Date:         Mon, 10 Oct 1994 12:30:44 EDT
From: PMDAtropos@aol.com

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Washington State Man Sentenced in Bombing of Seattle Gay Bar
By Paul Chavez, The Tacoma News Tribune, Wash.

 TACOMA, Wash.--Sep. 29--A 19-year-old Tacoma man was sentenced to 4 years
and 9 months in prison Wednesday for his role in the 1993 bombing of a
Seattle gay bar and for other explosives and weapons charges.

 Wayne Paul Wooten Jr. pleaded guilty in February to aiding and abetting
the July 22, 1993, bombing of the Elite Tavern in Seattle, said assistant
U.S. attorney Stephen Freccero.

 He was sentenced Wednesday in federal court in San Jose, Calif., by U.S.
District Court Judge James Ware.

 Wooten was arrested with Jeremiah Gordon Knesal, 20, of Auburn, on July
26, 1993 in Salinas, Calif. Both men were described by the FBI as skinhead
members of the neo-Nazi Church of the Creator.

 When Knesal and Wooten were taken into custody, police found explosives,
automatic weapons and white-supremacist literature in the trunk of their
car.

 Their arrests came shortly after the July 20, 1993, pipe-bombing of the
Tacoma NAACP meeting hall. The blast caused minor damages and no injuries.

 Authorities linked the two to a planned racist campaign that included the
bombing of the Tacoma NAACP office July 20.

 After the bombing, the three men drove to Portland. Wooten and Knesal
abandoned Kowalski in Portland. Kowalski was arrested in an Auburn, Wash.
apartment.

 The FBI said the bombing of the NAACP office was part of a plot designed
to ignite a race war. The plan was said to include bombing synagogues,
civil-rights organizations and military installations. Investigators said
in court documents there also were plans to attack rap singers Ice-T and
Ice Cube. After Wooten and Knesal were arrested, the FBI said it seized a
small arsenal of firearms and white-supremacist literature in the Auburn
apartment they share with Mark Kowalski.

 Knesal told authorities Kowalski, who was about 24, was the mastermind of
the plot to bomb the NAACP.

 A judge sentenced Kowalski on Jan. 21 to 11 years and eight months in
prison for his role in the Tacoma NAACP office bombing. Kowalski faced 30
years in prison but received the lesser sentence after undergoing a
jailhouse conversion to nonviolence.

 In a statement to the FBI, Knesal said he drove Mark Kowalski, 24, of
Auburn, to the NAACP office and cut the barbed wire fence surrounding the
meeting hall. Kowalski said Wooten participated as well.

 Knesal was sentenced in June to 6 1/2 years in prison for his role in the
NAACP bombing and for other explosives and weapons charges. He renounced
his racist views after his arrest.

 The July 22, 1993, gay-bar bombing was not believed to have been part of
the alleged conspiracy. Wooten was not charged in connection with the
explosion at the NAACP, according to prosecutors. Wooten could have faced
a maximum sentence of 15 years, Freccero said. Judge Ware had lowered the
range so the minimum Wooten could serve was 57 months and the maximum was
71 months.

 "I thought it was a fair sentence," Freccero said. He said the judge's
sentence was a serious punishment that still allowed Wooten a chance to
get out of prison a young man.

 He noted Wooten was the least involved of the charged members and was
never an open advocate of the white supremacy movement.

 "He certainly renounced any association with those ideas and expressed
remorse, " Freccero said. "I think that was a factor in the judge giving
him the sentence."