Snitch a hated man after environmental case : Former Earth First! member never strays far from his .45 automatic after key role in prosecution.

Ron Frazier is a pariah in the place he calls home. He spends most of his time holed up in a cramped studio in the Brewery Gulch of this hill town near the Mexican border, wondering when the hate campaign against him will subside.

“Some people in this town are slamming me, trying to run me out,” said Frazier, who never strays too far from his .45-caliber automatic. “But as long as they want me gone, I’m staying.”

Frazier, 38, is a self-described snitch who informed on friends and acquaintances for the FBI in the federal government’s prosecution this summer of five members of Earth First!, the radical environmental group.

The trial ended in August when the defendants agreed to plead guilty to lesser charges, including sabotaging the Fairfield Snow Bowl ski lift in Flagstaff, Ariz., in October, 1987. Prosecutors dropped a more serious charge of plotting to blow up three nuclear power plants.

Earth First! co-founder Dave Foreman pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit sabotage.

Frazier, a key witness in the case, became involved with Earth First! in the spring of 1987 after moving from Bisbee to Prescott, Ariz. He began working for the FBI in February, 1988. He installed a phone and taping device in his home and wore a wire, turning over to prosecutors more than 150 recordings.

For his services, Frazier was paid $53,000. He said $35,000 of that was salary, the remainder was for expenses, such as mileage and meals.

“I carried the job of snitch way beyond snitch,” said Frazier proudly. “I practically was a private investigator working for the FBI. It was a job.”

But after the trial when he returned to Bisbee, a town of 6,200 rife with old hippies, artists and environmentalists, Frazier found himself a hated man.

People spit on the sidewalk next to him. His few friends have been warned not to associate with him. Newspaper articles about the case are posted around town, with the words “FBI Snitch in Bisbee” scrawled across the top.

Rumors about him are legion, including one that he is a narc and is still working for the FBI, now targeting drug dealers.

“For a while I was worried about the druggies doing a preemptive on me, putting a couple in my back,” said Frazier, an ironworker and welder who for two days carried his .45 openly on his hip, sending a message to his intimidators.

Now that he is publicly denying the narc rumor, Frazier said he no longer fears serious violence. But some who consider him the enemy are unwilling to let the matter drop.

They are angry, believing that he entrapped the Earth First! defendants by urging them to commit illegal acts they otherwise might not have carried out. And they say he did it for cash.

“He wanted the money to go to diesel mechanic school,” said Jeri (Juicer) Doud, a Bisbee haircutter who rented a cabin to Frazier from which some of the FBI recordings were made. “He stood in front of me and told me that.

“This cat is a snitch and a liar,” Doud said. “He’s brought a lot of distrust to our community and I don’t like it.”

Frazier denies money was a motive. He said he became disillusioned with Earth First! after the sabotage of the ski lift. He also feared that Mark Davis, leader of Prescott’s Earth First! saboteurs, was going too far in his alleged plan to damage nuclear power plants. Davis was sentenced to six years in prison, the longest of any of the defendants.

But Frazier acknowledges that his decision to go to the FBI was motivated less by ideology than by a personal dispute with Davis over a woman, Ilse Asplund, also one of the defendants.

Once Frazier’s girlfriend, Asplund began dating Davis, and that angered Frazier.

He is disliked by many of Bisbee’s environmentalists, some of whom have never met him.

“He’ll probably stay in town for 10 years and end up running a 12-step program for former FBI informants,” says Dick Kamp, director of the Border Ecology Project. “Scumbags have a way of becoming gurus.”

Others have begun distributing “not wanted” posters, complete with Frazier’s photograph, that identify him as “Ron the Fink.”

No one appears interested in dropping the issue, even Frazier.

In a recent newspaper story, a Bisbee city councilman said that the town doesn’t like snitches and Frazier might as well leave. Frazier mailed copies of that story to his mother and made 20 copies of the “not wanted” poster, taping one to his studio door.

“I’m tired of hiding,” Frazier explained. “Maybe if I make fun of it, it will go away.”