Call of the Wily

Made into a movie, it would make a tidy triple bill with the currently showing Juggernaut and The Taking of Pelham One Two Three. But for the residents of the Pacific Northwest, whose electricity and water supplies have been threatened since late September by a man calling himself J. Hawker, the plot was real and all too earnest (TIME, Nov. 4). The ordeal finally ended last week when David W. Heesch, 34, of Beaver Creek, Ore., admitted responsibility for a bizarre extortion scheme involving the bombing of eleven electrical transmission towers of the Bonneville Power Administration, a threat to set a fire in the Bull Run watershed, which provides water for the city of Portland, and a $1 million ransom demand.

J. Hawker developed his own exotic mode of operating, including in his letters lengths of red and yellow wire tied in a twisted knot to certify their authenticity. He negotiated with the FBI by quacking out his instructions on a duck caller over a citizens' band radio frequency in Morse-like code. It was the radio that finally did him in. An FBI agent monitoring the channel traced the signal to a 1968 Plymouth passing through southeast Portland and arrested Heesch and his wife Sheila.

Mere Camouflage. Heesch, an unemployed truck driver, pleaded guilty to toppling two BPA towers near Brightwood, Ore., and using the U.S. mail to extort money. He faces 22 years in prison and a $20,500 fine. Sheila Heesch also pleaded guilty of being an accomplice to the dynamiting of two other towers near Maupin, 145 miles southeast of Portland, and to one count of extortion in the blackmail attempt.

Those who knew the Heesches described them as "family people" and "good neighbors," whose two children had gone trick-or-treating last month in the rural area of ranch-style houses where they had moved two years ago. Why did they do it? Evidently just for the money: Heesch had lost his job with a transportation company more than a year ago and had not been able to find another. Apparently the revolutionary rhetoric that accompanied his demands was mere camouflage.

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