FBI Raids Rural Home in Probe of Fatal Arizona Derailment : Investigation: Val Verde man is detained briefly. He reportedly had disputes with two railroads.

FBI agents raided a rural home near Magic Mountain theme park and detained a railroad salvage company executive Wednesday morning in connection with the deadly derailment of an Amtrak passenger train in October near the remote Arizona desert community of Hyder.

Officials said John Ernest Olin, 32, a director of a firm that has done business with several railroads, was taken to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department’s Santa Clarita station while agents searched his home, but he was subsequently released.

Olin later called it “unbelievable” that agents might try to link him to the derailment in southwest Arizona. “I’ve never been in that area in my life,” he said.

How Olin was thought to be connected to the case was not immediately clear, but investigators have said from the outset that the knowledge of railroads reflected in the sabotage made the crime look like “an inside job.”

Acquaintances said Olin has had disputes with two railroads--the mighty Burlington Northern Santa Fe and the tiny Apache Railway--but the streamliner that derailed was an Amtrak train, running on tracks owned by the Southern Pacific railroad.

Olin’s attorney, Allan Sarkin, said his client was not questioned Wednesday but has been questioned several times previously about the crime.

“They’re questioning anybody and everybody who ever worked on the railroad,” Sarkin said, adding that “anybody who worked on a railroad” is considered a suspect in the crime.

Before dawn Oct. 9, someone pried loose a rail on the desolate stretch of Southern Pacific track 65 miles southwest of Phoenix and sent Amtrak’s 12-car Sunset Limited plunging into a rock-strewn gully. Michael Bates, 41, a sleeping-car attendant, was killed and 78 other people, including several children, were injured.

President Clinton called the crime “an act of cowardice.”

A rambling anti-government note was found at the wreck site, signed by the “Sons of the Gestapo,” but the FBI apparently has found no evidence linking the crime to any extremist group.

About 7:45 a.m. Wednesday, vehicles carrying government agents and sheriff’s deputies began rolling into the modest canyon community of Val Verde, about three miles west of Santa Clarita, said Lewis Berti, one of Olin’s neighbors.

“It turned out to be a convoy of everything but tanks,” Berti said.

Berti said that as he watched from atop a stump that permitted him to peer over his backyard fence, the agents cordoned off the neighborhood surrounding Olin’s home--a modest, ranch-style house behind a gate with a sign that reads “Railroad Crossing, Private Crossing, No Trespassing.”

“He was home,” Berti said. “He was taken away. He was wearing light clothing. I can still see him shivering in the rain.”

The FBI and sheriff’s deputies refused to comment on the case, other than to confirm that a search warrant had been executed at Olin’s home in connection with the derailment.

The warrant indicated only that agents were seeking evidence--such as “crowbars, pry bars, lift jacks or other tools usable to remove railroad spikes or manipulate rail.” The accompanying affidavit, spelling out why Olin’s house was being searched, was sealed by a federal court.

FBI agents in blue jackets spent more than five hours carrying boxes, documents and what appeared to be railroad spikes, a typewriter and a large crowbar from Olin’s rented home Wednesday morning. A dog that officials said was trained to sniff out narcotics inspected the frontyard and a white pickup truck with a camper shell attached.

The pickup truck, which has Arizona license plates, has a railroad crossing symbol on its sides, along with the words “ECCP--Environmental Care and Cleanup Projects Inc.”--and “railroad recycling.”

ECCP, the company for which Olin works, is said to specialize in salvaging old railroad gear.

The truck and other shiny vehicles owned by Olin have attracted attention in the dusty community of 1,600, where residents say such well-tended equipment is rare.

“I couldn’t imagine having such expensive and fabulous vehicles,” Berti said. “It created a stir in the neighborhood.”

Neighbor Robert Ledoux, 32, said Olin, who reportedly shares his home with a girlfriend and her daughter, seemed friendly: “He comes outside when I walk past, and he seems cordial enough.”

Other neighbors said the FBI created a stir of its own in recent weeks.

Several agents apparently spent a month staking out the area--parking their van at Val Verde Park, half a mile east of Olin’s house.

“They’d cruise around sometimes, but mostly they just sat there all day, looking bored,” said John Morrow, 28, a handyman.

Nonetheless, Ledoux said he was shocked when the caravan of agents and sheriff’s deputies rolled in Wednesday morning.

“I thought they were a movie crew,” Ledoux said.

The raid and its attendant invasion by the news media were the biggest event in isolated Val Verde since controversial plans to expand the nearby Chiquita Canyon Landfill were revealed, other homeowners said.

“Look! There’s the guy from Channel 4,” Cindy Ferguson, 26, shouted to her three children, who range in age from 2 to 6. “Wow! Channel 9. Check it out.”

“It looks like O.J. Simpson replayed,” Berti said.

Court records show that a man with the same name and birth date as Olin was charged with murder in the San Fernando Valley in January 1990, but the charge was dismissed six months later. Details of that case were not immediately available.

Meanwhile, in Holbrook, a northeast Arizona railroad town about 200 miles from the derailment site, Olin was remembered Wednesday as an energetic, impatient businessman man who set up an ECCP office in the fall of 1994, eager to promote the firm’s railroad salvage business.

While in Holbrook, Olin bought newspaper ads for ECCP. When they failed to produce, he switched his advertising to a local country-western radio station, with similar results.

“He was very disappointed,” said Vickie Gentri, the station’s morning disc jockey.

Disappointed and angry, according to Janie Clemmons, an advertising sales representative for the newspaper.

“He blamed everybody that the company didn’t make it and said nobody would help him in Holbrook,” Clemmons said. “He said . . . that Santa Fe had treated him badly.”

Burlington Northern Santa Fe spokesman Jim Sabourin said that from December, 1994, to July, 1995, Olin used the railroad’s property “without authorization” to dump the scrap iron and other recyclables. When the railroad found out what he was doing, Olin was ordered to leave, Sabourin said.

“Did he leave with a smile on his face?” Sabourin said. “Let’s just say he left.”

A spokesman for the Apache Railway, which maintains a spur track that joins the Burlington Northern Santa Fe at Holbrook, said Olin had been using Apache right of way without permission and without paying rent.

A major reason authorities think the derailment was an inside job is that whoever committed the crime demonstrated considerable expertise.

When the rails were pried apart on a curve a few yards ahead of a bridge spanning the gully, the separated rail sections were connected with electrical cable to keep circuitry intact and the signals green. The rail on the outside of the curve was pried out and away from the center of the tracks and wedged in place so it would not snap back.

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

Times staff writers Ron Ostrow in Washington, Tony Perry in San Diego, Paul Feldman and Jim Newton in Los Angeles and Efrain Hernandez in Van Nuys, and correspondents Danica Kirka in Val Verde and Richard Winton in Pasadena contributed to this story.