From: pfrankli@well.sf.ca.us (Paul Franklin)
Subject: urgent appeal-unjust extradition
Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link
Distribution: usa
Date: Thu, 17 Dec 1992 01:05:34 GMT


Date: December 11, 1992
Place: Public Forum, Louden Nelson Center, Santa Cruz, California.

     The following information is excerpted from a presentation after
     the break that followed 1.5 hours of lecture from radio
     personality and historian Dave Emery, speaking on Nazism and
     Fascism.

     With whatever energy you have left to support our country's
     disintegrating democracy, I implore you to read this and act on
     it.

Virginia McCullough: ... If any of you care about the fact that the state
of California has an obligation to protect key witnesses in criminal
investigations, then contact John Gordnier (916/324-5169, FAX 324-5205) at
the State Attorney General's office, Gene Gilbert (619/863-8468, FAX 863-
8761) of the Riverside D.A.'s office, Tom Gates at the F.B.I. Los Angeles
division, 310 area code.  You tell them you want this lady and her family
protected.  She's willing to appear at every court hearing, here in Napa.
She's not willing to go back to Mason County, Washington, where she
testified before sitting sheriffs.  She wants her children (who are) in
Washington to have the opportunity for a hearing and their own attorney,
that's all she's asking.  She's spoken to them daily since they were taken
from her, and they are asking for their own attorney.  Their father is
saying that they're not entitled.

Bobbi Riconosciuto: He told them several things, but that's kind of
irrelevant, I don't want to get into a lot of that.  I promised my children
that I would review anything that I was going to say to the press about
them specifically, other than possibly an amusing anecdote.  I don't have
any amusing ones because my heart hurts from the stress of this ... my
kids.  It's true, the State of California, Department of Justice, offered
us protection, my children and I, in 1986.  We declined to be a part of the
witness protection program when several of the witnesses were killed - they
were part of the protection program.  Given Michael's background, he was
more than capable of protecting the children and I from whatever.  Now the
problem we've had all along, my children were, because of their life with
their dad, they were aware of some things as well, they disclosed through
therapists and what not, that was used to indict cops in Washington State.
These people don't like us very well.  They're using the same groups of
people now to keep a tight reign on my kids since they've been up there.
There haven't been any overt threats, and they were told if they would go
with him, without a fight, that they could come back to California and live
with me and that I wouldn't be tried in Washington, that it would go away,
if they would just spend a little time with him.  As soon as they got up
there, and as a matter of fact while I was at a hearing recently, last
week, they filed court papers that I'm not allowed to have a copy of, a
judge signed an order that I'm not allowed to hear.  The only reason that I
know what some of the papers say is because my children read them before
their dad got home from work.  Basically, what they want to do is they want
to put me away up there.  Well, I wont last a month, I'm tellin' ya,
because the people that I testified against, the same people who beat me to
a pulp in 1986, and told me 'Michael can't help you now' over and over
again until I couldn't hear anymore, are in the jail that they're going to
put me in.  Some of them are the correctional officers and some are
prisoners for other related derelict activity.  It's not a safe place for
my kids, it's not a safe place for me, and I don't have anybody to watch
this child if they extradite me.  We don't have any money anymore, they
took it all.  They took everything.  What I know for sure is that the
rights that I thought I still had, that I thought Michael had, that I
thought Danny had, we don't have anymore.  The reason that people like
Danny are shut up quicker, I think, Danny was very much, couldn't be put
down for any reason.  One of the last things that Danny Casolaro did for me
and my children was to tell anybody and everybody that we lived in Utah,
when he knew that we didn't, because I talked to him five hours a day until
the weekend that he left for Martinsburg and never came back.  He pushed
some buttons that we would have preferred him to push much quieter, but he
knew what was out there, he knew what the possibilities were.  He thought,
just like Michael thought, he didn't expect to be able to handle what came
down on him, he didn't expect not to be able to protect us.  With Michael,
just because of his position, there are stages: 'ready to be quiet now?'
'No.'  What's the point now?  I've been the carrot in Michael's life - the
children and I were the carrot - 'If you're a good boy and you disavow
everything that you told Congress and say that you made it up, we might let
you see them before your daughter's (muffled) and gone - we *might* let
you.  If you don't, we'll let you see how much you want to talk about it
now,' and that's what they told Michael the day I was arrested.  'Do you
still want to go before a Grand Jury?  You still want to talk about it?'
Michael, being who he is, in our household, and with our children, tore up
the papers I had just sent him as documentation, copies by the way, and
said 'I don't want to talk anymore.  I don't want to talk to the Grand
Jury.  Send me back to Terminal Island for 30 years.  I refuse to talk to
anybody until this extradition is not over her head anymore, and those
children are safe once again.'

Dave Emery: ...

Virginia: ... Thank you for listening, because I think that each and every
one of you that has access to the non-controlled media, the computer
network media, needs to get this out on the computer network.  Bobbi does
need one more thing.  There are papers that were filed against her 11/23/92
in Mason County, Washington.  They read Steven Peterson versus Roberta
(muffled).  She has not been given the papers, copies of those papers, her
children have not been given copies of those papers, we cannot get copies
of those papers from the Mason County clerk who signed accepting service
for Bobbi Riconosciuto in 1987.  Here name is Ginger Brooks, by all
means...

Bobbi: Give her a call.

Virginia: ... One of the good old girls, remember her well, and anybody who
has access

Bobbi: She actually signed my warrant.

Virginia: Anybody who knows Ginger Brooks or can get copies of those papers
filed 11/23/92, my telephone number 510/862-2362, my FAX is 862-0145.  I
would kiss your feet if you would just FAX me a copy of those papers.

Where is she at?

Bobbi: Shelton, Washington.

Virginia: Ginger Brooks, clerk of the superior court, under Judge Shawyer.
Judge Shawyer has direct conflicts of interest in this case.  The other
judge newly appointed to the bench, Toni Sheldon, she has direct conflicts
of interest in this case, as does the attorney representing her ex-husband,
Steven Peterson, Jeanette Boothe.  Jeannette Booth was also Bobbi
Riconosciuto's attorney...

Bobbi: and my parent's attorney

Virginia: This is the situation in justice, in the state of Washington, in
Mason County.

Bobbi: It's a good Microcosm of what goes on in this country and what's
possible...

     The right thing to do is never the easiest thing to do.  The
     moral, ethical, and most compassionate imperative from within
     your heart may in fact be the most difficult.  To be informed is
     important, to tell others is even more important, but without
     tangible action, our efforts are meaningless.

     Paul Franklin
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