Man Indicted in Bombing at Courthouse : Crime: Unemployed Escondido plumber was recently convicted of stabbing a neighbor’s dog and throwing a bomb at a cable TV worker.

An unemployed Escondido plumber recently convicted of dog stabbing and bomb tossing was indicted Friday on federal charges of bombing the downtown San Diego federal courthouse last September.

David Kevin Cox, who court records indicate has a history of methamphetamine-induced hallucinations and an apparent attraction for weapons, was charged in a five-count indictment.

A bomb discovered by federal agents in a February search of his home matches the unique chemistry in a homemade bomb that blew up Sept. 15 at the courthouse, prosecutors said. The blast blew the front doors off the main Front Street entrance but caused no injuries. If convicted of all five counts, Cox, 36, could draw 50 years in federal prison and up to $1.25 million in fines.

Cox was sentenced Tuesday in Vista Superior Court to four years in state prison for stabbing a neighbor’s dog and throwing a bomb at a cable TV worker.

Defense lawyer David R. Thompson, a Carlsbad attorney, said Cox has a recent pattern of bizarre behavior, including a belief that he had to save the United States from Satan and Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, much of it due to methamphetamine use. Still, Thompson said, Cox told him he did not bomb the federal courthouse.

“He says he has nothing to do with it. I believe it,” Thompson said. “We’re apparently going to have to let a jury decide now.”

Law enforcement sources said Friday that the chemical “fingerprints” of the device found in Cox’s home and the one at the courthouse are virtually the same, both containing a mixture of five or six ingredients that included a high dose of flash-burning magnesium.

Like the device discovered in Cox’s garage, the courthouse bomb had two fuses and was built around a 30-pound metal container in which the explosive mixture had been packed, federal agents said at a press conference Friday announcing the indictment.

The unexploded bomb in the garage was discovered only because Cox’s wife, Linda, called police Feb. 2, saying she believed there was a burglary in progress at the house, agents said. Later tests turned up the chemical and manufacturing similarities, agents said.

“If in fact the bomb which was used to (damage) the courthouse was made from materials in his garage, the act was completed as a volunteer project by persons he had no control over,” Thompson said.

Law enforcement sources familiar with the courthouse bombing probe, which has been a high priority for both prosecutors and federal agents, said they believe Cox planted the bomb as a retaliatory strike, one perhaps induced by methamphetamine use.

“He thought he was being shadowed by the feds,” one source said, adding that agents also believe that Cox bombed the building simply to amuse himself.

The indictment alleges that Cox built and possessed the two bombs and used one of them last fall at the courthouse. No date has been set for arraignment.

Last Tuesday, Vista Superior Court Judge Allen Preckel sentenced Cox to the four-year prison term. Cox, who pleaded guilty in May to one count of cruelty to an animal and another of possessing a destructive device, remains in the County Jail at Vista.

In sentencing Cox, Preckel compared him to the sinister character played by actor Jack Nicholson in “The Shining,” a horror film.

Police reported that, upon a short-lived release last February from jail, a neighbor of Cox’s heard a gunshot and looked out her window to see him say, “I’m baaaack,” close the door and laugh.

The incident must have “curdled (the neighbor’s) blood,” particularly if she saw the film, in which Nicholson played a hotel caretaker who stalks his family, Preckel said.

In a brief filed in Vista Superior Court that sought leniency, Thompson said there was “no doubt” that Cox stabbed the dog and tossed the bomb at the cable TV worker while “suffering from amphetamine psychosis.”

According to police reports and court documents, Cox walked in Jan. 28 on a neighbor, Lorrie Smith, told her that her dog, Ruff, was Satan, and that he needed to kill it. He also spoke about Hussein and a nuclear bomb in Escondido, according to files.

Smith left with her children, according to files, and returned to find Ruff had been stabbed in the neck.

On Feb. 2, according to police reports and court files, Cox threw a homemade explosive 5 to 8 feet from cable TV worker Peter Stum, who had temporarily shut off Cox’s service. The device exploded but did not injure Stum.

When Cox was arrested, a search of his house on South Fig Street in Escondido yielded 15 rifles, a cattle prod, more than 5,000 rounds of ammunition and books on war tactics, police said. The unexploded bomb in the 30-pound canister was found in the garage, agents said Friday.

Cox began experimenting with methamphetamine in late 1985 and began using it regularly in late 1990 “to medicate his pain,” lawyer Thompson said. A friend walked off with $15,000 that Cox had loaned him, his wife was pregnant and he was unemployed, the attorney said.

“To use his vernacular, something snapped,” Thompson said.

In the sentencing brief, Thompson said: “The methamphetamine began to greatly disrupt and warp David’s sense of reality and his perception of self.”

Then came the war with Iraq, Thompson said, adding: “David, who has always been very patriotic, soon became convinced Saddam Hussein was in San Diego . . . that there were Scud missile launchers everywhere, and that it was up to David Cox to save America.”