Indian Fights Extradition; Fears He’ll Be Sacrificed

Eddie Hatcher, a Tuscarora Indian fighting extradition to North Carolina where he is wanted for holding a newspaper staff hostage, said from his jail cell Thursday that he hopes California will not “throw me to the wolves.”

Hatcher, 31, lodged in the San Francisco City Jail, held a telephone news conference to announce the launching of a petition drive appealing to Gov. George Deukmejian to refuse extradition. The news conference was staged by the International Indian Treaty Council

“I would ask that the justice system here not throw me to the wolves,” Hatcher said.

He said his attempts to expose alleged corruption in North Carolina endangered his life and his mother’s safety in the past to the extent that they both took to wearing bullet-proof vests. He said he would be in danger if forced to return.

“I know what can happen. I’ve seen it happen, and that’s my main worry,” Hatcher told the news conference.

Hatcher stormed into The Robeson newspaper in Lumberton, N.C., Feb. 1, 1988, and seized 17 hostages at gunpoint, including editor Robert Horne. He said he committed the desperate act out of fear for his life after making allegations of local political corruption, including racism and law enforcement turning a blind eye to drug-trafficking in the rural county situated on Interstate 95, midway between Miami and New York.

All of the hostages at the newspaper were released unharmed. But after Hatcher was acquitted of the federal charges, the state of North Carolina filed kidnaping charges against him and co-defendant Timothy Jacobs, 19, who is awaiting trial.

Hatcher hid on an Idaho Indian reservation before surfacing in San Francisco on March 10 at the Soviet Consulate, where FBI agents arrested him as a fugitive.