THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, March 1, 1996 TAG: 9603010458
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JOE JACKSON, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NEWPORT NEWS LENGTH: Long : 105 lines
A federal probe into violence at local abortion clinics is investigating whether three activists were involved in fires set last year in clinics in Newport News and Norfolk, abortion opponents said Thursday.
Witnesses called Wednesday before the grand jury were asked about fires at the Tidewater Women's Health Clinic, a Norfolk clinic that opened in April 1995, and at Peninsula Medical Center for Women in Newport News, several anti-abortion activists said. Officials at both clinics would not comment.
The witnesses were also asked about the activities of three local anti-abortion activists. The three were identified as Jennifer Patterson Sperle, a Norfolk woman who moved in June to Wichita, Kan.; Ed Hyatt, a Virginia Beach man who is a friend of Sperle's; and a man whose identity was not divulged by anti-abortionists.
On Thursday, Sperle denied any part in a local conspiracy but said she fully expected to go to jail. ``(U.S. Attorney General) Janet Reno has spent so much money that somebody has to go to jail,'' Sperle said in a phone interview.
``I've already made arrangements for my children,'' added Sperle, who said she is pregnant. ``It doesn't matter if you are innocent or guilty, somebody's going to jail - otherwise, it'll look like the government wasted money.''
Sperle and local abortion opponents have said they think the probe is an outgrowth of a 16-month grand jury investigation in Alexandria into abortion clinic violence. That investigation ended in January with no evidence of a national conspiracy to target clinics and no indictments.
``The whole point is to try to prove a local conspiracy,'' said Donald Spitz, head of the Chesapeake-based Pro-Life Virginia. Sperle, Hyatt and the four witnesses have all been members of Spitz's group or of Life Ministries, a companion group headed by David Crane of Norfolk.
Two of the four witnesses called before the grand jury were jailed after refusing to testify about Sperle, Hyatt and the third person. The two - Rae Powell and Carol McAdoo - were granted immunity but would not answer every question, Spitz said. The other two witnesses answered questions and left, he said.
Powell and McAdoo are being held in Western Tidewater Regional Jail in Suffolk and could stay there until they decide to testify, family members said. The grand jury is expected to last through late April, they said.
Powell and McAdoo could not be reached for comment.
``It was a matter of conscience,'' Spitz said Thursday. ``The names of Sperle and the two others kept coming up. They (Powell and McAdoo) felt that to cooperate with this grand jury would be to help abortionists and child killers. They felt that cooperation meant putting other anti-abortionists in jail.''
Justice Department officials have declined to comment on the investigation or to say how long it might last. Because grand jury proceedings are secret, federal officials would not comment on why the two women were jailed.
Spitz and Crane were among 30 people who signed a petition declaring that violence against clinic personnel is justified as a ``defensive action'' to protect the unborn. In December 1994, Crane was also picketing Norfolk's Hillcrest clinic minutes before John C. Salvi III allegedly fired into the building. Salvi had driven to Norfolk after, prosecutors say, he killed two clinic workers in Massachusetts.
Police and fire records show three calls last year to Norfolk's Tidewater Women's Health Clinic in Norfolk Square. A month or a month and a half before the clinic opened in April, someone threw a firebomb through a window, resulting in about $500 damage, police spokesman Larry Hill said Thursday.
In the early morning of June 10, arson investigators were called to the clinic when a security guard discovered a gas can, which later proved to be empty, in the parking lot, fire officials said. The next day, clinic workers reported smoke, but firefighters did not find anything when they arrived.
Larry McAdoo - husband of the jailed Carol McAdoo - said his wife was also asked about a fire last year at the Newport News clinic. Newport News fire officials and employees of the Peninsula Medical Center for Women on Jefferson Avenue would not give further details.
``The federal government has given me no notification that they put my wife in jail, or even admitted where they put her,'' Larry McAdoo said Thursday. ``I only found out because my son was there with her. I only found where she was by calling around various holding facilities in the area.
``I'm very upset,'' Larry McAdoo said. ``I've been told I won't get to see my wife for several days.''
Powell's subpoena ordered her to bring any copies she had of an underground manual, known as the Army of God Manual. Authorities have called the manual a handbook for anti-abortion radicals filled with detailed accounts of how to disrupt activities at abortion clinics.
Spitz and other local anti-abortionists have said they have seen the manual, but would not comment on whether it has been distributed locally.
Powell's subpoena also told her to bring any correspondence from people convicted of abortion clinic violence and to bring correspondence from Sperle, who said she moved to Wichita on June 23.
Sperle, a former member of Crane's group, was a ``sidewalk counselor'' who protested weekly at Hillcrest, Tidewater Women's Health Clinic and Peninsula Medical Center for Women, she said Thursday.
``I've been targeted just because I was vocal and effective,'' she said. ``I went to the clinics on a regular basis three days a week.''
Sperle, 23, said her protests outside the clinics were always peaceful. One day after Salvi's arrest, however, Sperle was protesting outside Hillcrest when she told The Boston Globe that she supported Salvi if he used force to protect the unborn.
``I feel he (Salvi) was trying to defend those who cannot defend themselves,'' she said then. ``It was justified.''
KEYWORDS: ABORTION CLINIC by CNB