Jury Convicts Poison-Pen Letter Writer

An unemployed Ocean Beach man who claimed credit for last fall’s bombing of the San Diego Federal Courthouse was convicted Friday on three felony charges of sending threatening letters to a San Diego television station, a civil rights activist, and a lawyer.

Jurors, who began deliberations late Thursday, returned with the guilty verdicts after about 45 minutes of talks Friday morning. The jury rejected the defense claim that Somes wrote the letters in an alcoholic fog and didn’t really mean to frighten anyone.

Somes, 44, was immediately taken into custody. He is scheduled to be sentenced May 28 by U.S. District Judge John S. Rhoades.

He could draw up to 45 years in prison and a $750,000 fine, though prosecutors’ initial reading of federal sentencing guidelines suggests that he faces 57 to 71 months in prison, according to Assistant U.S. Atty. Larry Burns.

Somes was not charged in the case with the bombing itself, which blew the front doors off the courthouse but caused no injuries last Sept. 15. A source close to the case has said authorities do not believe he was responsible for the blast.

No one has been indicted in the bombing. In January, prosecutors wanted answers from Tom Metzger, the white supremacist from Fallbrook. But he told a federal grand jury that neither he nor anyone connected to his white-separatist group, White Aryan Resistance, or WAR, was involved in the bombing.

Testimony at Somes’ trial revealed that he made small financial contributions to WAR and placed about 40 phone calls to Metzger and the WAR hotline last fall.

Metzger was not involved in the Somes case.

Though authorities believe Somes played no role in the bombing, he claimed credit for the blast in the name of “The Holy Church of the White Fighting Machine of the Cross,” according to testimony at his trial.

The church apparently does not exist. But, in its name, Somes sent a letter two days after the blast to television station KNSD (Channel 39).

In that letter, Somes threatened “further action” unless all “anti-white” laws against “hate crimes” were eliminated and unless a civil lawsuit in Portland, Ore., involving Metzger was halted.

The suit was not halted, and in October, a jury found Metzger, his son, WAR and two skinheads liable for $12.5 million in the beating death of Mulugeta Seraw, a 27-year-old Ethiopian immigrant. His skull was split open when he was attacked by the two skinheads in November, 1988.

The Portland case against Metzger, brought on behalf of an uncle of the slain black man, was pressed by Morris Dees, the head of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala. Somes’ second letter, also dated Sept. 17, threatened Dees with physical harm unless he dropped the suit against the Metzgers.

The third letter was sent to Roberto Martinez, a San Diego community leader and Latino rights activist. It said Martinez would be hurt unless he stopped “criticizing the Border Patrol” and white advocates for the “white Aryan race.”