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Suspect in Colorado anti-evolution death threats case is missing

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Saturday, July 21, 2007

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Young Earth Creationist Menachem "Michael" Korn, suspected of sending death threats to various biology faculty and others at the University of Colorado at Boulder, is apparently missing or on the lam. Although the police said they will not name the individual in question until the person is arrested, previous reports and comments by faculty and staff at the university made it clear that Korn is the man in question.

Action was taken recently after the threatening behavior escalated and the letters passed beyond being a nuisance. It had gotten to the point where one graduate student and one faculty member were scared about entering the department out of concern for their safety. Korn, a former Messianic Jew who now self-identifies as Christian, allegedly sent various anti-evolution letters to faculty at the university.

... 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

—Menachem "Michael" Korn

Pictures of Korn have now been distributed to faculty with instructions to call police if Korn is spotted. 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 and has sent copies of those emails to other media sources, such as Wired. Korn later contacted Wired by telephone where he claimed to be unavailable since he was "traveling" and refused to discuss the letters in detail but spent most of the discussion focusing on claimed flaws in evolution.

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 of what legally constitute death threats. 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." Jeffry Mitton, a professor at the University, has filed for a restraining order against Korn.

Although the United States has had vigorous debate over the Creation-evolution controversy, and anti-evolutionists have engaged in threats and physical violence in some heavily Islamic countries such as Turkey, to date there have been no serious violent incidents in the United States. One possible exception is the unconfirmed attack on Paul Mirecki, a professor at the University of Kansas, in 2005. However, this may have been in response to other comments made by Mirecki that were about the more general culture wars and the Religious right in the United States and not about evolution in particular.

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This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.
Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.
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