Ohio Woman Charged in Clinic Arsons

Marjorie Reed, a 48-year-old housewife and mother from Toledo, would seem an unlikely candidate to be hauled into federal court and charged with politically motivated violent crimes.

But Reed was caught recently in New Jersey, allegedly after more than a year on the run from federal charges that she set fire to abortion clinics in Ohio.

Federal agents testified that she was uncooperative, smudged her fingerprints and closed her eyes when photographed. They said she once spent several weeks in jail for refusing to submit to a court-ordered blood test, then struggled so violently when blood was drawn against her will that it took seven matrons to restrain her.

Agents of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms caught up with Reed in North Caldwell, N. J., allegedly as she was about to make a second attempt to burn an abortion clinic in Fairfield. She faces charges in Ohio and New Jersey that could mean more than 40 years in prison if she is convicted.

The fires Reed is accused of setting are only three of more than 80 destructive attacks on clinics since 1982, when the bureau became involved in investigating such crimes. Of these cases, 50 have been solved and 37 defendants convicted.

Reed’s police record dates back to 1983, when she was arrested several times for trespassing during protest demonstrations at abortion facilities.

“I found her to be rather forceful,” said Joe Scheidler, executive director of the Pro-Life Action League in Chicago. “She wasn’t afraid to picket, to chant and so on, which I admired. Marjie did not seem like the type of person who’d burn down an abortion clinic.”

In August, 1988, two days after her release from serving a contempt of court sentence, Reed disappeared from Toledo with $100 withdrawn from the savings account that she and her husband shared. Her car was found abandoned in a park, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

At a hearing in Newark, U. S. Magistrate Ronald Hedges ordered Reed returned to Toledo for trial on a 1987 indictment and another, returned after she fled, charging her with setting a clinic afire in 1986.

The magistrate refused to set bail. He called Reed a hypocrite and said he could not understand how someone who claimed to believe in “the sanctity of life” could destroy property and endanger the lives of others.

Reed’s lawyer, John Broderick, said later that whoever committed the Ohio and New Jersey clinic arsons did not intend to injure anyone and made sure the buildings were empty before they were torched.

Although many pro-choice activists believe that bombers and arsonists have a support network in the anti-abortion movement, Jack Killorin of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms said that most of those arrested have been “lone wolves and outcasts,” who worked alone or with small, local groups.

In 1982, radio stations received anonymous telephone calls claiming that the “Army of God” was responsible for attacks on clinics, Killorin said, but that organization proved to have more shadow than substance.

“It would actually be much easier if there was an organization, because when you arrest this many people, you’d have a good picture of the network,” Killorin said. “Marjorie is the first one that’s been a fugitive.”