Woodburn bank bombing

Last updated
Woodburn Bank Bombing
Location Woodburn, Oregon, United States
Coordinates 45°09′03″N122°52′27″W / 45.15074°N 122.87423°W / 45.15074; -122.87423
DateDecember 12, 2008 (2008-12-12)
Attack type
Bombing, attempted extortion
WeaponsExplosive device
Deaths2
Injured2
PerpetratorsBruce and Joshua Turnidge
MotiveRansom, antigovernment beliefs

The Woodburn bank bombing was a bomb explosion that occurred on December 12, 2008, when a bomb that had been moved by a bomb squad technician into the West Coast Bank in Woodburn, Oregon exploded, killing two officers and seriously injuring a third. [1]

Contents

Bombing

On December 12, 2008, a phone call to the Wells Fargo bank in Woodburn, Oregon, was answered by 22-year-old teller Karen Valadez. A voice she later identified as that of Joshua Turnidge stated, "If you value your life and the life of your employees, you need to get out because I am going to kill you." [2] The caller then instructed her and the others in the bank to leave and go to an area outside, where they would find a cellphone that he would use to contact them with and provide further information. He added that he was contacting another nearby bank, West Coast Bank. Valadez waved over her manager, who told her to hang up; she disconnected the call and repeated its contents to her manager. The bank contacted the police shortly afterward. [3]

The police swept Wells Fargo, found nothing, and then proceeded to investigate West Coast Bank with no results. The police left the scene but were called back when an employee noticed a suspicious device outside. Oregon State Police Senior Trooper and munitions expert William Hakim examined the device. As rain fell, Hakim decided to carry it into the West Coast Bank to dismantle it. Inside the bank, with two bank employees still inside, Hakim began to examine the green box, trying to discern whether it was an explosive device or not. Shortly after he had begun examining it, an explosion occurred, killing him and Woodburn Police Captain Tom Tennant. [2] Woodburn Police Chief Scott Russell had one leg completely blown off by the blast and was bleeding profusely from the other when Detective Nick Wilson and Officer John Mikkola, who were both investigating at the other bank, rushed in. Wilson was able to save Russell from bleeding to death by using his belt as a tourniquet on Russell's leg. [3] A bank employee also suffered minor leg wounds from the blast.[ citation needed ]

Investigation and arrests

Two hundred sixty-five investigators from multiple agencies were assigned to work on the case. Investigators found a cellphone outside at the scene, which was concluded to have been the one mentioned by Joshua Turnidge in the first call. The phone was traced back to a Walmart, where surveillance videos showed a man purchasing the phone and later driving away in a blue truck. A partial license plate identification showed the truck was owned by Bruce Turnidge of Jefferson, Oregon. While Turnidge was not the man in the video, further investigation found a record of the truck being stopped for a traffic violation while driving by Turnidge's son Joshua, who matched the recorded image. Two days after the explosion, Joshua, age 32, was arrested at his home in Salem. Several hours later, Bruce Turnidge, age 57, was arrested at his home. [4]

Perpetrators

Bruce and Joshua Turnidge were construction workers who had maintained a close, if sometimes rocky, relationship since Joshua was a young boy. Bruce had maintained 2nd Amendment rights and conservative Christian views for many years. [5] Joshua joined the U.S. Navy at the age of 21 but received a medical discharge after a Navy psychologist stated that he was a danger to himself and others. Joshua later stated that he had faked his symptoms to ensure his discharge when he learned he had gotten a woman pregnant. The Turnidges both held numerous jobs, including owning a farm, and had decided to start a biodiesel company together, collecting cooking oil from restaurants for recycling. By the time of the bombing, the business was in debt and having trouble paying its rent. [6]

Trial, convictions, and sentences

The trial lasted more than two months, and more than 100 witnesses were called. Prosecutors brought forth the Turnidge's financial difficulties, anti-government beliefs, and fear that the then-new Obama administration would take away their guns. [4] A friend of Joshua Turnidge testified that Turnidge often confided in him about a plan to obtain money from a bank using a bomb. [7] During the trial, both defendants attempted to put the majority of the blame on the other, with Bruce's attorneys stating that his lack of computer skills and physical ailments would have prevented him from carrying out a role in the plot, while Joshua testified that he didn't know why his father had taken him for a drive that day and didn't know what happened until his father told him that "no one was supposed to get hurt." The defense also claimed the deaths would have never happened if Hakim did not set off the bomb by allegedly hitting it with a hammer and prying it open with a crowbar. [8]

The prosecution theorized that a stray radio signal had set off the device, not Hakim's actions. [8] It took less than five hours of deliberations for the jury to find both Turnidges guilty on all eighteen counts, including aggravated murder. Following a sentencing recommendation from the jury, the judge sentenced both men to death. [9] The jurors cited a lack of remorse as a reason for deciding on the sentencing recommendation. [10]

In 2016, the convictions and sentences were upheld by the Oregon Supreme Court. [11] On December 13, 2022, Governor Kate Brown commuted the death sentences of Bruce and Joshua Turnidge to life without parole. Everyone else on Oregon's death row received the same commutation. [12]

Aftermath

Police Chief Scott Russell required fifty-five plus surgeries but was able to return to work after receiving a prosthetic leg. He retired in 2016. [13]

Related Research Articles

KGW is a television station in Portland, Oregon, United States, affiliated with NBC and owned by Tegna Inc. The station's studios are located on Jefferson Street in southwestern Portland, and its transmitter is located in the city's Sylvan-Highlands section. KGW also served as the Portland bureau for co-owned regional news channel Northwest Cable News before it shut down on January 6, 2017.

On August 28, 2003, pizza delivery man Brian Douglas Wells robbed a PNC Bank near his hometown of Erie, Pennsylvania, United States. Upon being apprehended by police, Wells died when an explosive collar locked to his neck detonated. The FBI investigation into his death uncovered a complex plot described as "one of the most complicated and bizarre crimes in the annals of the FBI".

Oregon v. Guzek, 546 U.S. 517 (2006), was a decision by the Supreme Court of the United States, which ruled that the Eighth Amendment to the United States Constitution does not grant criminal defendants facing the death penalty the right to introduce new evidence of their innocence during sentencing that was not introduced during trial. Accordingly, states could constitutionally exclude such evidence from the sentencing phase of a capital trial.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Murder of Mulugeta Seraw</span> Racially motivated murder in Portland, Oregon

Mulugeta Seraw was an Ethiopian student who traveled to the United States to attend college. He was 28 when he was murdered by three white supremacists in November 1988 in Portland, Oregon. They were convicted, and Mulugeta's father and son—who was six years old—filed a civil lawsuit against the killers and an affiliated organization, holding them liable for the murder.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">European Kindred</span> United States white supremacist prison and street gang

The European Kindred (EK) is a prison and street gang that began in the Oregon prison system.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Woodburn Premium Outlets</span> Shopping mall in United States, /

Woodburn Premium Outlets is an outlet mall in Woodburn, Oregon, United States. The complex, located between the cities of Portland and Salem on Interstate 5, opened in 1999 as the Woodburn Company Stores. Owned and operated by Simon Property Group, the center has over 350,000 square feet (33,000 m2) of retail space.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kate Brown</span> American politician (born 1960)

Katherine Brown is an American politician and attorney who served as the 38th governor of Oregon from 2015 to 2023. A member of the Democratic Party, she served three terms as the state representative from the 13th district of the Oregon House of Representatives from 1991 to 1997, three terms as the state senator from the 21st district of the Oregon Senate from 1997 to 2009, three terms as majority leader of the Oregon Senate from 2003 to 2009, and two terms as Oregon Secretary of State from 2009 to 2015. She assumed the governorship upon the resignation of John Kitzhaber in 2015. She was elected to serve out the remainder of his gubernatorial term in the special election in 2016 and was reelected to a full term in 2018.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael Francke</span> American judge

James Michael Francke was an American judge from New Mexico and director of the state's Corrections Department, the governmental bureau which manages prisons, inmates, and parolees. He was later appointed by then-Oregon governor Neil Goldschmidt to oversee a plan to double the state's inmate capacity as director of Oregon's Department of Corrections. On January 18, 1989, his body was discovered outside the department's office building in Salem; an autopsy determined he had been murdered the night before. A local petty criminal was eventually tried and convicted for the crime, and sentenced to life in prison without parole. However, the convicted killer maintains his innocence, and several conspiracy theories have been advocated, claiming that the killing was a murder for hire conducted by corrupt state prison officials threatened by an investigation Francke was conducting into prison mismanagement. In 2019, the man convicted for the murder of Francke was released from prison after his murder conviction was thrown out by a federal magistrate in Portland, who ruled he did not receive a fair trial; four years later, he was given a full release when his indictment by the county was dismissed with prejudice and his murder conviction was expunged from the record.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gypsy Joker Motorcycle Club</span> Motorcycle club

The Gypsy Joker Motorcycle Club (GJMC) is a "one-percenter" motorcycle club that was originally formed in San Bernardino, California on April Fool's Day, 1956. Though founded in the United States, the MC expanded successfully overseas and gained significant notoriety in Australia, the United States, and Norway.

The 2010 Portland car bomb plot involved an incident in which Mohamed Osman Mohamud, a Somali-American student, was arrested in an FBI sting operation on November 26, 2010, after attempting to set off what he thought was a car bomb at a Christmas tree lighting in Portland, Oregon. He was charged with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction. An attorney for Mohamud argued that his client was entrapped. On January 31, 2013, a jury found Mohamud guilty of the single charge against him. He was scheduled to be sentenced on December 18, 2013, however the sentencing was cancelled in anticipation of the filing of new motions by the defense. In September 2014, Mohamud was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison with credit for time served, as well as lifetime supervision upon release in 2040.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Speedway bombings</span> Series of bombings in the United States

The Speedway bombings were a series of eight random bombings that occurred between September 1, 1978 and September 6, 1978, in Speedway, Indiana, United States. In four separate trials, drug dealer Brett Kimberlin was convicted of multiple charges related to the bombings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Boston Marathon bombing</span> 2013 domestic terrorist attack in Boston, Massachusetts

The Boston Marathon bombing, sometimes referred to as simply the Boston bombing, was an Islamist domestic terrorist attack that took place during the annual Boston Marathon on April 15, 2013. Brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev planted two homemade pressure cooker bombs that detonated near the finish line of the race 14 seconds and 210 yards (190 m) apart. Three people were killed and hundreds injured, including 17 who lost their limbs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dzhokhar Tsarnaev</span> Boston Marathon bomber (born 1993)

Dzhokhar "Jahar" Anzorovich Tsarnaev is a Russian terrorist of Chechen and Avar descent who perpetrated the Boston Marathon bombing. On April 15, 2013, Tsarnaev and his older brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, planted pressure cooker bombs near the finish line of the Boston Marathon. The bombs detonated, killing three people and injuring 264 others.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ben Boloff</span> Communist prisoner in Oregon

Ben Boloff was a Soviet Russian communist who resided in Portland, Oregon. An illiterate Jewish laborer, Boloff was arrested in 1930 under Oregon's criminal syndicalism statute, which made it illegal to be associated with communist or anarchist groups. Boloff was the first person to be tried under the statute since its implementation during the First Red Scare. He was arrested with 12 other suspected communists, but was the only one to be sentenced to prison.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge</span> Armed occupation of a US federal protected area in Oregon in 2016

On January 2, 2016, an armed group of Right-wing militants seized and occupied the headquarters of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Harney County, Oregon, and continued to occupy it until law enforcement made a final arrest on February 11, 2016. Their leader was Ammon Bundy, who participated in the 2014 Bundy standoff at his father's Nevada ranch. Other members of the group were loosely affiliated with non-governmental militias and the sovereign citizen movement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Two Rivers Correctional Institution</span> State prison in Umatilla, Oregon, US

The Two Rivers Correctional Institution is a state prison for men located in Umatilla, Umatilla County, Oregon on the Columbia River, owned and operated by the Oregon Department of Corrections.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2017 Portland train attack</span> Racially-motivated harassment and stabbing on a train in Portland, Oregon

On May 26, 2017, Jeremy Joseph Christian fatally stabbed two men and injured a third after he was confronted for shouting racist and anti-Muslim slurs at two black teenagers, Destinee Mangum and Walia Mohamed, on a MAX Light Rail train in Portland, Oregon. Two of the victims, Ricky John Best of Happy Valley and Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche of Portland, were killed; the third victim, Micah David-Cole Fletcher, survived with serious wounds.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leathers Oil Company murders</span>

The Leathers Oil Company murders refers to an unsolved mass murder that occurred in Gresham, Oregon, United States, on January 17, 1994. The victims were Virginia Kay Endecott ; Rosealie Fey-Girtz ; and Mary Beth Carey, each of whom were employed at the Leathers Oil Company gas station. Their bodies were discovered in a storage room on the premises, each having been shot to death. The station was also robbed of approximately US$9,000.

Robert Douglas Delgado was an American man living in Portland, Oregon, when he was shot and killed by Portland Police Bureau officer Zachary DeLong after spending a night in Lents Park.

References

  1. ↑ "Woodburn Bombing: Timeline of Events". Associated Press. December 17, 2008. Retrieved December 13, 2015.
  2. 1 2 Jung, Helen (September 30, 2010). "Bank employee testifies about getting bomb call in Turnidge trial". The Oregonian. Retrieved December 13, 2015.
  3. 1 2 Barnard, Jeff (October 1, 2010). "Policeman tearfully describes carnage of blast". Washington Post. Retrieved December 13, 2015.
  4. 1 2 Lynn, Capi (December 11, 2013). "Turnidge case closed, but not forgotten". Statesman Journal. Salem, Oregon . Retrieved December 13, 2015.
  5. ↑ Barnard, Jeff (November 10, 2010). "Bruce Turnidge, Josh Turnidge Trial: Bank-Bombing Case Exposes Anti-Government Sentiments". Huffington Post. Retrieved December 13, 2015.
  6. ↑ Jung, Helen (January 22, 2011). "Bruce and Joshua Turnidge stayed together through fights and failures – and now will be together on death row". The Oregonian. Retrieved December 13, 2015.
  7. ↑ KGW staff. "Turnidge friend details bank bomb plans back to 1995". KGW-TV. Portland, Oregon. Retrieved December 13, 2015.
  8. 1 2 Jung, Helen (December 8, 2010). "Woodburn bank bombing jury now decides whether to sentence Bruce and Joshua Turnidge to death". The Oregonian. Retrieved December 13, 2015.
  9. ↑ Jabali-Nash, Naimah (January 25, 2011). "Ore. Judge Imposes Death Sentences for Father, Son in 2008 Bank Bombing That Killed Two Officers". CBS News. Retrieved December 13, 2015.
  10. ↑ Barchenger, Stacey (January 6, 2011). "Video: Turnidge jurors discuss death-penalty trial". Statesman Journal. Salem, Oregon . Retrieved December 13, 2015.
  11. ↑ Bailey, Everton Jr. (May 5 2016, Updated Jan 09, 2019) Death sentences of Woodburn bank bombers upheld by Oregon Supreme Court. The Oregonian. Retrieved October 7, 2019.
  12. ↑ Borrud, Hillary (December 13, 2022). "Gov. Kate Brown commutes sentences of all 17 people on Oregon's death row". Oregon Live . Retrieved December 14, 2022.
  13. ↑ Sickinger, Ted (May 27, 2015). "Woodburn Police Chief Scott Russell, victim in the 2008 bank bombing, to retire July 1". The Oregonian. Retrieved December 13, 2015.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.