Vol. 1
Issue VI Federal Prison, Ashland ALL
RIGHTS RESERVED.
The Fires
Common sense dictated that the more carefully the mission
was planned, the greater
the chances of success, and that I would evade capture.
The most important, and
most obvious, reason why success was crucial was that
the cost of failure would be
a dead baby.
While the mother and "doctor" were exercising their free
will over the child, the Lord
my God, who loves that child so tenderly, would have
to watch -- not because He
is not Almighty and unable to rescue -- but because He
has given the mother and the
abortionist the ability to disobey His commandments.
But, see? He also made a way for this choice of evil to
be counter-affected, because
He gave me a free choice, too. So I hoped the little
display of zeal with which I
loved the child before His eyes would please Him.
So I owed it first to Him, and, secondly to the child,
to plan the attack carefully.
Yet, there was a third obligation, to myself. It had
to do with risk and cost. I could
die in the process or be captured. Even capture would
exact a heavy toll. The
conclusion had been reached that, if the child lived,
either of these prices would be
acceptable. If the child lived such prices would be cost-effective.
Not only would it
be a good deal for the baby, but for me, also. If I died,
and, then, the child died
anyway, it would be a terrible tragedy. By far I preferred
that we would both survive.
Yet, if the child lived and I died, the sum total would
include no tragedy at all;
because both factors would bring glory to God. It had
to succeed. Every detail of this
covert operation had to be thought out beforehand.
Every detail was laid out at home, sitting quietly with
my eyes closed, and imagining
myself at every step of the procedure, including parking
my car and putting the
keys in my pocket. I would leave the car door unlocked
at both sites to save a few
precious seconds. I would put the keys in my right, front
trousers pocket, first
removing everything else, so I wouldn't be fumbling around
in search of the keys.
To avoid boring my readers twice, and since you'll read
everything in the unfolding
of the account, let me just share with you one more,
major, part of the plan.
As I've mentioned, since I would be going inside Planned
Parenthood (P.P.) and,
therefore, could take all the time there I wanted, this
time would be irrelevant. The
only length of time that mattered was between the ignition
of that first and the second
fire, and my escape. So I kept wondering how I could
shave precious seconds
off the time needed to be spent at the second target.
What if, when I arrived at Haskell's death center (the
second target), the glass was
already cut and taped, and the container of gas was already
there, by the window,
with the cap screwed off? That was it. Although I would
set that fire secondly,
I would go there first and make all the necessary, little
preparations; then go and attack
P.P.; then return; attack; and go home.
Long before that weekend the idea of a Molotov cocktail
had been dismissed. A
Molotov cocktail is a glass bottle filled with gasoline.
The bottle has a rag stuffed
tightly in its neck. The part of the rag sticking out
is soaked with gas. The rag is lit;
the contraption is thrown through a window; the bottle
breaks; and the resulting
pool of gas is ignited. I didn't like it. Too many things
can go wrong. How much
gas will it involve? A quart, at most. Not enough. The
mission has to succeed.
What if the bottle doesn't hit right in the middle of
the window pane, and thus
breaks outside the building? What if, while passing through
the broken window, the
rag catches on the jagged edge and is pulled out? What
if the bottle falls on a thick
carpet and doesn't break? It has to succeed.
I wanted to use large quantities of gas to insure success.
My (ex)-wife (we were
still married and together then) knew someone who owned
a restaurant. She had
gotten from this business two perfect containers that
originally had held five gallons
of cooking oil each. They were of the same kind of translucent
plastic that milk
comes in. Since the whole window was missing at P.P.,
and I would be able to take
the large container in with me, I could simply leave
it inside. It would be quickly
consumed by the flames. The jug used at Haskell's could
be disposed of, halfway
home, in the dumpster behind the I.G.A. supermarket in
Ludlow, Kentucky. It would
be several miles both from my home and from the fires.
No link. Also into the
dumpster would go the old sneakers I would wear in case
of footprints left at the
scenes. So long, old pals. No link.
I did not own a glass cutter. My dad had passed away two
and a half years earlier,
but some of his tools still lingered at his old work-bench.
I stopped by Mom's.
Couldn't find Dad's old glass cutter. That's okay. Anyway,
I should go buy a new
one, because it will cut faster. Normally, I'd rather
go to a little independent, mom
and pop-type hardware store and help the little guy.
This time, for the sake of
anonymity, I go to the big chain store where they scarcely
pay you any attention unless
you beat them over the head. Didn't ask for any help
(kept a low profile), but just
kept casually browsing until I found them on my own.
There they were, row after
row of them, hundreds of them. They were all identical,
made by one manufacturer.
That maker? Red Devil!
There they were with the name "Red Devil" emblazoned on
the handle and a picture
of the devil's face grinning at me. I was indignant.
After a careful examination
proved there were no other brands I spun on my heel and
left.
I'm not superstitious. I didn't think I'd go to hell if
a Red Devil cutter were used,
nor thought it would, necessarily, jeopardize the success
of the mission. Nor did I really
think the company's owners were satanists.
It was probably just an unfortunate choice of names. But
I didn't like it, not for this
mission. Going from picketing to torching the places
is a big step, so, in order to
take such drastic action, the covert operator must be
fully convinced of the holiness
of his mission.
I Peter 1:16 says, "Be ye holy; for I am holy."
I'm not quite sure how to interpret that verse, but I
know, for sure, that I could
never dare to have the audacity to say, or even to think,
that I am holy. Not in this
lifetime. But I knew, I knew that my responsibility was
sacred, and the mission was
holy. It would be unbearable to take a tool proclaiming
"Red Devil" on such a
mission.
I considered that the little wheel in a glass cutter is
made of agate, and suddenly it
dawned on me. Of course! When I was free my hobby was
the lapidary art. A
lapidary is someone who cuts and polishes precious stones
from the rough into gems.
I sort of specialized in opals but remembered a large,
thick slab of agate laying
around my work bench. Agate is a mineral that breaks
off with a conchoidal fracture,
creating a razor-sharp edge. This piece of agate had
already been broken, just
so, when I'd gotten it. It would be perfect -- far superior,
in fact, to a commercial
glass cutter.
Ah, friends, I'm doing it again: paying such meaningless
attention to such trivial details!
I apologize and here will try to repent, fast-forwarding
to the crucial hour.
12/29/85. It might have been around 9:00 P.M. when I left
the house with the two
five-gallon containers; and wearing camouflage fatigues,
black gloves, a full-length
army storm coat (olive drab) a black ski-mask (still
rolled up so it looked like an
ordinary knit-cap), and combat boots. I took the old
sneakers along to change into
before stepping out of the car near the scene of the
first target.
I left home several hours before the planned time of the
fires because the (now ex)
wife and kids would soon be in bed, and I didn't feel
like sitting all alone. I went
down to Ludlow to visit my friend, Fast Eddie, but half
way there stopped in my
old hometown, Erlanger, Kentucky. On Erlanger Road there
is a Convenient Food
Mart. These stores do a good business, because their
selection is bigger and their
prices better than at any other carry-out store. This
was important, because, being
busy, no one would pay much attention to me. The way
I was dressed would not
draw unusual attention, because everyone knew I always
dressed that way.
Whenever asked about it, I explained that I didn't want
anyone ever to be able to
see me without being reminded that baby humans were being
killed all around us, by
way of war crimes, and that we had been lukewarm and
shamefully irresponsible
in not providing the militant stand and the defensive
warfare which the babies
deserved as much as anyone else would under the same
circumstances.
Convenient Food Mart also sells gasoline. The side-by-side
pumps are in a line
with the cashier inside, so she can't tell (if you pull
in front first) whether you're
pumping gas into your car or a five gallon jug. They
sell the hottest-burning gas
around, 92 octane.
After filling the two jugs and paying for the gas I headed
down to Eddie's to while
away a few hours chewing the fat and playing video games
on his computer. Of
course my mind was made up not to discuss the mission.
At about 1:00 A.M. I left,
telling Eddie I had a "little chore" to do, but not offering
any other information.
Going first to Haskell's place I parked about eighty yards
down the side street which
turns off McMillan Avenue and, with ski-mask rolled down,
carried one of the
jugs to the window described in the previous report.
With the jug to the left of the window (and its cap screwed
off) I took out the agate
slab and deeply scored a rectangle on the right-hand
pane. The smaller the
rectangle, the faster it can be cut; so I cut one just
large enough to accept the jug's spout.
Afterwards I realized this was a little mistake, because
a larger hole provides
more air (oxygen), and such a large quantity of gas covers
a large area and consumes
much oxygen. Still, the damage was extensive enough to
close the facility down
for six months; and Haskell was killing children there
who could be born within two
months. So I can't feel too bad about the fire's effects.
Years later (that is,
recently) he said the fire closed his abortion chamber
for only a week or two, but that's
a bald-faced lie. Our surveillance people watched carefully,
and we know he
didn't use that building for six months.
After scoring the rectangle into the glass I took a roll
of masking tape (first stripping
off a layer completely around the roll's circumference,
in case of finger prints) and
put two vertical, and two horizontal strips over the
rectangle, with the strips being
longer and wider than the rectangle. In other words,
the tape was stuck, not only to
the rectangle (which would be popped out when I returned),
but also to the outer
part of the glass which would remain intact. The part
of the tape on the outer glass
was taut, but I left a little slack (partial loops) in
the part stuck to the rectangle so it
would not complicate popping that piece out. The purpose
of the tape was to
prevent broken glass from falling and making that distinctive
tinkling noise.
The only thing I had forgotten when leaving home was something
to strike the glass
with. But right there in front of the window was part
of a tree limb, about as big
around as half way up a baseball bat, and over a foot
long. Perfect.
With all the time-saving preliminaries complete at Haskell's
site, I returned to my car
and drove to P.P. to light the first blaze. Parking the
car around the corner, on
Montana Avenue, and never suspecting anything was going
wrong, I took the other
five gallon jug and nonchalantly headed toward the apartment
building next door,
thus using the same subterfuge as the night before, as
though intending to enter the
apartments. Again, as before, I followed the little walkway
around to the side
entrance, which faced Planned Parenthood.
Something was wrong! Although that basement door (P.P.'s
was around the rear
corner, I could tell it was wide open, because light
was flooding out, into the night,
from within. From inside came the unmistakable sound
(Whisk! Whisk! Whisk!)
of a straw broom being worked over a cement floor. What
was the janitor doing in
there at 1:30 in the morning? Sweeping the floor, what
else?
Every time you approach and lurk outside an abortuary
with five gallons of gas,
a risk is taken, even if no fire is set. Be that as it
may, I would have to leave and come
back later. Meanwhile, back at Haskell's, the glass had
already been cut and taped,
with the gasoline beside the window -- all these unmistakable
evidences of "foul"
play -- but it couldn't be helped. I wasn't going to
call off the mission. It had to be done.
There was no time to dawdle in making my temporary retreat.
So I picked up the
heavy jug, went around the apartment's front, and made
for the corner where
Auburn and Montana Avenues meet. My car was on the other
side of Montana,
facing west; so I'd have to cross the street and walk
halfway down the block to get
to it. Halfway across the crosswalk I looked up and,
oh, brother, what's this?
A young man and his lady companion, on foot, were just
ready to turn the opposite
corner so as to go in the same direction as where my
car is parked! When they saw
me crossing toward their corner they stopped dead in
their tracks, paralyzed with fear.
I, also, came to a dead stop, standing right there in
the middle of the street. For to
proceed would have brought me right up to them, and I
could see they were scared.
There they stood, eyeing me up and down in my camouflage
fatigues, black ski-mask
rolled down over my face, five gallons of gas in a see-through
jug in my hand,
and they with terror written all over their faces.
You couldn't blame them for being concerned; but we stood
there for several, tense
seconds, staring into each other's eyes, and neither
willing to take the first step. It
was obvious why they didn't want to go first, because
it meant I would be falling in
step behind them. Who would want someone like me walking
behind them down a
dim street at 1:30 in the morning?
Yet I, also, didn't want to go ahead of them, because
it would mean they would see
me getting into my car, with the license plate in clear
view. Furthermore, I'd made
another little mistake. I should have removed my bumper
stickers before leaving home
that night.
All across my rear bumper, fluorescent, green letters
on a black background shouted
"WE'RE PROTESTANT PROTESTING ABORTION!
WE'RE PROTESTANT
PROTESTING ABORTION!" And
there the three of us stood, less than fifty yards
from an abortuary. I did not, under the circumstances,
want them to see me getting into
that car with that gas. But they were afraid to make
the first move.
Finally, I couldn't stand the awkwardness and stress of
the situation any longer, and
started for my car. Then they walked very slowly along,
drawing abreast of my
car as I was about to pull out. Would anything else go
wrong when I returned?
So I left and tooled around awhile.
Upon my return, about a half hour later, the janitor was
still there. It was necessary
to retreat once more.
When I came the third time there was no sign of him. All
was dark inside except for
that desk light seen the night before. Though it seemed
as if he had left I wanted
to wait a few minutes to be sure. So I stood there in
front of the apartment's side
entrance, jug of gas at my side, staring at the target.
At that moment my ski-mask
was rolled up, my face exposed. P.P.'s front door was
hidden by the building's middle,
front projection, but, suddenly, I heard a door closing
in that direction. Then,
there he was, P.P.'s maintenance man!
When a night janitor finishes cleaning a building and
walks out the front door, what
would you expect him to do next? Go to the sidewalk and
follow it to his car, right?
Of course, what else? Something was going wrong! He didn't
go to the sidewalk.
Instead, he started across the front yard in a line straight
toward me!
He's bigger than me, but I won't run.
I'm so incredulous I can't move. I just stand and watch
as he draws nearer and nearer
in his path straight toward me! It's as if he lives in
that apartment building and
means to enter that side door which I'm standing in front
of! But I didn't think of that
possibility at the time. When he cut straight across
the front yard and came
straight at me, drawing nearer and nearer, the only thing
I could figure was that this P.P.
employee knew what I was about and was coming to apprehend
me. He's bigger than me,
but I won't run. Even if I wanted to, it's too late:
he's too close; and my back is to the wall.
Now he's only thirty feet away, and coming on, and my
face is still exposed! It can be
surprising how fast you can think in an emergency. You
can weigh all the factors and do
an hour's worth of thinking in one second. I have only
one second to make a decision:
"do I reach up and yank the ski-mask down over my face,
or not? If I wait another two or
three seconds it will be too late, because he will have
seen my face already. That would be
disastrous! But if I yank it down right now, it can only
cause him to think one thing: that I
am a dangerous criminal who poses a serious threat to
him. He might panic and do something
rash! When he pulls his hand out of that coat pocket
it might have a gun in it; and he will
shoot me since he, too, has only one second to decide!"
I decide to leave the ski-mask rolled up.
He looks up and seems to be concerned for the first time,
but he keeps coming. Now he's only
fifteen feet away, but still coming straight at me. Our
eyes are locked, each on the other's.
When he is only eight feet from me, only three paces
away, and still looking into my face,
suddenly, as if on cue, we both take evasive action.
I hang my face down and turn a little to my left (thus,
toward the street). He veers off the opposite
way, thus toward the rear corner of the apartments, toward
the little flight of steps going down to the
parking lot. So now he's walking alongside the wall,
his back turned toward me.
I breathe a sigh of relief that he did not confront me
directly. But, still under the tension of
the moment, I do something silly and meaningless. I reach
up and pull down the ski-mask.
It doesn't make any sense: it's too late; he has already
seen my face.
Somewhere a streetlight burns, and I am in an exact line
with that streetlight and the part of the
wall which still lies ahead of the janitor. In other
words, although his back is turned to me
while he is walking along the wall, he can still see
my movements by watching my sharply
defined shadow on that part of the wall which still lies
ahead of him. As I'm watching him
walk away I see (over his shoulder) the shadow of my
hand coming up to the shadow
of my head and pulling down the mask. Uh, oh! He sees
this motion, too! He can't
miss it!
Until that instant he has tried to appear casual and unafraid;
but two seconds later he is
at the top of the stairs, and, in terror, he leaps down
the entire flight and takes off, with
all his might, flying across that parking lot like a
bat out of hell. Hey, why is everybody so
nervous tonight? I'm not trying to hurt anybody. I'm
trying to keep people from being
hurt, for Christ's sake!
The terror in which he has fled tells me everything. He's
not running that hard because
he's late for supper. It's not because he wants to catch
the last call for alcohol
at Joe's Bar. He knows what I am. He knows something
serious is about to happen.
As soon as he is confident that he has put a safe distance
between us, he will call
the police.
Nevertheless, it is too late for me to call off the mission.
I must carry it through. If I had
been thinking only of a campaign against abortion, in
general, it would have been madness
not to call off the mission and then, even, to wait several
more weeks for the situation to
cool off, before proceeding. But no, I had already focused
in on that one, real, particular
baby, who was still alive, somewhere in Cincinnati, and
for whom time was about to run
out. The time: about 2:35 A.M. The appointment: 8:00
A.M.
If I back down, that baby has less than five and a half
hours to live. If it's the last thing
I do, I must save him. There is another complication
in backing down: all the evidence at
Haskell's. It can't be undone. Glass, once cut, cannot
be uncut. But I didn't take time to
consider these things. It wasn't necessary, and there
was no time to spare. As I've said over
and over, ad nauseam (sorry), my mind was already irreversible
before the janitor saw me.
So as soon as he had fled I rushed to the crawl space,
diving in and pulling the jug in
behind me. With the bricks thrown aside and the plywood
removed, I punched at
the "wallpaper". What?! It wasn't wallpaper at all, but
a 12" thick layer of fiberglass
insulation! Since I had been discovered -- by a Planned
Parenthood employee, no
less -- there wasn't time to enter the building as planned.
I started tearing a hole in the fiberglass.
Yet, still under the stress of all that had happened,
I was making that hole in a crazy manner.
I was trying to make a nice, neat, square hole. "What,
have you gone CRAZY?!" You don't
have time to be particular!! Why bother to make a neat
hole when you're trying to destroy the
whole building ANYWAY?!" It took only a split-second
to think this thought, and then I tore
and clawed crudely at the insulation. Instantly the window
was completely cleared away.
Right inside the window was very wide shelving extending
out a couple of feet from the wall.
There was nothing on the shelf. There was a two inch
gap between the wall and the shelf. I
began pouring the gas through this gap as fast as possible
without splashing it around. Glug,
glug, glug. Glug, glug, glug, glug, glug.
Having shoved the empty jug into the basement, I scrambled
to the far edge of the crawl space,
as far from the window as possible; struck a match; and
threw it in.
Anyone who has ever used even just a few drops of gasoline
to start a campfire or charcoal
grill (if you've never tried it, don't) knows how violently
it erupts and how easily it is ignited.
Because gas evaporates quickly, forming fumes, the match's
flame doesn't even have to be
applied directly to the liquid. If a flaring match is
thrown anywhere near the gas, there is a
spontaneous fireball, and the surface is embroiled at
once.
Five gallons of any liquid spreads out over a very large
area -- surely, at least, several
hundred square feet. All I have to do is flip in a burning
match, right? But when I
did, something very strange happened. Nothing! I lit
another match and threw it in,
still flaring. Nothing! The gas has now been fuming for
several minutes; so I'm
afraid to go right up to the window and strike a match;
because there should be a violent
deflagration. I go only halfway to the window and throw
in another match. Nothing!
In frustration I strike a match, touch it to the remaining
match-heads in the book and
throw the whole, flaring book through the window. Nothing!
I expect to hear police sirens any moment. My heart cries
out to God: "Oh, Lord God,
please help me! Don't you want me to save these little
babies? Don't you want
me to destroy such a wicked thing? In Jesus' name, please
help me!"
Then I realized that the matches were not reaching the
floor but were being caught
in the torn, massive wads of fiberglass batting. It was
everywhere.
It should require only to matches to light two gasoline
fires, so one full book should be
plenty. For some reason which I did not understand at
the time, when I left home
I'd deliberately stuck four or five books in my left
trousers pocket.
So it seemed necessary to go right up to the window to
light the fire. If I had been a
left-wing liberal doing exactly the same thing, except
at a different target, for a
leftist cause (such as fighting against the use of underarm
deodorant), I would have
been too afraid to be fight in front of that window when
the gas went off. But I
believed, no, I knew that the Lord had more work for
me to do during my time on
earth; so He would preserve my life. In fear and trembling
I went up to the window,
lit another whole book of matches, and threw them in.
Only a small fire flared up from
a little gas which had gathered in a fiberglass wad,
but I knew it would be
enough to ignite the rising fumes and transform the building
into an inferno
Scrambling to the edge of the crawl space I dove out just
as an explosive fireball rolled
out the window. Rolling over, I rose to my feet, stepped
back, and heard Satan
roar in protest at the "desecration" of his unholy altar.
I didn't care if he didn't like it.
I wasn't scared of him.
"If God be for
us, who can be against us?" And "Greater is
he who is in
us, than he who is in the world." And
"He who dwells
in the secret place of the Most High
Shall abide
under the shadow of the Almighty.
I will say of
the LORD, "He is my refuge and my fortress;
My God, in Him
I will trust."
"Surely He shall
deliver you from the snare of the fowler
And from the
perilous pestilence.
He shall cover
you with His feathers,
And under His
wings you shall take refuge;
His truth shall
be your shield and buckler.
You shall not
be afraid of the terror by night,
Nor of the arrow
that flies by day
Nor of the pestilence
that walks in darkness,
Nor of the destruction
that lays waste at noonday..
A thousand may
fall at your side, And ten thousand at your right hand;
But it shall
not come near you.
Only with your
eyes shall you look And see the reward of the wicked.
Because you
have made the LORD, who is my refuge,
Even the Most
High, your habitation,
No evil shall befall you,... Psalm 91 (NKJV)
With Planned Parenthood in flames, I ran to my unlocked
car and sped to Haskell's abortuary.
Everything there was just as I had left it. After knocking
out the rectangle and pouring in all the
gas, I stepped to the side of the window, lit a match,
and flipped it through the window. Instantly,
there was a low, rumbling "WOOF!" And the neighborhood
on that side of the building lit up almost
as bright as day.
There
was a low, rumbling "WOOF!"
Grabbing the empty jug, I ran the eighty yards back to
my car and headed for the Kentucky
side of the river. Along the way I prayed for my
wife and children, begging the Lord to watch
over them. Then I prayed for the janitor, first for his
spiritual conversion, and then that the
Lord would keep him from opening his mouth, or that he
would be unable to make a positive
identification. It would take a miracle, but I had to,
at least, ask, didn't I? Well, that miracle
happened, and I remained free another two and a half
years. The janitor was never heard from
again. I was not arrested until caught red-handed in
the Florida operation..
After praying for the janitor I said one more prayer.
I asked the Lord to use my example to
motivate another anti-abortionist to attack an abortuary
with force. I was not praying this for
anyone in particular. I didn't know anyone, personally,
who would do what I had just done.
I was praying for a total stranger, anyone out there,
to carry the battle on. The very next day
my prayer was answered two hundred miles away. Someone
whose face I'd never seen, whose
name I'd never heard, fire-bombed the abortuary in Toledo,
Ohio. Years later we would learn it
was a lady, the angelic Margie Reed.
At about 4:00 A.M., as I drew near my house in Hebron,
Kentucky, I wondered if federal
agents from the B.A.T.F. would be waiting in my driveway.
Several months
earlier, after I'd delivered a fiery public speech before
the Florence City Council, B.A.T.F.
special agents Terry Sullivan and Leo Fultz found me
and shook me down.
They warned that if the abortion facilities in our area
(Cincinnati) were ever burned, or bombed,
they'd come looking for me as their prime suspect.
Oh, by the way, afterward the Florence city councilmen
voted nine to zero to deny the
abortionist an occupational license to kill children
in that town. Roger Rolfes,
Hugh Skees, all of them, were against the abortionist.
Very fine folks, fine Kentuckians.
There was no government car in my driveway. Using the
same stealth used during the operation,
so I would not awaken my family, I went in the house.
Listened to the report on the radio (softly). Chowed down.
Said my prayers. Went to bed.
Slept like a baby. Nighty-night. Don't let the bed bugs
bite.
Love-in-Christ,
Johnny
Genesis 9:6
Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by
man shall his blood be shed:
for in the image of God made he
man.
Numbers
35:33 So ye shall not pollute the land wherein ye are:
for blood it defileth the land:
and the land cannot be cleansed of the
blood that is shed therein, but
by the blood of him that shed it.
To contact e-mail: Glory2Jesus@ArmyofGod.com
Telephone 1-757-204-4454
Or write to: Rev. Donald Spitz
Pro-Life Virginia
P.O. Box 2876
Chesapeake VA 23327
