‘Make them disappear one by one’: Minnesota man was plotting ‘revolution,’ prosecutors say

“Media will label you a serial killer, but real folk will call you a hero.”

Federal prosecutors say that Eric James Reinbold, a 41-year-old resident of Oklee, Minnesota, had writings like that in his possession when they searched his home last fall suggesting he planned to start a “second American Revolution,” according to the St. Paul Pioneer Press.

A notebook that had Reinbold’s name on it also contained the phrase, “Make them disappear one by one,” the newspaper reported.

On Friday, a jury found Reinbold guilty on one count of illegally possessing a cache of homemade pipe bombs, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune reported. The jury did not see Reinbold’s alleged anti-government writings.

In a search of Reinbold’s hunting property in rural Red Lake County last fall, authorities found five steel pipes that appeared to be bombs near a hunting trailer or shack, according to court documents reviewed by the Duluth News Tribune.

Investigators found the bombs in a plastic container “partially concealed in a pile by concrete debris,” according to court documents.

The Duluth News Tribune reported that agents later confiscated fishing line and hooks, and Christmas lights allegedly used to make the pipe bombs.

Court records show Reinbold has had other run-ins with the law and was on probation at the time. In June 2015, he pleaded guilty to second-degree assault and endangering a child by firearm after he rammed a pickup truck his wife and children were in, according to the Duluth News Tribune. A standoff with police followed.

Just days after agents searched his Minnesota home and found the alleged pipe bombs, he was arrested in Kansas in violation of his bail. He had cash, camping gear and a passport with him, the Star-Tribune reported, but he told authorities he had no idea how he wound up in Kansas.

A condition of his $15,000 bail had been that he not leave the state; he was extradited to Minnesota, the Grand Forks Herald reported in November.

Prosecutors sought to show jurors evidence of Reinbold’s anti-government writings, but his defense lawyers argued that it was irrelevant to the pipe bomb charge and could potentially “wildly enflame the jury,” according to court motions.

Before trial, Chief U.S. District Judge John Tunheim ruled that only writings found in his home “directly related” to making or using bombs could be used, the Star-Tribune reported. Jurors were not shown Reinbold’s alleged writings about starting a “second American Revolution.”

According to the Pioneer Press, investigators found that he had notes on bomb-making, wilderness survival and how to fire up a rebellion. The notebook also listed targets: the IRS, police departments, teacher conventions and “the rich,” the newspaper reported.

He also had a copy of the “Anarchist Cookbook” and was writing a how-to for wanna-be armed rebels, according to Raw Story.

His defense lawyers argued that prosecutors didn’t have enough evidence to prove that Reinbold knew “the precise location of the purported pipe bombs” found by investigators, and that he had abandoned them and was not in possession of them when investigators found them, the Duluth newspaper reported.

Reinbold is expected to be sentenced Nov. 16.