White nationalist Kevin Harpham pleaded guilty to planting a homemade bomb packed with rat-poison-laced projectiles along the route of the Spokane Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade.
In U.S. district court Harpham admitted to building a pipe bomb that was to be set off with a remote car-alarm trigger and putting it in a backpack along the route of the January 17 parade.
Harpham was active in white nationalist circles, including being a member of the National Alliance, a contributor to The Aryan Alternative magazine, and a regular commentator on neo-Nazi internet forums.
In court earlier in the year, prosecutors revealed that Harpham took photos of himself along the parade route, and even photographed young African-American children gathering along the route, and of a Jewish man wearing a yarmulke. Harpham had faced a hate crime charge in addition to the bomb counts in the original complaint and could have faced 30 years to life in prison. The plea agreement under which Harpham admitted to two counts of building and planting a bomb calls for a sentence of 27 to 32 years in prison, plus a lifetime of supervised release. Sentencing is scheduled for November 30 in Spokane.
