Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, December 31, 1993                   TAG: 9312310173
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: ROCHESTER, N.Y.                                LENGTH: Medium

HIS MOUTH GOT HIM IN TROUBLE

Michael Stevens fancied himself a slick-talking salesman, yet he was nabbed and imprisoned for running a coupon scam - in part because he fecklessly confessed.

And when he masterminded the vengeful plot to kill his girlfriend's relatives, the scheme fell apart just hours after the bombings, because Stevens failed to realize the evidence would quickly point to him, authorities said.

"This guy was weird," said Michael West, a former district attorney who prosecuted Stevens in 1987 for the coupon and telemarketing scam.

Stevens, 53, and a friend, Earl Figley, 56, were charged in Tuesday's bombings. Authorities said six bombs were sent to relatives of Stevens' girlfriend, Brenda Lazore Chevere, throughout upstate New York.

Three bombs killed Chevere's mother and stepfather, Robert and Eleanor Fowler of West Valley south of Buffalo; a sister and her boyfriend in Rochester; and a co-worker of Robert Fowler's in the Buffalo suburb of Cheektowaga.

Another bomb injured Chevere's uncle, while two others intended for two more relatives were defused or detonated by police.

A law-enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the bombs apparently were sent to get back at Chevere's relatives, who wanted her to break up with him.

Stevens, of the Rochester suburb of Victor, and Chevere lived together and had a 2-year-old son, but the relationship was rocky, and Chevere was thinking about breaking it off, the official said.

Said Ron Sahr, a friend of Robert Fowler's: "Somehow he probably began to think that it was the family's fault he was having all these problems."

Figley apparently had a fierce devotion to Stevens, who persuaded him to buy 55 pounds of dynamite in Kentucky this past summer, bring it back to New York and help him make the bombs, authorities said.

Authorities have said Stevens and Figley met in prison, but West, the former Schoharie County prosecutor, said the two knew each other before that.

At his trial on the telemarketing charges, Stevens spent a day on the witness stand. With virtually no prodding from the prosecution, he confessed to bilking dozens of businesses that bought ads in a coupon book Stevens was selling by telephone, West said.

Stevens got caught in the scam because he began arguing with his partner in a motel lobby over who should keep their phony advertising contracts, West said.

Stevens served 20 months in a New York prison after rejecting a plea bargain that would have allowed him to serve a few months in a county jail, said Roger Mallery, the defense attorney in the case.

"He had his own ideas. He wouldn't listen to anybody," Mallery said. "When I heard about these bombings, I thought that he's probably telling himself he had a right to do it. He could justify anything he did. He believed whatever he did was right."

Keywords:
FATALITY