Crime & Courts

Former UAA employee pleads guilty to threatening officials with 'extreme violence'

A former University of Alaska Anchorage employee who threatened co-workers by sending an email alluding to acts of mass violence has pleaded guilty to a single charge in federal court. Now, he faces up to five years in prison.

Edward W. DuBois pleaded guilty to transmitting threatening communications in interstate commerce on Oct. 22.

If the charge had gone to trial, jurors would only have needed to find the email would be interpreted by its recipients as a "serious expression of intent to injure." The government would not have to prove DuBois intended to carry out his threats.

According to a plea agreement filed last week, DuBois was fired by the university in 2009. A report from UAA available online says DuBois was hired to fill a vacant credentials evaluator position around November 2006.

Upon his termination, "He challenged his dismissal unsuccessfully, and in the process, his behavior resulted in several former supervisors obtaining long-term restraining orders against DuBois for stalking," according to the plea agreement.

The university's employees are identified by their initials in court documents.

According to the original criminal complaint, DuBois appealed his termination, claiming he was physically and sexually assaulted. The appeal was denied, but DuBois spent the past five years sending letters to UAA officials.

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The correspondence turned criminal on Aug. 10, when Dubois sent an angry email to his former colleagues. The email included specific threats, wrote assistant U.S. attorney Tom Bradley.

DuBois described in the email how, he believed, a rational individual begins to "seriously consider" physically harming school employees, according to the plea agreement. He argued in some cases the perpetrator of mass violence could be considered a victim.

"My career is over, and my thoughts frequently linger on retribution and a desire to prevent some of the administrative officials involved from repeating similar behavior in the future," the plea agreement quotes DuBois as writing. "I have the motives, means, desire and opportunity to affect what I consider to be meaningful and positive change, through acts of extreme violence, against those who I consider to be deserving individuals."

The government included additional excerpts from DuBois' email in the agreement. Each is similar to the quote hinting at potential "extreme violence."

The UAA Police Department contacted the FBI's Anchorage division three days after DuBois sent the email.

On Wednesday, Bradley said DuBois may have believed the opportunity to resolve his perceived wrongful termination was vanishing.

"What may have triggered the threats is that it was about the fifth anniversary of his termination, and he felt his ability to get any remedies was going to expire and started to think of other options," the prosecutor said.

DuBois admitted he made the threats, according to the plea agreement. For his crime, he could get five years in prison followed by three years of supervised release. The court may also impose a fine of up to $500,000.

The parties have no agreement on DuBois' sentence, Bradley wrote. Sentencing is set for Jan. 6.

Bradley said the cases like DuBois' are uncommon.

"It is unusual," he said. "There may have been a few other cases like this but there aren't that many -- threats that are actually taken seriously enough to bring about criminal charges. There's a fine line between freedom of speech, protected speech and opinions, and true threats, and this obviously went beyond that line."

Jerzy Shedlock

Jerzy Shedlock is a former reporter for Alaska Dispatch News. He left the ADN in 2017.

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