Thomas Lavy

In 2003, Richard Sand wrote a fiction book in which the protagonist Lucas Rook was responsible for arranging the "suicide" of Lavy, who was portrayed as a poisoner. In March 1996, three months after the raid that led to Lavy's suicide, the United States Senate characterized the FBI's belief about the incident, noting that Lavy may have been trying to "fund and arm an underground terrorist militia". However, the report also confused the contents of Lavy's vehicle in 1993 and contents of his house following the 1995 raid. Ultimately, Hauer blamed Lavy's death on the actions of Robert Bundry, the "over-zealous" Alaskan prosecutor, and an unnamed FBI agent similarly enthused at the idea of taking Lavy down.

In the spring of 1995, FBI agent Thomas Lynch, previously involved in the ricin investigation of the Minnesota Patriots Council militia, was transferred to the FBI's Anchorage bureau in Alaska. Once there he learned of the Lavy-border-crossing-incident two years earlier and requested a grand jury convene to charge Lavy. On December 12, a grand jury recommended prosecution of Lavy.

He crossed from Alaska into Canada in his truck at the Beaver Creek, Yukon border crossing. on 8 April 1993. Lavy was "honest and forthright" when he explained to Customs officials that he had a shotgun, two .22 calibre rifles and a muzzleloading rifle, 20,000 rounds of ammunition, $89,000 and 130 grams (approximately 0.28 of a pound) of ricin, considered third amongst the world's most deadly substances. In his car were two books, one describing how to extract ricin from castor beans, and another discussing ways to poison with toxic compounds; likely the books Silent Death and another some media reports dubbed The Poisoner's Handbook and others dubbed The Prisoner's Handbook. There were also reports mentioning a third book, titled Get Even: The Complete Book of Dirty Tricks.

Lavy was arrested without a struggle and was "completely truthful" and "completely cooperative" in explaining the contents of his house to the officials. Since the search of his house turned up only legal weapons, and even his simple possession of Ricin two years earlier was completely legal, he was charged with "possession of a toxin with intent to use it as a weapon" under the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989. Despite the charge, police found no ricin at the time of the arrest, although they did find several castor beans in a tin designed for Christmas fruitcake, which he had purchased by mail from a woman in Oregon. Other contents seized at the house included several collector-model rifles, five pistols, several thousand dollars in cash and Krugerrand gold.

The Associated Press dubbed Lavy a survivalist; his family denied he had any such leanings. CQ Press claimed that Lavy was an alleged white supremacist, based on unsubstantiated reports that "Neo-Nazi" literature may have been found in his vehicle. In the 1970s, Lavy worked as a radio repairman for Motorola in Oklahoma City. He also lived in Troy, Missouri before taking a job as an electrician for an oil company on the Alyeska Pipeline in Valdez, Alaska. In the autumn of 1992, he visited his sister Betty Krieg and her husband Bill in Harvester, Missouri, and told them that he hoped to retire and purchase a small property where he could raise chickens and tend a garden. Several months later, he announced that he had found the perfect place, a cottage on six acres of land in Onia, Arkansas. Lavy packed his belongings for the move south in April 1993.

Thomas Lewis Lavy (December 18, 1941 – December 23, 1995) was an American farmer who attempted to cross the Canada–US border into Canada from Alaska with several firearms, ricin toxin, and $89,000 in cash in 1993. He was turned away at the border, and the toxin impounded. Lavy claimed at the time that the ricin was to poison the coyotes on his farm. More than two years later he was arrested by the FBI on terrorism charges relating to the border incident, and Lavy hanged himself in his jail cell four days later.