In tapes, 2 Manns talk about guns, files

— Jurors in the federal trial of Dr. Randeep Mann and his wife, Sangeeta “Sue” Mann, spent much of Thursday listening to some of his telephone calls to her while he was initially jailed on grenade-possession charges.

Prosecutors contend that the calls, which the Manns knew were being recorded, prove that the couple conspired to hide evidence as federal agents investigated his potential involvement in a bombing that occurred a month before 98 grenades were found buried near their London home in Pope County.

Defense attorneys say the Manns were simply discussing private business matters.

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http://www.arkansas…">Doctor bombing

At the time of the calls, Randeep Mann, now 52, hadn’t been charged in the Feb. 4, 2009, bombing in the West Memphis driveway of Dr. Trent Pierce, chairman of the Arkansas State Medical Board. Pierce was blinded in one eye and suffered other severe injuries in the blast.

Before the bombing, Mann had tried unsuccessfully several times to get the board to reinstate his authority to dispense controlled substances. The board had revoked that authority in 2006.

Without the authority to prescribe narcotics, the pain-management specialist saw his income drop substantially.

In the month or so before the bombing, Mann had discovered that the board was looking into a new allegation that he had dispensed narcotics despite being forbidden to do so - an allegation that could cost him his medical license.

Sangeeta Mann, 49, was charged in August with conspiring to obstruct justice and lying to a federal grand jury. In January, an updated grand jury indictment added the most serious allegations in the case - that Randeep Mann orchestrated the Pierce bombing.

In addition to hearing snippets of recorded calls between the Manns, jurors on Thursday saw photographs of the Manns going into and out of a storage facility in Russellville in the days before and after the bombing. The storage unit had been rented in the name of Randeep Mann’s brother, Sandip Mann, with a home address in Germantown, Tenn., although Sandip Mann was deported to India in 2002.

Records from the storage facility indicated that Sandip Mann was employed at Randeep Mann’s Russellville clinic, the Skyline Medical Clinic, located about eight miles from the Manns’ home on Lake Dardanelle.

The first of several calls that jurors heard, aided by a written transcript shown on court video screens, was made from the Pulaski County jail.

In a call to his wife on the night of March 6, 2009, the day after he was arrested on charges of possessing grenades and a few illegal weapons among hundreds he legally owned, Randeep Mann referred to the “Sunny stuff,” telling her, “Just take it out of my drawer.”

“Where do I put it?” she asked.

“Give it to Tim or Riley,” he instructed her, referring to two friends, one of whom reluctantly testified against him Wednesday. The friend said he had held a packet of papers for Sangeeta Mann overnight, at her request, after Randeep Mann’s arrest.

Defense attorneys have said “Sunny” was Sandip Mann’s nickname and that after Sandip was deported, the Manns adopted his son so that the son could stay in school in America.

Sangeeta Mann’s attorney, Tim Dudley of Little Rock, told jurors that the Manns sounded secretive in the recordings only because they were trying to discuss personal business when they knew others might be listening.

In the calls, Mann regularly called his wife “Bunny” and “My Bunny,” and she called him “Honey.” They discussed a pending search of his clinic, and he asked her to get papers from his clinic office and “put them in the gun room” at their home, which had already been searched.

He also expressed anger and frustration that “three of my guns have f****** problems,” meaning they hadn’t been registered.

Mann is accused of illegally having two guns that, according to the recordings, he didn’t think he was required to have licensed until he sold them to someone else. He wasn’t charged in connection with a third gun that it turned out was registered to someone else.

In one conversation, Mann talked to his wife about “disposing of everything” and told her, “Get Mom and Dad involved. You can’t do it alone.”

John Norris, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agent in charge of the investigation, acknowledged under cross examination that it’s possible the Manns were discussing liquidating their assets to hire attorneys. Norris agreed that another phone call between the couple, which jurors didn’t hear, clearly focused on that.

conspiring to hide those checks on an account set up to handle Sandip Mann’s affairs.

Randeep Mann implored his wife in several conversations to talk to friends of theirs about getting their “support.” The friends included a woman whose sister filed a complaint with the Medical Board that had led to the board’s most recent investigation of him. The complaint alleged that Mann gave narcotics to the woman, who was his friend and also an addict.

Still photographs, or “frame grabs,” from a videotape of activity at the Russellville storage unit showed Randeep Mann and a woman, possible Sangeeta Mann, entering the storage unit briefly on the evening of Feb. 2, 2009 - one night before the bomb was set in West Memphis. The video didn’t show what either person did inside the unit.

The video also captured Randeep Mann arriving at the unit by himself just before 1 a.m. on Feb. 5, 2009 - about 17 hours after the bombing - carrying in a suitcase and leaving without it moments later.

In a call made March 10, 2009, nearly five weeks after the bombing in which a spare Nissan tire was rigged with a hand grenade and left propped against Pierce’s car, Mann told his wife about items that agents took from his house while executing a search warrant.

“They took those nuts, those f****** nuts from the bloody Maxima - EJ’s Maxima,” he said, referring to the lug nuts on someone’s Nissan Maxima.

Other calls that jurors heard were recorded at the Dallas County jail in Fordyce, where Mann was housed with other federal prisoners.

In those calls, the couple discussed blank checks that he wanted her to get from his office. Prosecutors say the recording shows the Manns

The gray suitcase was seized in a search of the storage room on March 12. A label on the case identified it as belonging to Mann, with his address and phone number. Inside the suitcase, according to the testimony of Special Agent Stacie Rhoads with the Arkansas State Police, were videotapes.

The suitcase, taken into the courtroom, hasn’t been further discussed.

Prosecutors told U.S. District Judge Brian S. Miller, who is to resume the trial at 9 a.m. today in his Little Rock courtroom, that they expect to carry about 100 of Mann’s guns into the courtroom sometime today.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 07/23/2010

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