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."