Jury: Pipe bombs were weapons
Hill marketing director faces 10-year sentence
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No comments [ Add Comment ]By JESSE FRUHWIRTH
Standard-Examiner Davis Bureau
SALT LAKE CITY -- A jury decided Thursday that explosive devices made by a West Point man were pipe bombs designed as weapons, not merely amped-up fireworks used at Vietnam memorial events as the defense argued.
Raymond Bradley Parr, 48, a marketing director at Hill Air Force Base's 75th Services Division, was convicted by a 12-person federal court jury of possessing unregistered destructive devices. Two explosives storage violations were dismissed by prosecutors prior to trial.
Parr faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine when he is sentenced Dec. 8.
Forty explosive devices were discovered in a Layton car wash Sept. 5, 2007. At least four more were found behind a Roy convenience store Sept. 10. Bomb squads closed streets and evacuated businesses in both areas, then used robots to destroy the devices.
The pipes -- some plastic, some metal, many capped on both ends with fuses coiled around them -- were stolen from a storage unit in Clearfield, rented in Parr's name. They were discarded by burglars who did not initially recognize what the devices were, police said.
Prosecutors and defense clashed Thursday over whether the devices were homemade bombs or just pyrotechnics equipment.
"One phrase is the central issue in the case," said Assistant U.S. Attorney John Huber. "That phrase is 'destructive device.' "
That was the central issue because Parr admitted creating the devices, putting them in his storage shed and not having any registration for them.
But he denied that they were designed and built as weapons. Because they were not intended as weapons, they do not fit the legal definition of a destructive device and did not require registration, defense attorney Richard Mauro argued.
The defense maintained all the items were a part of a pyrotechnics show that Parr coordinated for a side business. They submitted marketing material from Parr's business dating back more than a decade to show that Parr has a long history with pyrotechnics.
Prosecutors did not deny Parr's pyrotechnics experience. They claimed, however, that Parr admitted that 17 of the devices were intended as weapons when he built them. The confession, they said, came during his initial two-hour interview with Layton Police and an agent from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms at Parr's home on Sept. 11, 2007.
According to detectives, Parr told them the items were built as re-creations of Claymore antipersonnel mines, a type of military ordnance that sprays shrapnel in only one direction. Detectives testified that Parr confessed that he made them during an "experimental phase in his life" more than 10 years ago but had never ignited any of them.
Some of the pipes were loaded with BBs and many were capped on both ends, according to police testimony and photos presented to the jury.
Mauro and Parr, who testified Wednesday and Thursday, said the BBs were a part of the pyrotechnics equipment. BBs glued to the inside of pipes would force their projectiles to spin, he said. The pipes were merely launching tools, not explosives themselves.
In his closing statement, Mauro seized on the prosecution's lack of direct evidence that Parr intended to build weapons when he made the devices. Mauro argued that besides the "experimental phase" confession, which Parr denied making, the government had no evidence regarding the central question of the trial.
"What witness came forward and said (Parr) designed these things as a weapon? They have the burden of proof," he said.
Huber countered by saying that Parr's explanation that the BBs would cause projectiles to spin in a pyrotechnics show was ludicrous.
"He's retracted every single confession he gave to investigators and he's replaced it with science that's fiction ... the rotational thing makes no sense whatsoever," Huber said.
He told the jury that if they believed the devices were clearly destructive and had no other use that they need not consider Parr's intentions when he built them.
