Who set tire bomb? Case isn’t closed yet

— Despite Monday’s conviction of Pope County physician Randeep Mann in a bombing last year that partially blinded the chairman of the Arkansas State Medical Board, a federal investigation into the bombing is continuing, authorities confirmed Tuesday.

The bombing on Feb. 4, 2009, occurred at 7:50 a.m. in the driveway of Dr. Trent Pierce’s West Memphis home when he picked up a grenade-rigged spare tire that someone had carefully propped against the bumper of his sport utility vehicle during the night.

Throughout Mann’s five-week trial, prosecutors have been careful to say that Mann orchestrated the bombing - not that he planted the bomb himself. His conviction Monday was for aiding and abetting the use of a weapon of mass destruction, for which he faces up to life in prison.

“There is still a person running loose who set that device,” Grover Crossland, resident agent in charge of the Little Rock field office of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the lead investigative agency in the bombing, said Tuesday.

“When we investigated this case, we determined that Dr. Mann did not actually set the device,” Crossland said. “He’s smarter than the average guy, and he made sure he had a good alibi.”

The records of a Russellville fitness center show that Mann and his wife were there until after 10 p.m. on Feb. 3, 2009.

In submitting the case to the U.S. attorney’s office for prosecution, Crossland said, “We said there is an unindicted co-conspirator. ... That means there is somebody out there that he conspired with - that either he hired or was a friend or whatever, we don’t know who - but that person is still out there.”

U.S. Attorney Jane Duke, who is forbidden by Justice Department rules from discussing ongoing investigations, simply said, “The theory of the prosecution’s case is that Dr. Mann solicited one or more other individuals to assist in the bombing of Dr. Pierce.”

During trial testimony, the identity of co-conspirators was only hinted at.

A woman who has cleaned house for Pierce and his wife,Melissa, for 25 years testified about driving past the Pierce house late the night before the bombing and seeing a man jogging in place near the driveway where the bomb was left.

The housekeeper described the jogger as wearing a short-sleeved shirt despite the cold weather, as well as jeans and a baseball cap. She said he wore his long, dark hair in a ponytail. She also said he “wasn’t black and he wasn’t white,” and looked like “one of those people that wear those little dots up there on their forehead,” implying that he may have been of Indian descent, like Mann.

Mann, 52, grew up in India but immigrated to the United States as an adult, becoming a U.S. citizen in 1986. His wife, Sangeeta “Sue” Mann, 49, is also a native of India and grew up in Boston. They married in 1983 and have four adult children, including a son they adopted from Mann’s younger brother, Sandip, who was deported to India in 2002 after his visa expired. They also haveanother son, Dan, and two daughters.

The housekeeper didn’t come forward with information on the mysterious jogger until about six months after the bombing, prompting defense attorney Tim Dudley to tell jurors in his closing argument that he believes that the account “never happened.”

But Crossland said Tuesday that he considered the woman “very believable.”

At first, he said, “she did not want to talk to us because she went home and told her son about it, and he said don’t get involved, they can’t protect you,” Crossland said.But, “after about six months, her conscience got to her.”

Asked in the courtroom if Mann was the person she saw, the housekeeper responded, “Who’s Mann?”

Then Randeep Mann stood up. She looked at him and quickly shook her head, saying the person she had seen that night - who refused to cross the street in front of her when she motioned for him to cross - was younger, maybe in his 30s or 40s.

“If she was going to lie,” Crossland said, “why didn’t she say she saw him set the device?”

Several days after the housekeeper testified, jurors heard from a man who was an inmate at the Pulaski County jail at the time Mann was awaiting trial. He testified that Mann complained to him that “Dan and them didn’t really do a good job”in setting the bomb.

The inmate, Steven Sean Briscoe, is from West Memphis and said he had less than a year left to serve on a conviction for being a felon in possession of a firearm and hadn’t been promised any help from the government for his testimony.

He said Mann offered him $50,000 cash if he would “finish off Pierce” when he got out of jail, before Pierce could testify against him. He also said Mann told him that “somebody named Dan” would get him the money, as well as a gun to shoot Pierce with, and asked him to make it look like a drive-by shooting.

Briscoe testified that he was only testifying because “I have a heart” and he wanted to help Pierce because he “is from my hometown - he’s my homeboy.”

On cross-examination, however, Briscoe acknowledged that he had previously volunteered to testify against at least three other inmates and was rewarded with sentence reductions.

Briscoe also acknowledged that he wouldn’t have been out of jail soon enough to prevent Pierce’s testimony even if he had agreed to the “offer.” And he admitted having written a letter to one of the prosecutors in the Mann case saying he was willing to testify against Mann “if the U.S. Attorney won’t forget about me after this trial is over and discard me like a used Kleenex.”

Briscoe testified that he was referring to receiving “protection from being killed,” but acknowledged that he also is seeking credit for a year served in the Crittenden County jail.

Last week a federal grand jury indicted another Pulaski County jail inmate, Hamis Alsharequi, 22, on a charge of tampering with a witness. Prosecutors say he attacked Briscoe in the jail yard with a metal object on July 22, six days before Briscoe’s testimony, “with the intent to influence and prevent” Briscoe from testifying in the Mann case.

Special section

Doctor bombing

Dr. Randeep Mann has been convicted of plotting a bombing attack that nearly killed the chairman of the Arkansas State Medical Board.

Mann guilty of bombing attack

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An ATF agent’s affidavit in support of an arrest warrant says Alsharequi approached “Individual 1” and said, “You are here to testify against my uncle, Dr. Randy Mann,” then swung a sock with a hard object, similar to a doorknob, striking the fellow inmate twice in the head and twice in the side.

Prosecutors say Alsharequi isn’t related to Mann.

Dan Mann, who is 21 and has short, dark hair, attended the trial only when the verdict was delivered, and began sobbing as the guilty verdicts were announced.

He wouldn’t comment afterward about the mention of the name “Dan” during the trial.

Prosecutors also suggested during the trial that a year before the bombing, Mann tried to target Pierce by e-mailing a photograph of the board chairman to Mann’s brother, Sandip, in India.

In an e-mail Tuesday from India, Sandip Mann told a reporter, “So he sent me a picture, but what do you expect that I can possibly do from India?”

Sandip Mann referred to other testimony in the trial from Serena Mann, Randeep Mann’s daughter, that the family often sends pictures of people who have power over family members’ lives, so that the entire family can pray for the person in the photograph to be strong and do the right thing.

At the time Randeep Mann sent the e-mail, he was trying to get the medical board to reinstate his prescription writing permit that it had revoked in response to overprescribing complaints.

“Yes, we prayed for him to be kind, understanding, impartial and to shun all animosity, and if that’s a crime, then we all are guilty!” Sandip Mann said Tuesday.

Crossland said he has no idea when the bombing case may be totally resolved.

He called Randeep Mann “an evil person and a coward” who covered his tracks well, and said unraveling the case so far has been like solving a “2,000-piece puzzle.”

Front Section, Pages 1 on 08/11/2010

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