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Christiana admits setting Bristlecone fire |
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Tuesday, 21 April 2009 |
 Arson and vandalism suspect John Thomas Christiana in Inyo County Jail. On Thursday, he was found “not competent” to stand trail. Photo by Mike Bodine By Mike Bodine
Register Staff
4-18-2009 The suspect in a spree of vandalism during the summer and fall of 2008 has allegedly confessed to the Inyo County Sheriff’s Department to burning down the Schulman Grove Visitor Center in the Ancient Bristlecone Pine Forest and vandalizing the White Mountain Research Station Summit Laboratory.
In an interview from Inyo County Jail on April 4-5, John Thomas Christiana said he has written a letter confessing to several high-profile crimes. He also elaborated on what he describes as the unusual factors that led him to commit the crimes.
The Inyo County Sheriff’s Department confirmed yesterday that he has written a letter of confession but would not specify what those criminal acts were.
By law, a confession is moot without any evidence, or corpus.
Nevertheless, additional charges were filed against Christiana on Monday that seemed to stem from his confession.
Those charges include felony arson of a structure or property on Forest Service land, and are added to the original 2008 charges that include felony auto theft, grand theft, two counts of receiving stolen property, vandalism, possession of a firearm and a misdemeanor charge of carrying a loaded fire arm.
On Thursday, Christiana was found “not competent” to stand trial, in a hearing before Judge Brian Lamb. The strange factors Christiana talks about, such as his belief that the U.S. government is intruding in his life, are what may have led to the judge’s decision.
Elizabeth Corpora, his public defender, said Thursday that an evaluation of Christiana will now be done to see what course of treatment is recommended to restore him to competency as well as what accommodations will be made to facilitate that treatment, such as in a state mental hospital.
She explained that now that he has been found incompetent to stand trial, he has the right to a mandatory competency hearing every 18 months.
Professor George Bisharat of U.C. Hastings College of Law explained that competency means the defendant “understands the charges and can participate effectively in their own defense.”
Corpora said that in his current mental state, Christiana may say things that are not in his best interest or defense.
Bisharat explained that if a defendant is found incompetent, the criminal proceedings are put into a state of “suspended animation” while the defendant is sent away to one of many state mental institutions for “competency training.”
Corpora said that the maximum amount of time he could spend in a hospital is the same amount of time as if he were found guilty on all the charges.
Inyo County Sheriff Investigator Sergeant Jeff Hollowell said Christiana’s confession led CalFire – heading up the Schulman Grove Visitor Center investigation – to re-interview him. It was that interview that gave the District Attorney’s office, “enough to file the new charges,” Hollowell said.
Hollowell explained he did not want to give any details as the case is still under investigation.
The Inyo County District Attorney’s Office said it had “no comment on ongoing investigations.”
According to a Forest Service fire investigator, its investigation is still ongoing. It is working with CalFire and Inyo County on the investigation but has not filed any charges in connection with the visitor center fire. He said that the Forest Service will probably wait and see what happens to Christiana through the county system before making any motions of its own.
According to Christiana, it was his need to confess that moved Corpora to have him stand for the mental competency hearing. This hearing also may have been tied to Christiana’s belief that he has a government-implanted chip in his head that causes him great physical pain by manipulating his subconscious.
“But the government thing has nothing to do with being competent. I can believe what I want to believe and still go to trial,” he said.
In the jailhouse interview, Christiana was calm and candid about his crimes. And he was adamant that he is “a rational person” who should be found competent.
But, Corpora said Christiana has a difficult time separating himself from his illness.
Christiana explained he has never had any mental illness or problems distinguishing what is real and what is not. He said he never had any suspicion of being mentally ill, nor did he show any signs of schizophrenia. He also didn’t think he was suffering from any disorder now, as, according to Christiana, schizophrenia doesn’t show up in people until their 20s, and he is 47 years old.
He did mention that his brother has suffered from schizophrenia nearly his whole life.
He said that the idea of the implant was actually initiated by law enforcement in the summer of 2008.
Christiana then described that incident and gave a time-line of events that eventually led him to the Sierra Nevada.
He said that on May 10, 2008, he went to the Bush Ranch in Crawford, Texas, to protest President George W. Bush at the time of the president’s daughter’s wedding because he knew “there would be a lot of media attention.” He said he was pulled over for speeding by Texas Highway Patrol, and was detained because he was carrying a firearm in his vehicle.
Christiana said the U.S. Secret Service then detained him for more than two hours, telling him he may have a government-implanted chip in his brain and demanding he sign a confession stating that he had a history of mental illness. He said, again, that he does not have such a history.
While not elaborating on what exactly he did or what happened next, he said that while returning to California from Texas he started putting the pieces together of the strange coincidences that had been following him for nearly a year. He said when he returned home to San Francisco, his friends suggested, after seeing him so distraught and out-of-sorts, that he “go climb a mountain.”
Christiana is a skilled mountaineer, having climbed all the highest peaks on all seven continents. Christiana said he decided to climb Mt. Whitney, and then decided to climb all the 14,000-foot peaks in the area.
He said it was while in the Owens Valley that he decided to lash out against the “government intrusion” into his life. He claims he did not come to the valley with intentions of doing any harm, but it was where the pain and anger caused by the implant “got the best of me,” he said, and he started to lash out against the pain caused by the government-implanted chip – “unfortunately for Inyo County.”
He does not claim the chip directed his destructive actions. “No, I never thought they were controlling me.”
But, most importantly, he blames the chip for causing the strange and very painful sensations in his genitalia. This pain leads to anger that caused him to lash out and to be “mischievous.”
The vandalism was not premeditated, he said, nor did he feel like himself when he was actually doing the damage. For example, when he climbed White Mountain Peak, he said he had no intentions of vandalizing the Summit Laboratory, but when he reached the summit, a sign reading “Ongoing research in progress” set him off.
“I read the sign and I thought about all the pain I’ve been through – then I found an opening into the building,” Christiana explained. Reports of damage to the lab include busted windows and lights and smashed cabinets.
Mono County District Attorney George Booth said that on March 27, his office charged Christiana with felony burglary and vandalism to the Summit Lab.
The situation for the Bristlecone Pine Forest Visitor Center was similar, in that he admits to having intentions to vandalize the center, but not to the extent that would eventually result.
“Unfortunately, I had plenty of gasoline with me at the time,” Christiana said.
The gasoline he admits to siphoning out of local vehicles for his own car.
For clarification, Christiana explained, he wanted the people of Inyo County to know that, “I did not come here with the intention of vandalizing anything.”
Christiana said he has cried openly in court about the destruction of property and the incidents weigh heavily on his conscience. He said he just wants this to be over with, whether he goes to prison or a mental hospital.
Christiana does not claim of lashing out prior to the summer of 2008, but his MySpace.com entries from as early as April 2008 do display contempt for the government. The entries in June and July of ’08 call the government agencies involved with the implant “sick, sick people.” He later claims to “disowning” various family members for their knowledge of the implant and not doing anything to help him.
Christiana believes the implant took place when he was 18 years old. In 1979, he was in a bicycle accident resulting in major lacerations to his head and perhaps skull fractures.
He said it was at that time that a small chip, so far undetectable by X-ray, was implanted in or around his ear. When asked why he thought he was chosen for the chip, he said he “fit the profile of someone the government would want to experiment on,” an average white male.
“I was at the wrong place at the wrong time,” Christiana said, “Just like someone has to win the lottery.”
He said the first time he started getting suspicious was Thanksgiving 2007, when “weird things,” more than mere coincidences, started happening to him.
He said a man developing a mountaineering Web site for Christiana told him there were several hundred lewd photographs of Christiana on the Internet. Christiana said the man then threatened to kill him.
He thought it was his neighbors taking pictures of him in compromising situations with hidden cameras, but after the incident in Texas, he was sure that it was the implant that was responsible for the pictures.
He said he talked to his parents and several friends who all admitted to Christiana that there was “something for him to be concerned about,” but they were not at liberty to give any details.
He gave examples of some of the extraordinary series of events that took place, “externally, not voices in my head,” that make him believe he is not mentally ill, but in fact, “an ongoing experiment for the government.”
He said he woke up one night at his home in San Francisco, the TV still on. When he awoke and tossed back the covers, Gary Radnich, the sports caster for Channel 4, had his face up close to the screen and said, “He’s awake, get the cameras out of his room.” Christiana said he then saw the TV crew make some adjustments to the set and then the sports cast continued.
He also said that since November 2007, his dreams have increased from a couple a night to 6-9 a night and he has had unexplainable gastric problems.
Christiana admitted that this may sound far-fetched, but he made the analogy to the concept of a cellular phone 50 years ago – it may sound impossible at the time, but technological advances eventually make the impossible a reality.
He talked about the advancements in cameras and medicine and how the implants are all too real. Christiana had reports from Finland and U.S. News and World Report about Cold War experiments using brain implants to control the actions and emotions of unwitting human guinea pigs. He also made references to current brain chip technology that is helping amputees to control robotic prostheses.
He said he believes that now that he is aware of the implant, the government is also aware of his knowledge, and have since stopped any meddling into his life.
Corpora said that she “hopes for the best” for Christiana and hopes he can receive the help he needs and can be made well again.
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Last Updated ( Friday, 10 July 2009 )
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