Sentencing hearings for two people who pleaded guilty to participating in the 1998 arsons that destroyed a lodge at Vail ski area have been postponed from next week.
Prosecutors are recommending that Chelsea Dawn Gerlach and Stanislas Gregory Meyerhoff, both 29, receive 10 years in prison for their role in the arsons as well as participation in a slate of other crimes aimed at government agencies and businesses they believed were not acting with environmental responsibility.
Attorneys involved in the case said that the Dec. 14 sentencing date probably will be pushed back until spring, to allow federal courts to consider the fates of all 19 defendants accused in the five-year eco-terror crime spree.
The secretive, loose-knit cell, which called itself “the family”, frequently attributed its work to the Earth Liberation Front.
Gerlach and Meyerhoff are accused of aiding cell leader Bill Rodgers in torching Two-Elk Lodge and several other buildings on top of Vail ski area in protest of the resort’s plans to expand into habitat for the endangered Canadian lynx.
Rodgers, a Prescott, Ariz., alternative bookstore owner, committed suicide in jail after being arrested a year ago.
Confessed co-conspirators Kevin Tubbs and Jacob Ferguson are also awaiting sentencing for their lesser roles in the Vail fires. Two others connected to the conspiracy, Josephine Sunshine Overaker and Rebecca Rubin, are fugitives believed to have fled the country.
The blazes at Vail alone caused an estimated $12 million in damages.
Between 1996 and 2001, the cell also attacked U.S. National Forest administrative buildings and research stations, federal Bureau of Land Management installations, two meat-packing companies, two lumber companies, a Chevrolet dealership, a tree farm and a university horticulture center, and a Bonneville Power Administration transmission tower.
Staff writer Steve Lipsher can be reached at 970-513-9495 or at slipsher@denverpost.com.
