Grudge Studied as Motive for Derailing Train

Investigators focused Tuesday on whether sabotage that derailed the Amtrak Sunset Limited in the Arizona desert, killing one person and injuring about 100 others, was anti-government terrorism or the terrible handiwork of someone with a grudge.

One source close to the investigation said authorities were “leaning a little bit more toward an inside job, either a railroad employee or an employee combined with an outside group.” Another source cited railroad merger plans and said, “Employees could be laid off. Employees could be disgruntled.”

A manifesto left at the crash site criticized police and federal law enforcement. But one government source said it differed in style from what investigators have come to expect from traditional, militant anti-government groups. A passenger who saw the manifesto said it appeared to be “sarcastically poetic.”

As investigators analyzed the manifesto and hunted for other clues as to who caused the crash, President Clinton said he was “profoundly outraged” by the sabotage and declared: “We will punish those who are responsible. We will not tolerate acts of cowardice like this in the United States, regardless of the motive.”

At the wreckage, in and along the sides of a rocky, sun-bleached ravine 27 miles east of this small desert town, workers backed a van up to the side of a baggage and mail car and appeared to be unloading it. Others awaited the arrival of cranes to remove the car and others that had careened off the tracks.

The train, carrying 248 passengers and 20 crew members from Miami to Los Angeles, hit tracks just above the ravine on Monday that had been loosened and moved. The two locomotives managed to cross a trestle over the ravine and stay on the rails. But several cars left the tracks, and three toppled into the wash.

Mitchell Bates, 41, a sleeping-car attendant, was killed. Amtrak said 78 other people, including several children, were injured, five of them critically. Many were in cars that fell 30 feet into the ravine. Some remained hospitalized on Tuesday. Sheriff’s deputies said more than 20 other people suffered minor injuries.

The FBI sent about 90 agents to the site, making this the agency’s second-biggest crime scene investigation after the bombing in April of an Oklahoma City federal building, allegedly by anti-government extremists. The agents told a news conference at a staging area six miles from the scene that they were calling this probe Operation Splitrail.

“This a walk-around, crawl-in-the-dirt type of investigation,” FBI spokesman Jack Callahan said. “Today we’re covering a square mile. If successful, tomorrow we will expand the area.”

The FBI, Callahan said, “has received numerous telephone calls [about the case] from throughout the country.” He said the investigation “has expanded to other states.”

He declined to be specific.

Derailer Found

Agent Al Davidson said the bureau was looking into the possibility that a device called a derailer, found on freight tracks in downtown Phoenix on Tuesday, might be related to the crash or might be part of a “copycat” effort to cause another wreck.

Derailers are used by train crews to stop runaway cars or to put derailed cars back onto tracks. The device was found by Phoenix police after a truck driver reported two people making clanging noises on the tracks.

The wreck of the Sunset Limited prompted state and local officials to offer rewards for investigative leads. The state of Arizona and Maricopa County offered $10,000 each for information leading to a conviction.

The manifesto discovered at the crash site mentioned federal raids on the Branch Davidian religious group near Waco, Tex., and on a family at Ruby Ridge, Ida., whose father was being sought on gun charges. Both raids have been rallying causes for anti-government extremists.

Sources close to the investigation said the manifesto was signed “Sons of the Gestapo” or “Sons of Gestapo.”

Anti-terrorism experts said they knew of no such group.

Arizona Gov. Fife Symington said he had read the manifesto. He declined to reveal what it said, except to note that he was told there were multiple versions that were “comparable in content.”

Michele Cruz, 29, a psychiatric nurse from Sacramento who was a passenger on the train, said she, too, had seen a copy of the manifesto.

As she walked along the tracks after the crash, Cruz said, she spotted a man with a red beard and mustache who was guarding it. She said she did not know who the man was.

The Manifesto

“There was a big rock on it,” Cruz said. It was still early morning, she said, and the sun had not yet come up. She said she shined a flashlight on the note and knelt to read it.

“I didn’t touch it . . . didn’t want my fingerprints on it,” she said.

“It started out as something like you read in a book, how people are victimized, something about as the lights go down in the night, the mothers and daughters begin to pray, possibly kneel to pray,” she said.

She recalled a reference to the FBI disconnecting the power or refusing to turn it on, “something about the electricity not being on and praying in the dark.”

“They were trying to be poetic martyrs . . . victimized by the FBI and different government agencies,” Cruz said. “I believe they were trying to be sarcastically poetic.”

Cruz said the message was on a standard sheet of white typing paper.

She said it was in mint condition.

“The biggest impression on me was it was like brand new,” she said. “It didn’t look like it had been thrown around the desert.”

The note was not handwritten but typed, perhaps by a computer printer, said one source close to the federal investigation. Its wording “is not very conducive to what we’ve seen many, many times in the past.”

The source said this meant that its style differed from what investigators have come to expect from anti-government militants. Another source agreed and described the message as two paragraphs long and “almost literary, poetic” in style.

While one of the paragraphs mentions Waco and Ruby Ridge, this source said, the message poses questions that go beyond federal authorities to other law enforcement officials and mentions the use of chokeholds in apprehending suspects.

The source said the manifesto asks who is going to police the police.

Part of the reason authorities were “leaning a little bit more toward an inside job,” the source said, was because of the knowledge of railroads reflected in the sabotage.

Two 39-foot sections of rail were connected with a red electrical cord to keep circuitry intact and trains signals green along the tracks. A 36-inch steel bar that joins the rail sections was removed, and 29 spikes were pulled out to loosen the tracks from their wooden crossties.

Then, on a slight curve on the approach to the ravine, the outside rail was pried out and away from the center of the tracks. It was wedged in place so that it could not snap back.

“All of this indicates it was somebody who knew what they were doing, somebody who knew about railroads,” another source said. On a curve, the source pointed out, it is the outside rail that carries most of the train’s weight.

If the inside rail had been moved, this source said, the entire train might have made it around the curve and over the trestle to safety.

“All of this has led to speculation whether those notes were valid,” the source said. “The Southern Pacific has merger plans. Employees could be laid off. Employees could be disgruntled.”

The sabotage occurred on a portion of tracks owned by the Southern Pacific railroad, which is expected to merge with the Union Pacific, resulting in an estimated $500 million in annual savings through cost-cutting and job reductions.

Disgruntled Employee?

At a news conference Monday in Washington, Amtrak President Thomas M. Downs would not rule out the possibility that the crash was caused by a disgruntled employee.

“I don’t know if this is a disgruntled employee of ours, or another railroad, or someone else,” he said. “Someone did know enough about the railroad to wire this” sabotage to keep the signals green.

Nonetheless, the FBI placed the investigation under the supervision of Assistant Director Robert Bryant, who runs the bureau’s national security division. The division handles terrorism cases.

Malnic reported from Hyder and Ostrow and Jackson from Washington. Times staff writers Louis Sahagun in Hyder, Mark Gladstone in Sacramento and Richard E. Meyer in Los Angeles contributed to this story.