| The suspect being sought by police for making threats against biology lab faculty at a Colorado university now appears to be on the run.
Suspect in Colorado Evolution Threats is Missing Menachem "Michael" Korn, a member of the Young Earth Creationist group suspected of sending death threats to various biology faculty and others at the University of Colorado at Boulder, is apparently missing. Although police said they will not identify their suspect until an arrest is made, previous reports and comments by University faculty and staff have indicated that Korn is the man in question.
Korn, a former Messianic Jew who now self-identifies as Christian, allegedly sent various anti-evolution letters to faculty at the university. Police were called-in after these letters crossed the line from being merely a nuisance. It has now gotten to the point where at least one graduate student and one faculty member have said they are scared to enter the department out of concern for their safety. Jeffry Mitton, a professor at the University, has filed for a restraining order against Korn.
Pictures of Korn have been distributed to faculty, with instructions to call police if he is seen. Before going missing, Korn had refused to respond in detail to media requests for his side of the story, but he had sent emails to the Denver Post. In addition, he sent copies of those emails to Wired. Korn later contacted Wired by phone, claiming that he was unavailable because he was "traveling." He refused to discuss the letters in detail, spending most of the discussion focusing on flaws in evolutionary theory.
A university spokesperson has speculated that one reason police have been reluctant to formally name Korn is that the threats may have not crossed the line into what legally constitutes a death threat. For example, Korn said that "He [pastor Jerry Gibson] said that every true Christian should be ready and willing to take up arms to kill the enemies of Christian society. But I believe it is far more effective to take up a pen to kill the enemies of Truth."
Although the U.S. has had vigorous debates over the creation-evolution controversy, and anti-evolutionists have engaged in threats and physical violence in Islamic countries like Turkey, there have been no serious violent incidents in the United States, with the possible exception of a 2005 attack on Paul Mirecki, a professor at the University of Kansas. However, this attack may have been in response to other comments made by Mirecki that were about the more general culture wars and the religious right and not about evolution in particular.
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2007 by AlternativeApproaches.com
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