Background: Homemade pipe bombs seized from Logan Sea Pallister (via U.S. Justice Department). Inset: Logan Sea Pallister booking photo (via Helena Police Department).
Logan Sea Pallister, a man who amassed an arsenal of weapons and fawned over the Columbine High School shooting before vowing to shoot up and bomb schools in Montana, was sentenced to seven years and six months in prison this week.
Prosecutors originally sought 10 years.
According to a sentencing memorandum from federal prosecutors, when Helena Police arrested Pallister in the early hours of May 31, 2022 — it was close to 4 a.m. — he was exiting his home wearing a black trench coat and carrying a bag. He also had eight loaded firearms concealed on his body including AR-style rifles equipped with high capacity magazines.
In his car, police found nine more guns, body armor and trigger modifications for his firearms that would make them shoot faster. There were four homemade pipe bombs and a jerry-rigged silencing device he made from an oil can as well. Inside his home after his arrest, police found yet more equipment to modify firearms and more supplies to make explosives.
“To be clear, the United States cannot unequivocally tell this Court that Pallister was on his way to carry out an attack the morning he was arrested. In fact, additional parts to manufacture more pipe bombs arrived at his home several days after his arrest, indicating he was probably still in the preparation phase of his plan. What is clear, however, is that Pallister had both the stated desire to carry out an attack and was methodically acquiring everything he would need to achieve his aim,” prosecutors wrote last month.
“In short, Pallister had clearly set in motion a chain of events that likely would have ended in tragedy,” they added.
The Montana man and former fast-food chain employee was only arrested because a teenage co-worker had “both the foresight and the courage” to report him to police after he threatened her directly, prosecutors said. The specific fast food chain was not identified in court records.
When his co-worker called police, she said Pallister had multiple guns and bombs and had discussed committing an attack on a local high school. She also told police that Pallister kept guns in his car and that he allegedly showed the teen a homemade pipe bomb after retrieving it from the vehicle. She told authorities that he threatened to kill her if she reported him.
Pallister has denied ever making the threat.
But prosecutors say the man “regularly harassed his co-workers, engaged in aggressive, violent and inappropriate behavior, and discussed an ongoing fantasy to commit a Columbine-style mass shooting at a high school.”
“His fixation on Columbine led Pallister to acquire clothing and weapons that mirrored those worn by the Columbine attackers. He also discussed details of how he planned to plant bombs around the school to maximize the effect of his attack and claimed to have a stockpile of firearms and ammunition,” his sentencing memorandum notes.
The threats are “unequivocally serious” at a time when “crises involving active shooters and other threats to schools continue to have a significant impact in schools, and even a false report of an active shooter requires an immediately, typically traumatizing response,” prosecutors urged U.S. District Court Judge Brian Morris, an appointee of former President Barack Obama.
Court records show that Pallister lived in a property adjacent to a local Montana courthouse. The Independent Record reported that authorities found eight firearms in his home including five handguns and three semiautomatic rifles. Some of the guns could be equipped with silencers.
As noted first by the outlet, Pallister’s arrest on May 31, 2022, came just one week after the massacre in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 children and two teachers died after a shooter went on a rampage inside Robb Elementary School.
Pallister pleaded guilty to making homemade explosives as well as possession of an unregistered silence this January. With the federal charges adjudicated, the Montana man still faces similar state charges but he does not appear in court to face those until September.
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