a very unsettling and strange experience and I didn’t really defend myself at the time, even though some people at KQED and others would say, Why wasn’t I saying that she was the source of all this information? But I didn’t, because it was a matter I considered a matter of journalistic ethics. She was a source and she told me this in confidence and all the other people who mentioned these things to me too who were close to her, also told me this in confidence. So I felt that I could not betray a source. And I’ve kept this a secret, basically, for ten years. But now because it’s such a long time ago that this happened, and also because she died five years ago, I feel that I now can tell this story, honorably. And I think it’s important to tell this story because the trial is happening now and because the case has never been solved.
Thurston: Are you doing a follow-up documentary or are you writing about this at all?
Talbot: I’m going to write a piece this week in fact for Salon.com, the online magazine. I’m working on that now. Unfortunately, as far as coverage of this case goes, I’m extremely busy in my other life which is developing a new series which is going to debut on Public Television soon, on the Frontline show, the PBS documentary series that I’ve been working for for the last ten years. So I’m afraid that at least in the short term I’m not going to do a documentary TV follow-up to the Judi Bari case, but I certainly wanted to get this information out into the public discussion.
Thurston: Steve, why not write for Mother Jones? They commissioned you in the first place to write about what was going on, why wouldn’t they be interested in a follow up here?
Talbot: I’m sure they would be interested. Actually, this is all coming at a very inopportune time for me, this trial and this case coming back because I’m extremely busy with my new job producing a new series called Frontline/World which is going to be part of the overall Frontline series, a new quarterly that will deal with international events. Our pilot is May 23rd. So I’m really trying to squeeze in this commentary above and beyond my regular job. … I’d like to say just one last thing here. I’ve got to emphasize that I do not know whether Michael Sweeney put this bomb in Judi Bari’s car. She went to her grave not knowing who had done it. But the one thing I really want out of the world and feels like a real burden off my shoulders is to finally be able to say what Judi told me so movingly and convincingly in 1991. Which is that this guy had done some some things which seems very suspicious.
Thurston: I’ve got to go the news here, Steve.
Talbot: Go for it.
KSRO, Newstalk 1350. Pat Thurston Show, Tuesday, April 9, 2002. Host: Pat Thurston. Guest: Mary Moore. Topic: The Bari/Cherney Federal Case.
Thurston: I’m gonna tell you my view on this. I’m just going to be very frank about it. I think this lawsuit is important, but I think it doesn’t reach far enough. I think there should be a demand for an investigation. And I think there’s a real reason that they’re not mounting an investigation. That’s because they don’t want to discover that it’s possible… We all know that it’s possible… There have been allegations made that Judi Bari’s ex-husband actually did this. What’s being asked for by you (Moore) and by Bruce Anderson and by some others, including me, is to do a real investigation in which he would be considered a suspect, and he would be investigated! I mean really investigated. Other suspects would be investigated as well!
Moore: Not only that, it was said in the story today on the front page, that DNA technology back in those days was in its infancy. That’s true. But it’s not anymore. They have DNA. Why can’t they just simply… I don’t want to just point the finger at Mike. That’s who I suspect did it, but I don’t know. I don’t know. Why can’t they just test it with the various people who they have suspected?
Thurston: There is evidence that could be DNA-tested. Buy my point is that the people who are pushing the lawsuit forward do not want to find out if indeed it was a case of domestic abuse, spousal abuse…
Moore: That’s right.
Thurston: They don’t want to find that out because then Judi would just be another woman who was beaten by her husband, instead of the martyr that she is now.
Moore: And the icon for the movement of nailing the FBI. This is not the best case for that though. We’ve had many cases over many many years in the movement of the FBI looking at us and all. This is not the case! … Judi Bari can be remembered for all the wonderful organizing that she did. We don’t need to make an icon out of her and blindly follow what is being put out here. Your point is key to all of this. Judi Bari was a hell of an organizer. But she was a very proud woman and I don’t think she’d want it publicly known that there was domestic violence in her marriage, both down here and we know up in Mendocino County also.
Thurston: What about the DNA evidence?
Moore: Well, they could go right up to Mike Sweeney now. They could certainly go to Irv Sutley. They could go to Pam Davis. They could go to any number of people who were connected with Judi who were under suspicion for one reason or another. I’d gladly give my DNA and put it in there. The (Lord’s Avenger Letter) envelope was apparently licked by a woman. But the stamp was put on by a man. The Lord’s Avenger letter was written shortly after the bombing and there was so much knowledge about how the bomb was made that it had to be written, or at least dictated, by the person who made the bomb. It was sent to Mike Geniella (of the Press Democrat) and it was full of all sorts of flowery religious stuff. I knew Mike, the ex-husband, quite well. He was in my affinity group back in the late 70s. He’s a very very smart man. Whoever wrote that letter, if they weren’t a religious zealot, wrote it so that it would appear that it was a religious zealot.
Thurston: It seems like that’s one piece of evidence that just about everybody agrees that the perpetrator, the actual bomber, had to have some involvement with that letter. Therefore, if you test the envelope where it was licked, if you test the stamp, there’s a real possibility that you’re gonna come up with some evidence that can be matched. All you have to at least vindicate certain people who are suspected is to get samples and show that they don’t match!
Moore: And this technology is no longer in its infancy. We also had Don Foster, who is an attributional scholar. He was given six or seven blind samples of people who were suspects, and he didn’t know who had written it. He analyzes through the way you express yourself on paper. And he came up with Mike Sweeney. That’s probably not conclusive in court. But that certainly added to my suspicions which I’ve had all along, because Mike was never investigated. And an ex-husband is usually at least questioned whenever violence is done to an ex-wife.
Thurston: Couldn’t one of the remedies that the litigants are seeking be that they at least investigate as far as gathering the DNA evidence and samples from the suspects?
Moore: I would certainly hope so! I’m not privy to the internal workings of the Redwood Summer Justice Project and the folks that are bringing this suit. Maybe they have. It would be a question worth asking them. But as far as I know from reading the lawsuits which have been amended down, and gotten narrower and narrower, that is not being asked. And I don’t know why. Even if it weren’t being asked there, why isn’t there more coming from those parties in terms of, like, screaming, We want an investigation! One of the people who’s party to that is a well known activist here who’s whole thing is around domestic violence! How can she ignore that?
Thurston: You’re talking about Tanya Brannan.
Moore: Yeah!
Thurston: If the Oakland Police Department and the FBI, and it does seem like from the stuff coming from the litigants in the case that they’re essentially blaming the Oakland Police Department or the FBI for the bombing itself. Particularly the FBI. If that’s the case, and if particularly the FBI wanted to show that this is ridiculous, we didn’t have anything to do with it, the FBI could DNA test that stuff.
Moore: Yeah. They could. But I think the final thing that’s presented to court has been narrowed down to whether or not they were unjustly arrested.
Thurston: And that’s a shame. Is there anything we can do to get a real investigation to happen?
Moore: People could put pressure on Norm Vroman up in Mendocino County, or Maria Bee and the folks down in Oakland. We, the people who have been following this and are not investigators but we’ve had to do the job, believe that the bomb was placed in Mendocino County. There is some controversy about that. I would never swear in court, but that’s what I suspect. And it went off in Oakland. So you could make the case that either of those District Attorneys could open up an investigation.
Thurston: And she departed from Mendocino County. So that would also do it. It’ll be interesting to watch what happens in this trial.
J’Accuse
J’accuse Steven Talbot. Not for being a liar, but for being a willing dupe. This is easily discerned when video journalist Talbot was interviewed by Pat Thurston in 2002. What? Judi Bari never told a lie? What? Judi Bari never told a half truth, that is, mixing truth with falsehood to make it all seem true? Ask the editor of this paper, he’d be an excellent source for this. Isn’t a journalist supposed to be a sceptic, doubting the source of what is said unless it can be proved? Can mere hearsay tie a noose? For Steve Talbot Judi Bari was the Mother Theresa of the redwoods. If she said that her ex-hubby may have bombed her, was this somehow heaven sent? Did Talbot get her comments on tape? (standard modus operandi for journalists) Was his video camera rolling? Was he taking notes? Was a witness present?
I have no idea, neither proof of deed or vindication, about what her husband did or didn’t do before he and Judi arrived in Mendocino, but whatever did or did not happen came from the mouth of Judi Bari, and Steven Talbot was more than willing to swallow the bait. Bari whispers into his ear, and everything flows from that—i.e., ex-hubby’s guilty of two significant crimes. Even a rookie beat cop needs more than that.
And, so it has proceeded for years, especially on the pages of the mighty AVA. Talbot has been the public font of another’s alleged guilt without one scintilla of proof. It has driven our dear editor to near obsession, and at his age he is sorely in need of rest. Aside from elder abuse, Talbot deserves an award. When it comes to Talbot’s reporting on Judi Bari, he’s on a par with Stephen Glass, Brain Williams and Jayson Blair. The bogus Pulitzer is on the way.
The activist, Mary Moore, had a better sense of things in her Pat Thurston interview. Although, I would disagree with Moore on many issues, bless her heart for being the spirited lady she is. She went more astutely to the heart of the matter. The only remaining concrete proof for the bomb in Judi Bari’s car, that I know of, is the DNA on the so-called Lord’s Avenger Letter. What is the origin of this DNA: ex-hubby? Someone else? The FBI? (one of Judi and Darryl’s oft moronic contentions) Or, was Judi transporting an explosive device that accidently went off by itself? Mary Moore was spot on about the answer being in the DNA. Talbot consistently leaves it on the cutting room floor. The envelope was licked by a female; there was male DNA on the stamp. This implies conspiracy. The deranged Christian; lone wolf theory may be ruled out. And, when the female DNA on the Lord’s Avenger envelope is input for population affiliation assessment, the DNA comes back to a female of either Chinese or Middle Eastern heritage. The male DNA is too minimum for inclusion. (so far) Law enforcement agencies now have access to a brand-new, genetic tools: notably, GEDMATCH and Parabon Nanolabs. (accessed by law enforcement only) A little swab here; a little swab there; this case might be easily solved.
Talbot doesn’t deserve this abuse. His work over the years establishes his credentials. PS. That’s a great test that comes back “to a female of either Chinese or Middle Eastern heritage.” Narrows it down to two continents, and two distinct ethnicities.
“Talbot doesn’t deserve this abuse.”
Come on Bruce, if MK is right, neither does Mike Sweeney. MS is male, I assume, and I also assume is not of Chinese or ME heritage.
The point, George and Mike, the case can be solved, and was never investigated by law enforcement in a systematic manner. Steve Talbot did the only thorough work on it. Koepf doesn’t have any idea what he’s talking about.
“the case can be solved, and was never investigated by law enforcement in a systematic manner.”
That, in itself, is a good point. But finding someone guilty in the press, or the court of public opinion has it’s noted pitfalls, too. There are credibility issues with all the those involved. Does anything, that any of the principals have said, whether in private or in public, mean anything beyond a warm bucket of spit?
Law enforcement does not want to act, and it appears no one involved, who is still alive, wants law enforcement to act, either, for reasons we do not know. So it appears for law enforcement, if the people who should care don’t want our help, why bother. There are other more important things to do.
Bruce, are you aware that we have Americans who have migrated from those continents? Some may even live in our county. Abuse? Making a case for bad journalism couched in hearsay is abuse? I guess “established” members of the media are untouchable. So sorry. Didn’t know, they were currently a protected class.
When last we left this discussion Michael Koepf seemed to assert that the bomb that exploded in Judi Bari’s car in Oakland, CA. in 1990 was her own bomb. If that’s his accusation, so be it. It’s what the FBI and the Oakland police originally charged, though the Alameda County DA ultimately decided not to prosecute. Later, of course, Bari and her Earth First partner Darryl Cherney’s lawyers managed to win a big case in federal court for false arrest, etc. But that trial in 2002 did not resolve the fundamental issue of who was responsible for the pipe bomb being placed in Bari’s car.
The question of who bombed Judi Bari has never been solved…by anyone. I tried. I investigated the bombing and produced a documentary for KQED way back in 1991. The evidence my team and I uncovered discredited much of the FBI and OPD case. We also looked at a wide range of possible suspects, including Koepf, whose ex-wife (a colleague of Bari’s) expressed concern that he might have been the perpetrator.
Toward the end of my investigation, Bari confided in me that she feared her ex-husband, Michael Sweeney, might have tried to kill her in the car bombing. This was off-camera and not on tape. She told me this off the record during a slow walk in the woods near her cabin where she was recuperating from her extensive injuries. This was not something she was saying publicly, though it turns out she had told several close friends the same thing. Her public position was that she’d been a victim of the logging industry or the FBI. I was shocked to learn that she privately thought it might be Sweeney. With what little time I had left to complete my documentary, my team and I investigated Sweeney, an effort that was made difficult by Sweeney’s hostility and absolute refusal to be interviewed. He was, in fact, the only person we approached for the documentary who would not speak with us.
Ironically, in the end, Bari publicly turned against me for raising questions in the documentary about what role Sweeney might have played, even though she was the one — along with several of her confidantes — who had brought up Sweeney to me as a suspect in the first place.
Contrary to what Koepf seems agitated about, I didn’t accept Bari’s private suspicion of Sweeney at face value. That’s just Koepf getting things wrong. But I did take Bari’s fears seriously enough to investigate Sweeney as best as I could given time constraints. KQED had given us months to examine the case, but there were limits. We had a broadcast deadline.
The bottom line is that I still do not know for certain who placed that bomb in Bari’s car. No one has ever been prosecuted. No trial or investigation has ever answered the question, Who Bombed Judi Bari?
Bruce Anderson, to his credit, has kept the case alive in the AVA. I’ve been a bit surprised to see that Koepf, after all these years, is still weighing in, even if he doesn’t seem to be shedding much light. I’ve moved on in life to many other investigations and reporting projects. If Koepf or anyone else knows anything more about the unsolved case, they should say so.
Meanwhile, for anyone still interested in this nearly 30-year-old case, here is what I last wrote about it — all I know — in Salon in 2002:
The mysterious bombing of an environmental activist
Though she vehemently denied it in public, the late Earth First leader Judi Bari told me and others in private that she suspected her ex-husband was behind the notorious 1990 car bombing that is finally being examined by a federal jury.
https://www.salon.com/2002/05/23/judibari/
Steve Talbot, your writing style is sniffy, but let’s see if I can help.
Envelope Addressed to Mr. Geniella
Post Mark Not Clear
“The cells recovered from the flap of the envelope addressed to Mr. Geniella with unclear post mark contained an unbalanced mixture of DNA from a female and a male. The major DNA source was determined to be D3S1358 type 14,17; vWA type 17,19; FGA type 20,21; D*S1179 type 10,11; D21S11 type 30,31,2; D18S51 type 16,17; D5S818 type 11,13; D13S317 type 8,12; and D7S820 type 10,10. This DNA was also determined to originate from a female by analysis of the amelogenin gene. This array of genotypes occurs in significantly less than one out of 100,000 members of population. The calculated genotype frequencies indicate that it is unlikely that more than one human being has ever possessed this particular genotype array.”
Steve, and indulgent, sidekick Bruce: The DNA analysis, extracted from the DNA report above, was conducted by the Forensic Science Associates of Richmond California. The geneticists and criminalists, who concluded the study were Edward T. Blake and Alan Keel. The DNA sample was taken from the licked flap of the Lord’s Avenger Letter that was sent to journalist Mike Geniella shortly after a bomb exploded in Judi Bari’s car. The report was initiated by Darryl Cheney and the sample from the flap was removed under FBI supervision. Gentlemen, ask yourselves a simple question: does the DNA obtained above have any significance in the Judi Bari Bombing case? I’m a simple guy; thus, I thought it might. I took the major source of female DNA, listed above, and placed it into PopAffiliator 2, a population affiliation program available online. Hey, you guys can try it too! So, can any reader on this page. The results came back non-Caucasian. The female DNA was either from a lady of Chinese ancestry or from a woman with antecedents in the Middle East. When I initially presented this information in an essay published in this paper, the essential point I asked was: could Michael Sweeney know these gals? I don’t know this man, or the women in his life around the time that bomb went off, but I brought this question up, because, for years, Bruce Anderson accused Sweeney of blowing up the mother of his kids. In fact, Bruce accused Sweeney of murder (in print) although Judi Bari died of cancer and not from the wounds of the blast. Did Bruce cite any facts? Nope. Steve, Bruce was continually referencing you in that interview you did so many years ago in which you claimed that Judi may have said that Michael Sweeney placed the bomb. That was all he had.
Guys, as I’ve stated clearly more than once, I’m not a geneticist, and, for all I know, maybe PopAffiator 2 is a secret, Russian site. Perhaps I’m wrong. However, what I find both curious and revealing is that neither one of you, in all this back and forth, has addressed the central issue I have raised. Where’s your journalistic curiosity when it comes to the DNA that was definitely involved in this case?
Steve. Let’s clear up a thing or two.
Steve Talbot: “…I didn’t accept Bari’s private suspicion of Sweeney at face value. That’s just Koepf getting things wrong.”
Steve, then why make a “private suspicion” a public issue as you did in the interview? Lefties always want it both ways to give cover to the things they say. Do I have this right?
Steve Talbot: “I’ve been a bit surprised to see that Koepf, after all these years, is still weighing in, even if he doesn’t seem to be shedding much light.”
Steve, DNA, DNA, DNA! Woman; non-Caucasian. Do you get it yet?
Steve Talbot: “Bruce Anderson, to his credit, has kept the case alive in the AVA.”
But, Steve, why would you take exception if another looked at this case? For instance, me?
Steve Talbot: “I was sympathetic to Judi Bari.”
Right on, Steve. Power to the people! It was a marriage made in left-wing, media-heaven.
Steve Talbot: “But I must say that everyone, from the logging community, people in the anti-abortion movement, other people who were involved in Earth First!, various people who had had suspicions raised about them, even when people were not anxious to have us asking questions of them, they spoke to us”
Steve, be honest. Allow me, as best I can, to recall and briefly summarize the jest of our very short conversation when you were conducting your grand investigation of “various people.”
“Hello.”
“Steve Talbot, here. I’m calling to inform you that you will be a suspect in my documentary. I’ve spoken with Annamarie Stenberg.”
“What!?”
“Good bye. Have a nice day.”
But, but…I sputtered to myself. Prior to the bomb in Judi’s car I was in Montana with my pal, Jim Crumley, closing down the bars almost every night. What “questions?”
Steve and Bruce, all I can add is this: when one welds themselves to a conclusion, the door to the mind is shut. But, it’s out there; DNA, GEDMATCH, PopAffiliator 2, Parabon Nanolabs. Who knows? Someday or never, there may be someone in law enforcement whose curiosity surpasses yours.