Portal:Oregon/Selected article/21

The 1985 Rajneeshee assassination plot was a conspiracy by high-ranking followers of Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (now known as Osho) to assassinate Charles Turner, the then-United States Attorney for the District of Oregon. Osho's chief lieutenant, Ma Anand Sheela, assembled the hit squad after Turner was appointed to investigate illegal activity at Rajneeshpuram. Turner headed an investigation into the 1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack in The Dalles, Oregon, and also investigated charges of wiretapping, immigration fraud and sham marriages. The conspirators obtained false identification to purchase handguns out-of-state, stalked Turner, and planned to kill him near his workplace in Portland, Oregon. The assassination plot was uncovered as a result of an investigation by federal law enforcement into the bioterror attack in The Dalles, and Turner was never harmed. Prosecution of the conspirators began in 1990, when a federal grand jury brought indictments against several of the key players. Some had fled the country, and extradition proceedings against the perpetrators and subsequent prosecution and conviction was not completed for sixteen years. The final conspirator was convicted in 2006, when Catherine Jane Stork agreed to return to the United States from Germany in order to be allowed to visit her ill son in Australia. The perpetrators received sentences ranging from five years probation to five years in federal prison.