[Shadow_Group] A Beautiful Mind, The Story of William Cottrell

[shadowgroup-l at lists.resist.ca]

http://www.lacitybeat.com/article.php?id=1451&IssueNum=79
 
A BEAUTIFUL MIND 
by Jennifer Hahn 

  Did the same intellect that drove William Cottrell into physics at CalTech also make him part of an anti-SUV arson spree?
Billy Cottrell and his friend Tyler Johnson had done this kind of politically motivated vandalism before. Cottrell, a graduate student in Physics at CalTech, claimed that he and Johnson, a recent alum, had once scaled a Starbucks to change the sign to “Starfucks.” Another time, according to trial testimony, they plastered Pasadena with “Go Metric” stickers. But nothing like this. 

In the early hours of August 22, 2003, according to Cottrell’s testimony at his recent trial, the two men and Johnson’s girlfriend Michie Oe allegedly spray-painted such messages as “SUVs Suck,” “Smog Machine,” and “Is your penis really that small” on SUVs at four car dealerships and a few cars at private residences around West Covina. But then – again, according to Cottrell, who called SUV dealers “evil” – Johnson and Oe allegedly set fire to at least 11 Hummers, one Ford Expedition, and a parts warehouse using Molotov cocktails. 

Authorities believe Johnson and Oe have fled the country, and they have not been formally charged, but on November 19, 2004, William “Billy” Cottrell, 24, was convicted of seven counts of arson and one count of conspiracy for his role in the firebombing and vandalizing of about 125 SUVs. The spree caused nearly $5 million worth of damage. Cottrell was acquitted of the most serious charge, using a destructive device during a violent crime, which carries a sentence of 30 years to life. The other counts carry mandatory minimum sentences of five years, which can be served concurrently. He will be sentenced March 7. 

May Alhassen, operations manager for Clippinger Hummer, which bore the brunt of the attacks, says owner Ziad Alhassen is pleased with the verdict. Alhassen, who came to the U.S. from Syria in 1968 with $40 in his pocket, owns four other dealerships. She says he was devastated by the attacks. “At that point, he had sold more global electric vehicles than Hummers,” she said, adding that he had also donated GEMs – groovy golf-cart-like electric vehicles – to local schools. “We’re trying to impart some sort of consciousness,” she says. “The big problem is trying to get the people in Detroit to want to build those cars.” 

The Earth Liberation Front isn’t waiting that long. The tag “ELF” appeared repeatedly on the spray-painted cars, alerting police to the likely involvement of the Front, a so-called ecoterrorist organization known for taking direct and often destructive action to preserve the environment. The FBI considers ELF and its sister organization, Animal Liberation Front (ALF), the “most active criminal extremist elements in the United States.” Since 1976, the groups have committed over 1,100 criminal acts in the U.S., resulting in at least $110 million worth of property damage, but very little, if any, harm to humans. After September 11, foiling domestic terrorism became even more of a priority, lending new energy to the hunt for ELF/ALF. 

Cottrell denies any involvement with these groups. His defense believes that he was prosecuted with unusual vigor since the Justice Department is under pressure to break the elusive ELF network. 

On that August night in 2003, Cottrell went out to dinner, hung out at a comedy club, and ate cake at a fellow grad student’s place before heading home. He says that at around 1 a.m. Johnson and Oe showed up. Johnson had given Cottrell $200 to print up some bumper stickers reading “Your SUV supports terrorism.” Annoyed that they had not yet arrived, Cottrell said in his testimony that Johnson offered to cancel the debt if he agreed to come spray-painting with him and Oe. When Johnson allegedly threw a Molotov cocktail at a Ford Expedition to see how well it would burn, Cottrell protested. “I was kind of shocked,” Cottrell testified. “I told him I thought that was bad.” Johnson said it wouldn’t happen again. 

“Now, most people would probably say, ‘Look I’m out of here,’” says Cottrell’s lawyer, W. Michael Mayock. “But a person with Asperger’s … would maybe take two hours or so to figure this out that something was wrong, that it was going to happen again.” 

Billy Cottrell has been diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, considered by many physicians to be a mild form of autism. Those with the condition have difficulty picking up social cues such as facial expressions and gestures, often take things too literally, and have trouble changing course once they’ve started something, among other things. The defense contends that Asperger’s made it difficult for Billy to extricate himself from a bad situation, but this information was precluded from the trial. Believing it relevant, Mayock presented a motion for a new trial on November 24. 

As a kid, Billy’s intellectual brilliance and social incompetence conspired to cause him a lot of trouble. “We’ve always known that Billy’s different,” says his mother, Heidi Schwiebert, who’s finally found a word for Cottrell’s eccentricity in his recent Asperger’s diagnosis. “When he was in third grade, it was explained to me that on the bell curve he’s as far to the right as somebody who’s mentally retarded is ´´ to the left, and so you have just as many social issues.” Cottrell spent his childhood getting left out, picked on, and beaten up. 

“Billy retreated and he loved his books,” says Schwiebert. A typical trait of Asperger’s is a near obsessive interest in a particular subject, and for Billy it was physics. In first grade, he was reading about “black holes and the fabric of space and time,” his mother says. In second grade, it was Carl Sagan’s Cosmos. “He wants to be the world’s greatest physicist,” Schwiebert says. At 10, he filled out a questionnaire in school which asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up. He wrote in astro- or nuclear physicist. When asked what frustrated him, he answered, “trying to explain relativity to people.” 

Bored by school, Cottrell tried to amuse himself as best he could. He got kicked out of one school when he doused a dollar bill in alcohol and lit it on fire to show that only the alcohol would burn. In middle school, he started an underground newspaper in his mother’s garage. His article about how the school needed better teachers was not well received. He once got in a fight with a teacher who claimed that Texas was the biggest state in the U.S. Cottrell said no, it was Alaska. The teacher got out a ruler and measured the two states. When an outraged Cottrell pointed out that the scale for Alaska was different, the teacher sent him to the principal’s office. 

Cottrell finished up high school by simultaneously enrolling at a local community college and in the fast-track Physics program at the University of Florida. He attended college at University of Chicago, winning the school’s top prizes in physics and math. At CalTech, he seemed to have found a home. “He met some people that like to go rock climbing and then run and do physics,” his mother says. “When you can find that combination, then you’ve got a companion. They’re few and far between.” One of Cottrell’s friends testified at the trial that on Saturday nights CalTechies get together and work out physics and math problems for fun. 

Geekdom, in fact, was part of his undoing. Scrawled in spray paint on the side of an SUV at Duarte Mitsubishi was the equation ei
 + 1 = 0. Known as Euler’s Theorem, the equation is a favorite of math mavens everywhere. But it wasn’t until Cottrell began communicating via e-mail with a Los Angeles Times reporter about the case that the FBI began sniffing him out. By contacting the Times, Cottrell was trying to exonerate Josh Connole, a local peace activist that the FBI had mistakenly arrested for the crime. The IP address of the computer Cottrell was using at CalTech’s library eventually led investigators to the young man his mother affectionately calls “socially retarded.” 

Cottrell will continue to work on physics while he’s in prison, perhaps even publishing from behind bars. He and his mother are currently working out a system to make sure that he has access to the latest physics books and papers. He makes up his own problems to keep his mind sharp, and when he can’t look something up in a needed reference book, he spends hours deriving the equation himself. “I said, ‘Well, you’ve got the time,’” Schwiebert tells him. “Maybe you’ll come up with a better way to do it.” 

He keeps himself busy by tutoring fellow inmates who are trying to get their GEDs in basic math and biology, and by teaching himself Mandarin Chinese. He quickly became the chess champion at both San Bernardino County Jail and Metropolitan Detention Center, where he resides now, before the other inmates gave up trying to beat him. Many of them have taken an interest in his trial. 

Mayock is hoping that the judge will consider Asperger’s in the sentencing phase of the trial. After September 11, the government introduced tougher sentencing guidelines for domestic terrorism. When asked if Cottrell might face these guidelines, prosecutor Beverly Reid-O’Connell would only say, “We won’t know until the sentencing occurs what type of guideline range he will face.” 

The judge, at least, seems to be personally familiar with the social improprieties that accompany Asperger’s Syndrome. During the trial, he asked Cottrell if string theory was an area of physics. Cottrell replied, “It’s the area of physics.” When asked by the prosecution if his sister had helped him write an e-mail, he said, “Objection, relevance,” cracking up the court room. “Nice try,” the judge retorted. 

CalTech would not comment on Cottrell’s academic performance for legal reasons, but a spokeswoman hinted at his brilliance saying that he was working with “the most brilliant minds in the country” in a “pretty esoteric and difficult field” at one of “the most competitive institutions in the world.” She added that CalTech has not yet determined whether or not Cottrell can come back to the institution after he finishes serving his prison sentence. 
“He is one of the great minds of this century,” says Mayock. “I mean, it is clear. That’s why this is such a tragedy to have this happen.





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