Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

534 • PHYSIOLOGICAL MODEL OF TERRORISMfor this act of zeal, Phinehas and his descendants were rewarded withthe high priesthood in perpetuity.It is not known whether there is a network of related PhineasPriesthood groups or whether the name is simply used by a numberof phantom cell groups to confuse authorities. However, in 1991,after six men made an arson attack on a gay book and video store inShelby, North Carolina, in which three patrons along with the bookstoreowner were shot dead and the store burned down, credit for theattack was claimed in the name of the Phineas Priesthood.In the period April–October 1996, a gang of four men callingthemselves the Phineas Priesthood conducted two bank robberies inSpokane, Washington, and bombed the Spokane City Hall, a localnewspaper, and Planned Parenthood clinic but without causing injuriesto anyone. Three men, Verne J. Merrill, Charles Barbee, and RobertBerry, were identified and arrested on 8 October 1996 after a foiledbank robbery attempt near Portland, Oregon. After a mistrial on 2 April1997, the three were eventually convicted in Federal District Court inSpokane on 24 July 1997 on charges of conspiracy, illegal possessionof hand grenades, and interstate transportation of stolen vehicles. Afourth suspect in the Planned Parenthood bombing, Brian Ratigan, wastried and convicted separately later. On 21 May 1999 the Ninth CircuitFederal Court of Appeals upheld the convictions of all four men.On 10 August 1999 a white supremacist, Buford O’Neal Furrow,opened fire with a semiautomatic gun on the North Valley JewishCommunity Center in Los Angeles, injuring five people and laterkilling a postal worker. Although Furrow did not identify himself asa Phineas priest at the time of his arrest, a search of his car revealed acopy of Hoskins’s book along with five rifles and hundreds of roundsof ammunition.PHYSIOLOGICAL (STIMULUS-REINFORCEMENT) MODELOF TERRORISM. A psychological model explaining recruitmentinto terrorism, as well as the terrorist contagion effect that uses aphysiological model of individual-level response to terrorist stimuliseeking also to take account of social experiences and the upbringingof those attracted to terrorism. Kent L. Oots and Thomas C. Wiegele,in their article “Terrorist and Victim: Psychiatric and PhysiologicalApproaches from a Social Science Perspective” (Terrorism: AnInternational Journal 8, no. 1 [1985]: 1-32), noted four factors that