A Utah man accused of failing to report that his cousin produced and possessed the deadly poison ricin pleaded guilty Monday to the felony charge.
Thomas Tholen, 54, pleaded guilty to misprision of a felony — knowing about a crime but failing to report it. Federal prosecutors agreed to recommend that he receive probation rather than prison time at sentencing, set for October.
Tholen's cousin, Roger Bergendorff, pleaded guilty Aug. 4 to federal possession of a biological toxin and weapons charges but denied any criminal intent and said he never intentionally or accidentally released any of the lethal powder.
Tholen, a 54-year-old freelance artist who creates characters for video games, admitted in U.S. District Court in Salt Lake City that he lied when he told authorities Bergendorff never mentioned anything about ricin.
Tholen offered only one declarative statement in court, explaining why he lied to Las Vegas police and FBI agents. I was scared, he said.
Outside court, Tholen dismissed the government's theory that he let Bergendorff make some of the ricin in the basement of his house in the Salt Lake City suburb of Riverton. He didn't, Tholen said flatly.
There was no discussion inside court Monday about where the ricin was made or for what purpose, but federal prosecutor John Huber said later that authorities continue to believe some of the ricin was made in Tholen's basement.
Vials containing ricin were found in Bergendorff's motel room a few blocks off the Las Vegas Strip in February. He was hospitalized at the time with a still-unexplained illness that left him unconscious for weeks. Authorities suspect he was exposed to ricin, but Bergendorff denies that and blames his illness on stress following the death of his older brother.
Bergendorff told The Associated Press on Monday he believes that he told Tholen he had a batch of ricin while living at Tholen's house from February 2005 to May 2006.
I think so. I may have told him, Bergendorff said in a brief telephone interview from the North Las Vegas jail, where he has been held since his release from a hospital in April.
Bergendorff, 57, will be sentenced in November. He is expected to get three years and a month in federal prison, according to terms of an agreement with prosecutors.
Bergendorff told the AP on Friday that he distilled the lethal powder from the beans of a backyard castor plant in 1998 while he was living in San Diego, and carried it with him for a decade while living in Reno, Salt Lake City and Las Vegas.
Police and prosecutors have cast Bergendorff as a troubled man who acted alone, and they have said the case was not linked to terrorism. Bergendorff has offered no explanation for making the ricin and Tholen said Monday he couldn't help explain.
I don't want to speculate, he said.
Tholen's attorney, Greg Skordas, said the government's theory that Bergendorff made ricin at his client's home doesn't hold up because agents searching the house found nothing connected to ricin or its production.
Ricin is a biological toxin that prevents cells from making proteins and can cause organ failure, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Its only legal use is for cancer research.
The CDC and FBI agents say ricin was used as a weapon by Bulgarian intelligence operatives in 1978. They fired a ricin-tipped bullet from an umbrella in 1978 at a dissident, Gregori Markov, who died a day later.
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Associated Press writer Ken Ritter in Las Vegas contributed to this report.
