Man rigs property with ‘Indiana Jones’ booby trap after losing home in lawsuit, feds say
A man lost his Oregon home as part of a lawsuit, then rigged the property with an “Indiana Jones”-style booby trap — a round hot tub ready to roll — out of “bitterness,” federal prosecutors said.
Gregory Lee Rodvelt, 72, planted other booby traps inside and around the home, including animal traps and a “homemade shotgun device” that fired and struck an FBI bomb technician, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Oregon.
The discharged shotgun shell left the agent’s leg profusely bleeding and sent him to a hospital, where an X-ray revealed a pellet stuck below his knee in September 2018, prosecutors wrote in court documents.
Rodvelt rigged his former property with the deadly devices after learning his old home was going to be sold, according to prosecutors.
“Fueled by anger and bitterness,” Rodvelt booby-trapped the property “with intent to seriously injure someone,” Nathan J. Lichvarcik, the chief of the attorney’s office’s Eugene and Medford branches, said in a statement.
“Unfortunately, his trap worked,” Lichvarcik said.
Rodvelt was sentenced to 12 years and six months in prison on Dec. 6 in the case, the attorney’s office announced in a news release.
In June, he was convicted of assaulting a federal officer and using and discharging a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence, prosecutors said.
McClatchy News contacted federal public defenders representing Rodvelt on Dec. 7 and didn’t receive an immediate response.
In a sentencing memorandum, they wrote “although (Rodvelt’s) conduct was extraordinarily stupid, juvenile, and reckless,” he never intended to harm law enforcement.
A scene from ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’
In August 2018, Rodvelt visited his former Oregon home while on pretrial release on assault charges in Arizona, prosecutors wrote in sentencing documents.
He convinced Arizona officials to allow him to travel for legal proceedings connected to his Oregon home, but “he made it too late,” according to prosecutors.
“By the time he arrived,” a court-appointed person was preparing to sell the home, prosecutors said.
This made Rodvelt angry, according to sentencing documents.
The next day, the court-appointed individual and an investigator drove over homemade spike strips placed in the home’s driveway and spotted a sign “warning of improvised munitions,” the government’s sentencing memo says.
FBI agents and Oregon State Police bomb technicians responded to the property on Sept. 7, 2018, and faced an array of traps — including one “much like a scene from the movie ’Indiana Jones — Raiders of the Lost Ark,’” an affidavit says.
As they walked up to the home, they noticed a hot tub on its side near a gate, according to prosecutors who said FBI technicians realized it would roll toward whoever opened the gate.
Rodvelt later said in an interview that the hot tub trap was set up like the “stone rolling down in the Indiana Jones movie,” the affidavit says.
FBI agents and law enforcement officers also found steel animal traps outside the home that had windows “barred from the inside,” according to prosecutors.
An unloaded, modified rat trap was found inside the garage that could “accept a shotgun shell” and would be triggered when the garage door was opened, prosecutors said.
After bomb technicians and officers used an explosive to break open the home’s front door, they entered, according to prosecutors.
When an agent bumped into a wheelchair sitting in the front entryway, it triggered the shotgun device that fired a shell at the FBI bomb technician, prosecutors said.
Rodvelt “went through great efforts to set intricate and deadly concealed traps to prevent FBI agents from doing their job,” Kieran L. Ramsey, FBI special agent in charge of the Portland field office, said in the news release.
“These were no joke,” Ramsey added.
Rodvelt’s prison sentence will be followed by three years of supervised release, according to prosecutors.
This story was originally published December 7, 2023 at 2:29 PM with the headline "Man rigs property with ‘Indiana Jones’ booby trap after losing home in lawsuit, feds say."
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