WESTLAND LAWYER QUESTIONS DEADLY SWET RAID

A second autopsy has cast doubt on the official version of Rolland "Rollie"
Rohm's Sept. 4 death at the hands of a 100-member Michigan Southwest
Enforcement Team (SWET) in Vandalia, a town near Southwest Michigan's
Indiana border.

Janet Frederick-Wilson, a Westland lawyer, suspects that the shooting of
Rohm, 28, and his business and life partner, Grover T. "Tom" Crosslin, were
wrongfully killed at the couple's at the Rainbow Farm Campground during a
five-day standoff with federal, state and county law enforcement officers.
(Crosslin was shot on Sept. 3.)

As advocates of legalized marijuana and hemp, the couple had been under
police investigation for four years. During that time, undercover police
busted several Rainbow Farm campers for possession of marijuana, LSD, and
cocaine. Police were unable to connect the suspects to Rohm or Crosslin,
despite heavy-duty surveillance. However, in May, while searching the
couple's home for federal tax withholding records, officers say they found
about 300 marijuana plants growing there and three guns.

Crosslin was charged with manufacturing marijuana, felony firearms
possession, possession of firearm by a convicted felon, and maintaining a
drug house.

Rohm was charged with manufacturing marijuana, felony firearm possession
and maintaining a drug house. Crosslin was released on $150,000 bond; Rohm
was released on $25,000 bond. Both were due in court during the standoff,
where friends and family members say both were planning to go.

The Death Certificates filed by Cass County Medical Examiner Robert Knox,
which were kept from the victims' families, attributed Crosslin's death to
a shot to the head causing immediate death, and Rohm's death to a single
gunshot to the chest causing death within one minute.

Yet the second autopsy, conducted by the Oakland County Medical Examiner,
indicated that Rohm had been shot five times. (Crosslin's body was cremated
before a second autopsy could be conducted.)

"Why shoot somebody more than once?" asks Janet, a question that Rohm and
Crosslin's friends and family repeatedly ask.

"Roland Rohm died of a gunshot wound to the chest and left thigh," wrote
the Examiner. "The manner of death is homicide."

Adding to Frederick-Wilson's suspicions are the apparent mutilation of
Rohm's body during the first autopsy, and the Oakland County Examiner's
take on the angle of the chest wound. Since the bullet entered the left
side of Rohm's chest and exited out his right upper back, she makes the
case that Rohm was shot while lying on the ground.

"It was like they finished him off," said Dan Wilson, Janet's husband, who
assists her on the case like a male Erin Brokervich.

While Janet battles Knox and Cass County Prosecutor Scott Teter for autopsy
records and police reports from Southeaster Michigan, Dan rounds up
witnesses near Vandalia.

At this point, Janet's quest for evidence of wrongful death is temporarily
on hold. Without government records, it's difficult for her to force a
third autopsy, which she hopes will blow wholes in the official story.

Officially, on Aug. 31 sheriff deputies had headed out to the campground
after receiving two anonymous tips. One tipster said that campground
buildings were burning. The second said that men in camouflage uniforms
were assembling to ambush the deputies.

When the deputies arrived, there were no men in camouflage uniforms to be
seen, yet the deputies called in the SWET team, Janet said.

"There story doesn't make sense," she said. "Why should they call in the
National Guard and all when the guys in camouflage were not there? What was
going on?"

What was going on was that Rohm and Crosslin were surrounded when,
according to family members, they couldn't take it anymore.

Not only had they been the object of four years of drug investigations and
run-ins with the law over their biannual marijuana legalization festivals,
but Children's Protective Services files had taken away Rohm's 12-year-old
son Lee Michael Rohem and placed him in foster care. Lee was also separated
from Rohm's parents and his grandparents, John and Geraldine Livermore.

The grandparents, who are fighting for visitation with Lee. Lee stands to
inherit Rohm and Crosslin's property under an August will.

"Tom wrote the will because he knew what was coming though he didn't think
that they would outright murder him," said Grover Crosslin, father of Tom.
"That's why in 1999 he also wrote a letter to Prosecutor Scott Teter
saying, 'The blood will be your hands.'"

In that atmosphere, the presence of heavily armed SWET team and media
helicopters made the couple agitated," said Merriam Crosslin, Tom's
sister-in-law, one of the few who police allowed past the barricade.
According to friends and family members, officials rejected their offers to
talk the couple into surrendering, according to Crosslin.

"We were there between 5 and 6 p.m. Friday (Aug. 31) and talked to Tom for
about 20 minutes," she said. "The police were agitating him and causing him
to be upset. I talked to him about Rollie's son. Lee had a lot to do with
Tom's agitation. I asked him if he would come out but he said it was too
late. I tried to persuade them to come out, but he told me if I kept
talking along that line he would ask me to leave."

Merriam, one of the few witnesses, said that the couple were outgunned.

"I only saw them with small varmint guns (.223-caliber Mini-14
semiautomatic rifles), the kind farmers use to shoot groundhogs," she said.
"They were basically at their own home, not bothering anybody."

When Merriam returned to the police side of the barricade, officers asked
her how many people and weapons were there.

"It sounded like they were trying to get information about what they were
up against," she said. "I told them that all we saw were Rollie and Tom and
their varmint guns."

Not long after Merriam left, Tom was shot dead. The next morning, Rollie
joined him. Depending on who you believe, either each was killed by one
bullet from a sharp shooter or each went down in volleys like Bonnie and
Clyde. (Wilson's pictures of the crime scene show serval bullet holes on
the campground.)

My calls to county and state law enforcement officials for the police side
were not returned. Likewise Bill McMaster's Freedom of Information requests
to Cass County officials have been ignored.

So the public will never know what happened to cause a 100-man SWET team to
attack two men who were about to voluntarily surrender to the court in
hours unless Janet Frederick-Wilson can persuade a court to force
Prosecutor Teter to produce the police reports.

"The only way he can hold on to the records is if there's an ongoing
investigation," said Frederick-Wilson. "My guys are deceased so he can't be
investigating them. So I wonder who is being investigated? It must be some
of his."