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Original story here: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ht...aded_to_prison_for_belle.html?syndication=rss
Former Kirkland man headed to prison for Cold War weapons cache
Posted by John de Leon
-- From Times staff reporter Ian Ith:
To everyone who knew him, Ronald Struve was not the kind of man who would one day be arrested by federal agents and, at age 67, be sent off to prison for four years on weapons charges.
He was the jovial bachelor uncle, the eccentric, introverted pack-rat who loved his pet birds and fed the wild critters who came to his back porch. For four decades, he went to work every day as a court stenographer, and even shared a rental house with a King County sheriff's deputy for awhile.
But during the decades of the Cold War, Struve also sincerely believed that it was only a matter of time before the Soviets or the Red Chinese came storming onto American soil to conquer our way of life. So quietly, Struve collected an arsenal and stuck it away in rented storage lockers in Bellevue and Spokane: grenade launchers, dozens of grenades and machine guns, plastic explosives, silencers, blasting caps and detonator cord.
The Cold War ended, of course, and Struve quit worrying so much. But he just couldn't bear to part with his collection.
Then one day he failed to pay the bill on the Bellevue locker. Someone bought the contents at auction. Struve's secret was out.
This morning in Seattle, U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman sentenced Struve to 48 months in prison, three years of probation and mental health counseling, saying, "The bottom line is people simply should not have these things and that's why we have laws against them."
"Your collections have put other people at risk for decades," she said.
Struve <broken link removed> in March to one count of possessing plastic explosives and four counts of possessing unregistered firearms. In return, the government dropped more than 100 other counts against him.
When agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms first searched the Bellevue locker in November, 2008, one veteran agent said, "In all my years, I've never seen this sort of firepower in one place."
They tallied two grenade launchers, fifty-four grenades, six big blocks of C4 plastic explosive, 37 machine guns from the Vietnam-War era, among other weapons. One of the grenades had been "dud-fired," meaning someone had pulled the pin and it could potentially still go off with a mere jiggle. Many of the items turned out to be stolen from the military long ago.
The agents also found more weapons in a locker Struve rented in Spokane. When they arrested Struve at his Spokane home, they said he told them he might use the weapons "some day," against "the enemy."
Prosecutors asked for a 63-month sentence this morning. Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Woods said in court papers that Struve's arsenal "to say the least, was capable of inflicting deadly force on a devastating scale."
What if there had been an earthquake or a fire, Woods wondered. What if the person who bought the locker's contents at auction had been a little rougher when moving all the boxes home? What if a criminal had broken in and stolen the stuff?
"The scope of the arsenal in this case was simply breathtaking," Woods said. "Quite simply, this was one of the largest arsenals for one person in this region's history."
But Struve said he never meant to hurt anyone.
In a letter to the judge, Struve said he started collecting weapons on the black market in the 1960s, while the Vietnam War raged. "As a young man, I became an anticommunist and that influenced my thoughts and beliefs," he wrote. "I thought there was a strong possibility we (the U.S.) would be attacked by the Russians/Red Chinese."
But as the years went by, Struve said, he has been "modifying and tempering my beliefs and thoughts about world events and politics in general."
Even so, he was devoted to his collection, and figured it might be worth something, he wrote. He tried to keep the weapons safe, he said. And he emphasized that he never fired any of them.
"I am not a violent person and have never knowingly hurt another person," he wrote.
And his family and friends eagerly backed that up.
His nieces and nephews recalled "Uncle Ronnie," the guy who showed up for every family get-together, the guy whose habit of collecting everything from old magazines to war paraphernalia to pet birds was endearing, not worrying.
"He is a bit eccentric, but harmless," his niece, Tanya Fresquez of Las Vegas, wrote to the judge. "I beg of you to see that he is harmless."
And his former roommate, retired sheriff's captain James O'Brien, recounted that when the two shared a house in Kirkland many years ago, the raccoons and squirrels made a nightly pilgrimage to their backdoor for Struve's handouts.
"Ron has always been a quiet, friendly and caring person, close to his family in California," O'Brien wrote. "Ron is a good person who had made some bad choices."
Copyright © 2009 The Seattle Times Company
