http://www.katu.com/news/story.asp?ID=67123 May 7, 2004
Mayfield's stepmother says 'he has always been a delight'
By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI
PORTLAND, Ore. - The first American to be arrested in connection with the deadly train bombing in Madrid is a former Army lieutenant who lives in a nondescript home in a Portland suburb, a convert to Islam who faithfully attends a nearby mosque.
Brandon Mayfield was born in Oregon and grew up in Kansas, family members said. His wife trusts in her husband's innocence; his parents say he has never ever traveled to Spain.
But law enforcement officials in Spain said Friday that Mayfield's fingerprints had been found on bags containing detonators of the kind used in the March 11 attack.
He is being held as a material witness, which allows the government to hold him without filing formal charges, to allow time for further investigation.
"He has always been a delight," said his stepmother, Ruth Alexander, in Halstead, Kan., where Mayfield grew up.
"This is positively unbelievable. He was never in any trouble growing up," she said in an interview with an Associated Press reporter.
She recalled a compassionate child who once kept a pet grasshopper.
(How pathetic and stupid - why didn't get this delightful child a puppy?)
Her stepson went into the Army right after he graduated from high school, "because he felt that was the right thing to do," she said, and was posted overseas in Germany.
Mayfield met his Egyptian-born wife, Mona, while stationed near Tacoma, Wash., at Fort Lewis. Records from Washoe County, Nev., show the two were married in 1998. Mayfield converted to Islam after marriage, Alexander said.
Mayfield, who is 37, comes from a family of non-church-goers, Alexander told The Associated Press.
"When they started having children, he thought they should have some religion to have the family focus on," she said.
(They stated having children in 1989, but didn't get married until 1998. He converted to Islam after marriage - at least a dozen years after they starting making kids together? I question the accuracy of this report.)
Leaders at the Bilal Mosque in Beaverton, Ore., said he would show up regularly for prayer on Fridays, and that he helped congregants who needed legal advice.
Mayfield passed the Oregon bar in 2000 and largely kept a low profile in the Portland legal community until 2002, when he volunteered to represent Muslim terrorism suspect Jeffrey Battle in a child custody case.
Battle was among six Portland area residents who were sentenced last year on charges of conspiring to wage war against the United States by helping al-Qaida and the former Taliban rulers of Afghanistan.
(Two of those terrorist wannabes also attended Mayfield's mosque.)
Mayfield lost one of his biological brothers to leukemia, Alexander said, while another still lives in Halstead, and teaches art at a public school.
Mayfield's paternal grandmother, Lydia Mayfield, was well-known in Hutchinson for her plainspokeness, Ruth Alexander said, and was once investigated by the FBI for a letter to the editor published in the local newspaper in which she threatened the president.
(When was this? Which President?)
Records show Mayfield spent a single semester at Lewis & Clark law school in Portland, but that he received his degree from Washburn University in Kansas, according to Dena Anson, the director of university relations at the Kansas school.
Neighbors said the Mayfields moved into a repossessed home in Aloha, Ore., fixed it up and then held a dinner party. The Mayfields had so little furniture then, neighbor Arlene Witt recalled, that she and her husband sat on the couch and Brandon and Mona Mayfield sat on the floor.
In Portland, Mayfield did work for low-income clients.
The two have three children - Shane, Sharia, and Samir, ages 15, 12 and 10, respectively.
(According to this report, they were married in 1998. What does their mosque teach about having 3 children out of wedlock?)
AP Correspondent Roxana Hegeman contributed to this report from Halstead, Kan.
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Another KATU report from yesterday included this:
In addition to the raid at Brandon Mayfield's home, KATU News learned agents also searched the Bilal Mosque in Beaverton.
A woman who lives at the apartment complex next to the mosque was at her kitchen window this morning and says she saw the whole thing, and now cannot believe what she is hearing.
"It's horrifying. It's absolutely horrifying to look out the window and see that they could possibly be doing any kind of… I don't know," Aurora McCann told KATU News.
McCann was home for an early lunch when she saw the search from her kitchen window.
"I saw a couple of cop cars - one unmarked. I think it was black… it was either black or white… an unmarked car out here and a couple of people from the mosque - older gentlemen out there just talking."
At the time, McCann says she did not think much of the activity going on outside her window.
"They weren't engaging in conversation closely. I mean, they were pretty standoffish as far as, you know, discussing the topics, but I couldn't hear anything. I just assumed that it was maybe somebody that got pulled over," she said.
Hearing that it was actually part of an ongoing FBI investigation comes as a shock.
"This close - I mean the school bus stops right out here in front of this apartment building to pick up kids for school."
(Okay, so McCann is mostly a ninny. Didn't this rocket scientist realize that the mosque next door financed the trip overseas of 2 wannabe terrorists who are now serving time for attempting to join Al Quaeda fighters against the US?)
RW remember my question about progressives and if they were strong in that part of Kansas?
Read this interesting little tidbit:
"Mayfield's paternal grandmother, Lydia Mayfield, was well-known in Hutchinson for her plainspokeness, Ruth Alexander said, and was once investigated by the FBI for a letter to the editor published in the local newspaper in which she threatened the president."
This sounds like some of the progressives I have met over my lifetime when they decide to in the open re their hostility towards America.