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Bomb scare suspect ordered detained
YOUNGSTOWN
A U.S. magistrate has ordered a Burghill man to remain detained without bond until his trial on a federal charge of extortion with threat of death via the U.S. mail against Atty. David Betras.
U.S. Magistrate George J. Limbert on Monday also bound the case over to a federal grand jury.
Limbert ordered that Charles J. Reighard, 67, of state Route 7, remain locked up on the charge that Reighard mailed three threatening letters to Betras between Sept. 4 and Oct. 20.
Betras is Mahoning County Democratic Party chairman and Reighard’s former lawyer.
“My big concern is that this could have been a graduated issue,” with Reighard possibly eventually producing a functioning pipe bomb, Limbert said.
“I find he is a danger to the community,” Limbert said of Reighard, who appeared in court in the orange uniform of the Northeast Ohio Correctional Center, where he is being held.
“This defendant may be likely to make good on the threats,” Justin Seabury Gould, the assistant U.S. attorney prosecuting the case, told the magistrate.
In support of his argument, Gould elicited testimony from FBI Agent Matthew M. Hartmann concerning the contents of the letters, an Oct. 16 bomb scare at Betras’ office and the results of a search at Reighard’s residence.
The testimony closely paralleled Hartmann’s affidavit accompanying the complaint, which says the letters demanded money in exchange for not killing Betras or his family. One of the letters demanded $4 million from Betras, the FBI agent said.
In his unsuccessful argument that Reighard be placed on electronically monitored house arrest, Timothy C. Ivey, a federal public defender from Cleveland, said Reighard has no criminal convictions for acts of violence or for exploding bombs, and he also suffers from a multitude of health problems.
Reighard’s wife, June, testified her husband suffers from high blood pressure, diabetes and a kidney ailment and has undergone heart-bypass surgery. He has never threatened or inflicted violence against her during their 43-year marriage, she said.
On Oct. 16, an employee of Betras, Kopp & Harshman LLC arrived to find a second-floor window of the Canfield law office broken and a pipe bomb beneath it, which bomb-squad technicians determined was complete except for the explosive powder.
When they executed a search warrant at Reighard’s home and arrested him on state charges Oct. 23, Mahoning County deputy sheriffs said they found an unopened package of 3 mm safety fuse, 10 feet in length, several pieces of galvanized metal pipe and a typed draft of a letter in a trash can with Betras’ and Reighard’s names on it.
Betras represented Reighard, who was charged in 1999 with vandalism over allegations he caused new cars to catch fire by deliberately driving a car into them at the General Motors plant in Lordstown, where he was employed.
Betras negotiated a deal in which Reighard pleaded guilty to telecommunications harassment and was put on five years’ probation.
Reighard claimed Betras, the prosecutor and the judge conspired to get him fired from GM and “ruin his life,” according to the FBI agent’s affidavit.