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."