Pubdate: Thu, 06 Sep 2001
Source: Detroit Free Press (MI)
Copyright: 2001 Detroit Free Press
Contact:  http://www.freep.com/
Author:  Shawn Windsor, Free Press Staff Writer
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/125
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/af.htm (Asset Forfeiture)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?200 (Rainbow Farm Shooting)

PAIR SAW ONE ESCAPE: DEATH

Cornered By Cops, Men On Farm Feared Losing Land, Freedom.

He had no power and nothing to eat. He had no place to go -- his farm was 
surrounded by nearly 100 police, deputies and FBI agents, most of them 
hidden in the woods. On Sunday afternoon Grover Tom Crosslin left his stone 
house on Rainbow Farm and slipped through the trees.

He faced losing his campground to the state. He faced 20 years in prison 
for drug and weapons charges. And he'd already lost his partner's son, whom 
he helped raise. On a cell phone a day earlier, he told his lawyer, who was 
trying to get him to surrender, that "society consists of bad government.

You're going to be the only one left to tell the story."

He knew he would die, a determined if frustrated martyr in a campaign to 
legalize marijuana.

On Wednesday, Dori Leo, the lawyer for Crosslin, 47, and his longtime 
partner Rolland Rohm, 28, explained in a kind of suicide-note-by-lawyer why 
they decided they had no option of leaving the farm alive and provoked 
police into shooting them to death in separate but hauntingly similar 
incidents 13 hours apart.

According to the FBI, Crosslin reached a neighbor's house just before 5 
p.m. Monday. He broke in, took food and headed back, only to realize he'd 
forgotten a coffee pot.

So the owner of the marijuana advocacy campground headed back out. He was 
wearing camouflage and carrying a semiautomatic rifle. He'd already set 
fire to nine of the 10 buildings on the campsite, including the general 
store and coffee shop.

Only his and Rohm's homes weren't ash. As he approached the house, carrying 
the coffee pot and gun, he noticed an FBI agent.

He raised his gun.

The agent shot first. Crosslin collapsed into a campfire pit.

The next morning, his partner, Rohm, set fire to the house, walked away, 
saw a Michigan State trooper, raised his gun, and was shot the same way.

"I was stunned Rollie didn't make it," said Leo. "I knew what would happen 
to Tom after we talked. Tom was the defiant one. But Rollie was scared."

He was also, she said, a follower.

Still, before midnight on Sunday, she talked to Rohm on a cell from inside 
an FBI vehicle. The agents were standing outside.

Rohm asked what kind of time he faced.

"When he said that, I thought there was hope," she said.

But it started raining. Hard. The agents climbed back in the truck. She 
told Rohm they had company. And they'd talk in the morning.

"I remember lightning lit up the whole camp, and that was the first time I 
could see how many police were there," she said.

Then it grew dark.

On Wednesday, Cass County Sheriff's deputies, FBI agents and lab scene 
specialists, state fire investigators and Michigan state troopers picked 
through the rubble and soot, looking for clues. It was an odd vista, the 
bucolic, rolling, 34-acre campground full of charred buildings and 
vehicles, including a VW Bug.

"We made no effort to provoke," said John Bell, special agent in charge of 
Michigan's FBI.

Bell's team got involved when shots were fired at aircraft on Friday and 
Saturday. He'd been there since Sunday afternoon. His cleanup team found 
100 shell casings, a pipe bomb that burned but didn't explode, revolvers 
and long guns. They found no evidence of marijuana on the property. In May, 
police had found plants growing in the basement under artificial light.

Bell said they expected to be out of Rainbow late today.

"We want to find everything out we can about what happened," he said.

Two FBI agents shot at Crosslin, he said, and both are still working. The 
two state troopers who fired at Rohm are on administrative leave.

Both agencies are following their own protocol after an officer is involved 
in a shooting.

Officials involved and others say the shootings were reasonable but 
unfortunate, but others say their deaths are an example of a government 
that infringes on the rights of people.

"This has obviously shaken us a bit. People are horrified," said Keith 
Stroup, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of 
Marijuana Laws, a Washington, D.C.-based group fighting to legalize pot. "I 
think there is a growing awareness that in some parts of the country, 
offenses considered minor in most of the country are potentially lethal. 
Now we know one of those places is rural Michigan."

Leo, a former Cook County, Ill., prosecutor who talked in her Kalamazoo law 
office, wondered Wednesday why her clients had to die.

"Why can't we maim them? Or tranquilize them?" she asked.

Leo said she asked the Sheriff's Department on Friday afternoon to back off 
in the hopes Crosslin and Rohm would surrender -- a warrant had been issued 
that day because the two men failed to appear in court on drugs and weapons 
charges. Crosslin allegedly sponsored a concert at the campground last 
month in violation of the conditions of his bond.

Leo said the sheriff was concerned about public safety.

"Maybe they were justified," she said. "But it's too bad it had to end this 
way."