JBLM officer threatened to blow up state capitol
Mar 13, 2012, 2:18 PM | Updated: 5:11 pm
A lieutenant colonel from Joint Base Lewis-McChord allegedly threatened to blow up the state capitol and pay a hit man to kill his wife and a fellow officer.
Lt. Col. Robert Underwood is in the middle of a “nasty divorce” and custody battle. He allegedly told his daughter he was going to do something “big and they’d see it on television.”
“There’s something about divorces, particularly rancorous
divorces, that make people act crazy,” Pierce County
Prosecutor Mark Lindquist told 97.3 KIRO FM’s Ron and Don Show.
Underwood was arrested late Monday night.
“More information came to light that made us believe that
we need to get him into custody right away because there’s just too much specific information out there that if any one of these things were to happen, that someone would be hurt or killed,” said Pierce County Sheriff’s Detective Ed Troyer.
Court documents also say a woman Underwood was involved
with found a naked picture of his daughter on his laptop. The woman apparently also went to Underwood’s wife and told her he paid a hit man $150,000 to kill her and a fellow officer.
Underwood recently underwent a psychological evaluation, according to court documents, and was cleared of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. However, when he was a child he witnessed his mother kill his two siblings before she shot him several times and left him for dead.
Underwood was arraigned on three counts of felony harassment on Tuesday afternoon. He pleaded not guilty and was ordered held on $250,000 bail.
