Thurmont
Middle School teacher guilty
By James Rada Jr.
News Editor
FREDERICK,
Md. – Thurmont Middle School teacher Michelle Dohm was
found guilty on Monday April 2 on five counts of making false
bomb threats to five different students at the school.
“The
defendant is in fact responsible for the creation and delivery
of these five documents,” Frederick County Circuit Court
Judge Julie Stevenson Solt said after hearing a statement
of facts read into the record. The documents were essentially
bomb threats sent to five different students in Thurmont.
Solt
presided over the trial, which lasted less than an hour. Dohm
pled not guilty to an agreed-upon statement of facts. Because
of this, Dohm gave up her right to a jury trial and the right
to hear and call witnesses. On the prosecution side, the state
agreed to ask for no more than 18 months of prison time in
the Frederick County Detention Center, though each count carried
a maximum penalty of 10 years and/or $10,000.
A soft-spoken
Dohm took the witness stand to answer questions from Solt
to make sure she understood the implications of the agreement
she had made.
Dohm,
a sixth-grade teacher at Thurmont Middle School who has been
on unpaid administrative leave since Nov. 2005, was indicted
in December 2005 on charges stemming from October incidents
where she sent letters to students that intimated a bomb threat
and death threats against the students. Many of the letters
used the phrase, “Tick tock. Tick tock. Is it a bomb
or is it a clock?”
States
Attorney Charlie Smith read the statement of facts into the
record. It detailed the progression of the investigation and
the unfolding of the events.
It began
in September 2005 with a sealed letter Dohm said a woman had
asked her to give to the administration. The letter told the
administration to check a Landon Routzahn’s locker for
knives. Dohm could only give a vague description of the woman
who asked her to deliver the note.
“To
this day, this woman has never re-appeared at Thurmont Middle
School nor has she been identified,” Smith said.
The
tone of the letters escalated from terms like “suffer”,
“bound and tied” and “shoot you” to
the bomb intimations.
An additional
incident in April 2006 was the basis of one of the five charges
against Dohm. This incident came after Dohm had already been
indicted four months earlier.
Forensic
evidence that included microscopic examination of the stamps
on the mailed threats and handwriting analysis linked Dohm
to some of the letters and the letters to each other. Through
the connections, Smith said, “it is more likely than
not that the defendant prepared the note that was left in
the boys’ bathroom in Thurmont Middle School on Nov.
21, 2005, as well as the note left on the Routzahn’s
vehicle on Sept. 30, 2005. Consequently, it is more likely
than not that the defendant prepared the notes that were delivered
on Apr. 21, 2006 by U.S. Postal Service to both Dennis Tokar
and Kenny Kober.”
Other
circumstantial evidence linked Dohm to the situation, including
knowing information she shouldn’t have known or being
seen where letters appeared shortly before their appearance.
In one instance, temporary printing files on Dohm’s
school computer showed that some of the threatening letters
had been printed from it on a day when there were no students
in the school, but Dohm had been seen at her computer.
An April
2006 search and seizure of her home yielded the stamps that
were connected to the ones used to mail letters to students
and handwritten practice threats.
“I
would wager to say the entire community is offended by what
she did,” Smith said after the trial.
Dohm
will be sentenced at a hearing on June 26. At that time, families
of the victims are expected to make their wishes known. Dohm
also has to undergo a psychiatric evaluation before then.
“The
only thing that is really perplexing is why she did it,”
Smith said. He added that the prosecution has some theories,
which they will present at the sentencing hearing, but they
are only theories. Dohm is the only one who knows her reasoning.
- See
more ('timeline of events' and 'teacher
notes to students')
