Tag: Vermont

A Teen Entrepreneur Pays Dearly for Fraud
(“Over and Out,” Forensic Files)

Many a duped consumer has thought for a moment or two about sending a bomb to the culprit on the other end of the transaction.

A 35-year-old Indiana truck driver named Chris Dean distinguished himself by actually doing it.

It’s a particularly sad case because the dishonest seller, also named Chris, was only a teenager.

Forensic Files told the story of the clash of the Chrises in “Over and Out.” It’s a Greek tragedy spanning the internet, surface mail, and citizens band radio.

He’s with the band. For this week, I looked around for an epilogue for the bomber. But first here’s a recap of the episode along with information from internet research:

Chris Marquis bought and sold CB radios and parts over the internet.

Although Forensic Files depicts him as an obscure hobbyist with a devious streak, the Vermont native actually had established himself as a widely known and reviled entrepreneur among CB radio enthusiasts.

To inflate his image, Marquis portrayed himself as a married 27-year-old dad with a retail shop called the CB Shack, according to an investigative piece that appeared in Wired magazine six months after the bombing.

None-too-endearing. In reality, Marquis was 17, single, and childless and he ran the CB Shack online out of his bedroom in his mother’s house — there was no store.

The tall, blond teenager wasn’t as much of a loner as Forensic Files hints, however. He managed to score a serious girlfriend who was a year ahead of him in school.

Marquis acquired his bad reputation as a CB enthusiast by making obnoxious comments to people on CB radio networks.

And he got his ill repute as a business owner by routinely misrepresenting the merchandise he sold and traded.

UPS had already received a number of complaints about Marquis from customers who said he cheated them.

No second chance. He might very well have been scared straight if the shipping giant had tipped off U.S. government authorities about the fraudulent interstate commerce and the feds showed up at his mother’s house in Fair Haven, a town of fewer than 3,000 residents.

A bit of a grifter herself, Sheila Rockwell was very close to her son, sometimes working with him as a DJ at events, and the two engaged in a little mother-son shoplifting from time to time, according to the Burlington Free Press and Wired.

Nonetheless, having FBI agents materialize on her doorstep would have in all likelihood made Rockwell flip out and beat up on her son about using her house, the mail, and the internet to defraud people across state lines.

But no intervention ever happened, and Marquis never had a chance to repent and reform.

Fateful day. On March 19, 1998, UPS delivered a package for him with a return address he didn’t recognize, a Samantha Brown from Bucyrus, Ohio.

When he opened it, a pipe bomb exploded, severing his femoral artery. His mother, who had just handed him the box, lost several fingers and part of one knee.

Police heard the explosion and saw smoke (Rockwell’s house sat right behind the municipal building) and ran inside the residence.

They saw huge craters in the floor and ceiling and found the mother and son still alive.

She survived, but he soon bled to death.

Aggressive manhunt. The murder was colossal news for a town with three police officers in a state known for public safety, and Rockwell didn’t have to wait long to win justice for Marquis, who was her youngest child (his father died before he was born).

The FBI and ATF joined the hunt for the bomber, and investigators quickly zeroed in on Chris Dean.

The trucker had told friends about being cheated out of a $400 ham radio in an online deal. Dean had repeatedly contacted Marquis to complain but got no answer.

Files never die. The house in Pierceton, Indiana, that Dean shared with his wife held a cache of incriminating evidence, including the types of hex nuts, wires, and pipes used in the bomb.

A package of 9-volt batteries in Dean’s drawer had the same lot number as the mangled one found at the crime scene.

Dean, who apparently didn’t watch Forensic Files often enough, thought he had permanently erased a computer file with the CB Shack’s address and the fake “Samantha Brown” return address used on the package with the bomb.

Police retrieved that file as well as information Dean had downloaded about how to create an explosive device.

Hazard in the air. The package with the bomb had been mailed from a UPS store in Mansfield, Ohio. Sprint North Supply, the product-distribution company Dean worked for, confirmed that Dean was in Mansfield on the day it was sent.

To top it off, one of Dean’s buddies told authorities that Dean said he “was going to send the guy [Marquis] a package in the mail and boy is he going to be surprised,” the Washington Post reported on March 21, 1998.

U.S. Marshals transported Dean to Burlington, Vermont, where Federal District Court Judge William Sessions charged him with offenses including murder and “sending an explosive device on an airplane, knowing it could endanger the safety of the aircraft,” the New York Times reported on April 5, 2000.

A mother’s mercy. To avoid capital punishment, Dean pleaded guilty to first-degree murder. He also met with Sheila Rockwell one on one and apologized for killing her son.

Rockwell said that while she couldn’t forgive Dean, she didn’t want to see him get the death penalty either.

As far as why Dean, who had no prior criminal record, committed capital murder over a $400 fraud, it may have been a case of a tightly wound guy stewing until he snapped. Dean had some compulsive traits, according to the Wired story by writer Scott Kirsner:

“Dean was obsessively neat. Neighbors remember him constantly washing his cars—a Corvette and a Blazer. Joe Stump, his landlord, recalls that Dean kept his lawn buzzed down practically to AstroTurf length. ‘And the house was always spotless inside,’ Stump adds.”

Last message. A judge gave Dean life in jail without parole after federal prosecutors alleged that he had threatened to kill witnesses and hatched a plan to break out of St. Albans jail. They also pointed out that “it will be just as easy for Dean to construct a [bomb] at age 70 as it was at 35,″ the AP reported in 2000.

The judge also ordered Dean to pay Rockwell $50,000, although the Burlington Free Press noted that it was unclear whether Dean was able to come up with the money.

He mouthed “I love you” to his wife, Diane, as he was led out of the courtroom.

Defense never rests. But just because Dean pleaded guilty didn’t mean that he accepted his punishment. Early on, he trotted out complaints about having an unhappy childhood.

That didn’t get him anywhere.

In 2006, he argued that a U.S. Supreme Court decision that said federal sentencing guidelines weren’t mandatory should apply to his case.

A federal magistrate in Vermont ruled against him.

Today, Dean resides in Hazelton, a high-security federal penitentiary in Bruceton Mills, West Virginia.

Hazelton is a rough place. In April 2018, an inmate died after a fight with a fellow prisoner.

The Bureau of Prisons website notes that all visiting at Hazelton has been suspended; it doesn’t provide a reason or an end date.

CB radios remain. On the bright side for Dean, the institution seems to have a menu of commissary items priced far more reasonably than the $5 cans of Coke the Orange Is the New Black ladies complain about.

The list includes cinnamon raisin bagels for 55 cents each, a pizza kit for $3.40, and an entire six-pack of Pepsi (no Coke) for $3.30.

By the way, if you’re curious about the state of the CB radio in the age of GPS and smartphones, you can check out a piece in BND.com.

That’s all for this week. Until next time, cheers. — RR