Man sentenced for false terror claim

ST. LOUIS -- An Illinois man was sentenced Wednesday to 14 months in prison for falsely telling the FBI that his former business partner planned to crash airplanes into the Super Bowl, Fair St. Louis, the Gateway Arch and a Cardinals baseball game.

Henry W. Hersman, 43, of Wood River, Ill., was also sentenced to three years of supervised release after his prison term.

Hersman pleaded guilty in March to one federal felony count of making a false threat of planned use of explosives to kill, and one count of making false statements to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

U.S. Attorney Ray Gruender said that on Oct. 5, 2001 -- less than a month after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks -- Hersman, using the name Pete Myers, called FBI agents in Fairview Heights, Ill. He told agents his former business partner and his brother planned to steal an airplane from an airport in Chesterfield, Mo., and crash it into the Gateway Arch on Feb. 3, 2002 -- Super Bowl Sunday.

Hersman also claimed in the telephone call that the two planned to arrange for a second plane to crash into the Superdome in New Orleans during the Super Bowl. Hersman said they planned to recruit terminally ill Afghani citizens to pilot the planes.

On June 4, 2002, in a phone call to the FBI in St. Louis, Hersman said the same two men had recruited terminally ill Pakistanis to crash a plane into either the Fair St. Louis Fourth of July celebration on the Arch grounds or into Busch Stadium during a baseball game, Gruender said.

Hersman later admitted that he was involved in a business dispute with his ex-partner and wanted to cause the man "a little grief," Gruender said.

In an unrelated case in December, Hersman was charged with aggravated arson and five counts of attempted murder. Authorities said he crashed a burning car into a rural Macoupin County, Ill., home, where his wife was staying with the couple's two children.

Authorities also suspect Hersman of setting fire to his family's unoccupied house in Wood River, stabbing his family's dog to death and leaving its body on top of a car abandoned on a rural road near his in-laws' house.