APut 05/18 0241 Pires Interview SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) -- Robert Pires says he joined up with

APut 05/18 0241 Pires Interview


   SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) -- Robert Pires says he joined up with the
Aryan  Nations  white supremacist church as a mercenary and later
turned himself in because he didn't want innocent people killed.

   Pires himself was sentenced last week to life  in  prison  for
the murder  of  a  Baltimore  man in northern Idaho.  He also has
received state and federal sentences of as long as 20  years  for
his  role  in  bombings  in  Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, as well as for
counterfeiting and attempted bank robbery.

   Pires talked to The Spokesman-Review newspaper in April at the
Latah County Jail in Moscow, Idaho, where he was  held  from  his
arrest last  October through early last week.  The newspaper said
Saturday that the interview was granted on the condition that his
comments wouldn't be published until after Pires's sentencing was
complete.

   One of his major early memories, Pires said, was  learning  at
the age of 4 that he was adopted.

   "It  really  upset  me,"  he  said. "It seemed like my parents
didn't care because I wasn't really theirs."

   Pires' adoptive father was a strict Seventh-Day Adventist  who
served a number of schools Pires attended as a child, either as a
teacher or  principal.    His early years were spent in Maryland,
and the family lived in Bermuda at one point.

   When Robert was a teen-ager,  the  family  moved  to  Mountain
View, Calif.   Pires  discovered  marijuana  and alcohol.  He was
expelled after stealing his father's car  and  destroying  school
property.

   It was the start of an arduous adolescence.

   "I  always  felt  as  though I was in another world inside the
regular world," he said. "There was the other world  and  I  just
leapt for it."

   When  the  family moved to another California city, Robert was
expelled from school for striking a vice principal.  He moved  to
an alternative high school, but dropped out in his senior year.

   With  money borrowed from his grandmother, he bought his first
car.  He said he sold drugs to pay her back.

   In 1983, Pires was arrested in Santa Barbara for burglary  and
enrolled in  an  alcohol-rehabilitation  program.    He  finished
rehabilitation, borrowed money from his grandmother  and  rode  a
bus back to Maryland, where his family had moved.

   There he enrolled in another alcohol treatment program.

   In  February  1984,  Pires  burglarized  the  homes  of family
friends and took eight firearms.  Convicted, he was sentenced  to
16 months in jail.  When he got out, he took 11 firearms from his
landlord and headed for Idaho.

   Pires said  he  went to the Rev.  Richard Butler's compound in
Hayden Lake, Idaho, to be a mercenary, not because he believed in
Butler's neo-Nazi teachings.

   "I figured I would make $25,000  a  year,  fight  for  what  I
believe in and pay people back," Pires said.

   Authorities  say  Pires was the getaway driver on the day that
Kenneth Shray was killed last August in Bonner County,  north  of
Coeur d'Alene.  Aryan Nations members believed Shray was a police
informer, Pires' lawyer said last week, and Pires didn't know the
others planned to do more than beat up Shray.

   Pires,  22,  said  he  was the one who persuaded Ed Hawley and
David Dorr, other members of a group that called itself Order II,
not to kill a Roman Catholic priest who heads the Kootenai County
Task Force on Human Relations.

   Pires said Hawley wanted to leave a bomb at  the  Rev.    Bill
Wassmuth's  front  door  last  Sept.  15, then ring the doorbell.
Pires said he convinced Hawley not to put it right  in  front  of
the door.    The bomb went off 20 feet from the priest and he was
uninjured.

   Later, after another series  of  bombings  in  Coeur  d'Alene,
which were intended to provide a screen for bank robberies, Pires
said  he  sat  in  on  a session at which Dorr and Hawley planned
other murders.

   Hawley wanted to go to Wassmuth's home and  "blow  him  away,"
Pires said.

   Pires said  he  decided  to  surrender then.  First, he took a
brief trip to Seattle.

   "I shouldn't have come back," Pires said.  "I  shouldn't  have
said  anything,  then  we'd  see  how many people would have been
killed."

   His plea bargain includes provisions that his  sentences  will
run  concurrently,  that he'll testify against white supremacists
and  that  he  will  be  included  in  the  federal  government's
witness-protection program.
   
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