School Owner Gets 2 Years in Firebomb Case

A Dana Point teacher and co-owner of a chain of private schools was sentenced Monday to two years in federal prison for hiring a band of Alabama mercenaries to harass two former employees who she believed had vandalized her schools.

The mercenaries blew up cars in San Bernardino County in August, 1985, belonging to former employees Robyn Rishoff of Etiwanda and Harriet Russo of Ontario.

Because Charlotte Ruth Wyckoff, 52, already has served nearly a year in jail awaiting sentencing, she will serve only an additional year in custody. She pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court to being an accessory after the fact to the bombings.

“This has been a nightmare and a funeral in many ways,” a tearful Wyckoff told U.S. District Judge Alicemarie H. Stotler.

David E. Kenner, Wyckoff’s attorney, said Wyckoff has lost her expensive home, her lucrative business and her state teaching credential. He said she is working as a laboratory administrator in an undisclosed city for $1,390 a month.

Stotler also ordered Wyckoff to pay about $4,000 in restitution to one of the teachers whose cars were firebombed by the mercenaries. Stotler called the bombing plot an “unbelievable fiasco.”

Wyckoff and a partner, Elizabeth Leta Hamilton, 39, who was sentenced earlier to seven years in prison, owned a chain of seven private schools in Orange and San Bernardino counties known as the California Learning Centers. After several of their schools were vandalized, Wyckoff and Hamilton became convinced former employees were responsible. They contacted Alabama mercenary camp owner Franklin J. Camper and asked him to come to California to provide “unconventional security” for themselves and their schools. Last week, Camper was sentenced to 14 years in prison for his role in the bombings.

Stotler also sentenced two other defendants in the case Monday. Paul Johnson, 43, of Birmingham, Ala., was given two years in prison, and James Cuneo, 23, of Long Island, N.Y., was sentenced to 18 months.