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Brett Kimberlin (born 1954) is best known as the perpetrator of the Speedway bombings in 1978. Since his release from prison, Kimberlin has co-founded the non-profit Justice Through Music Project and the activist organization Velvet Revolution. He has also been involved in various legal disputes. == Criminal convictions == Shortly after graduating from high school, Kimberlin was convicted in 1973 of felony perjury for lying to a grand jury investigating drug trafficking.〔 Kimberlin had been called before a grand jury investigating drug use at his high school and was convicted for testifying that he had not sold LSD.〔〔 Kimberlin served only 21 days of a one-year sentence on this charge.〔 By 1976, Kimberlin's drug business was grossing hundreds of thousands of dollars a month.〔Singer 1996, p. 57.〕 Kimberlin invested his free cash in such businesses as a retail health food store, a vegetarian restaurant, and an Earth shoe franchise.〔〔 However, Kimberlin became a suspect in the murder of Julia Scyphers, the mother of a friend/employee of his in Speedway, Indiana in 1978.〔〔Singer 1996, p. 58.〕〔 In the first six days of September 1978, a series of bombings struck Speedway. Initially there were no injuries; however, the last bombing led to the amputation of Vietnam veteran Carl DeLong's right leg, and left DeLong and his wife with several other injuries that required significant hospitalization and rehabilitation.〔 DeLong committed suicide in February 1983.〔 Investigators traced the Mark-Time timer and the Tovex 200 used in the bombings to Kimberlin, and he was placed under surveillance.〔〔〔Singer 1996, pp. 59-60.〕 The police believed that Kimberlin had conducted the Speedway bombings to divert attention from the murder investigation.〔 On September 20, 1978, Kimberlin was then arrested by the FBI for an entirely different charge—possession and illegal use of Department of Defense insignia, illegal use of the Seal of the President of the United States, and impersonation of a federal officer, after the FBI received a tip from a print shop owner. 〔〔〔Singer 1996, p. 60.〕 Between one and two weeks later, he was released although the charges were not dismissed. 〔〔 A few months later, on February 16, 1979, Kimberlin was at a makeshift airport in Texas to supervise the unloading of an airplane, when bad weather and low fuel led the airplane's crew to jettison a shipment of 10,000 pounds of marijuana from Colombia (in 50-pound bales) over a wide area of southeastern Texas so that the plane could land at a real airport.〔〔 Kimberlin was arrested a few hours later while trying to retrieve the bales.〔〔〔 In June 1980 Kimberlin was convicted in a Texas federal court of conspiracy to possess marijuana with intent to distribute and given a four-year sentence.〔〔 In a separate trial in November 1980, he was convicted of possession and illegal use of Department of Defense insignia, illegal use of the Seal of the President of the United States, and impersonation of a federal officer.〔〔〔 Finally, Kimberlin was convicted of the Speedway bombing in a trial that took 53 days and included 118 witnesses, and his sentences for all of his convictions were aggregated to a total sentence of 50 years.〔〔〔 Kimberlin was released on parole in February 1994 after serving 13 years, but his parole was revoked in 1997 for failure to pay the civil judgments against him, and he was returned to prison for four more years before his release in 2001.〔〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Brett Kimberlin」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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