Rochelle Manning Pleads Not Guilty
Rochelle Ida Manning pleaded not guilty Monday to a federal indictment charging her with participation in a fatal 1980 mail bombing that took the life of a Manhattan Beach secretary.
Manning, 48, is charged along with her husband--Robert Steven Manning, 36, who currently is a fugitive in Israel--and William Ross, a Hawthorne real estate broker in the death of Patricia Wilkerson. All three defendants were Jewish Defense League members in the early 1970s.
Federal prosecutors allege that the trio sent a bomb hidden in a box to a woman with whom Ross was embroiled in a bitter dispute over the sale of a home in Manhattan Beach. But the package was opened by Wilkerson, a secretary and mother of two, who was killed instantly.
Rochelle and her husband also have been named as suspects in the 1985 bombing death of prominent pro-Arab activist Alex M. Odeh of Santa Ana. Odeh, who was the West Coast regional director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, was killed when he triggered an explosive device as he entered his office.
U.S. District Judge Dickran Tevrizian accepted the not guilty plea of Rochelle Manning, who is being held at Terminal Island.
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