By Edward Marshall, Journal Staff Writer
A former Martinsburg attorney was arrested in Virginia Wednesday afternoon by officers in Henrico County, Va., in connection to a series of arsons and bomb threats that occurred in Martinsburg in 2007 and 2008, police said Thursday.

Ashley R. Shreve, 28, currently an attorney in Richmond, was arrested without incident in Richmond after Berkeley County Sheriff’s Department investigators obtained warrants for Shreve’s arrest and coordinated her arrest with investigators in Henrico County.

Lt. B.F. Hall, of the Berkeley County Sheriff’s Department’s Criminal Investigations Division, obtained warrants charging Shreve with one count of second-degree arson, attempted arson and terroristic threats. Shreve previously lived in the Spring Mills area.

“We’re not really going to go into motive. We’re not going to release that information right now,” Hall said.

The arrest brings a conclusion to a nearly three-year investigation, which began in September 2007 after a suspected arson occurred at the law firm of McNeer, Highland, McMunn and Vernor at 275 Aikens Center in Martinsburg. Investigators learned that the fire intentionally was set to a box of files in an office belonging to one of the firm’s legal assistants.

Shreve was employed as an attorney at the law office, police said, but it wasn’t until later in the investigation that she became a suspect.

The law firm, as well as other nearby businesses, received bomb threats over the course of the next several months. Investigators with the Sheriff’s Department also received two letters in the mail taunting them for not making an arrest in the arson. Investigators were able to recover evidence from the original arson and from the subsequent bomb threats.

In April 2008, investigators were again called to the law firm for a reported attempted arson. Hall and then Chief Deputy Kenneth “Kenny” Lemaster Jr., who now is Berkeley County’s sheriff, responded to the law firm and conducted the investigation.

“At the beginning of it we didn’t know it, was actually internal. It took a little bit of investigation to determine that it was possibly internal,” Lemaster said.

Hall later was notified by the West Virginia State Police forensic lab that a DNA sample had been obtained from an envelope used to send a bomb threat.

After Hall learned that Shreve had moved to the Richmond area after the April 2008 attempted arson, he contacted Henrico County investigators and received assistance in obtaining a search warrant for Shreve’s DNA. The DNA obtained from Shreve was sent to the West Virginia State Police forensic lab to compare to evidence from the bomb threat envelope. Hall was notified in December that the DNA samples were a match.

Shreve is currently being held in the Henrico County jail while awaiting extradition back to Berkeley County. She is expected to be returned to West Virginia early next week.

“We’re glad that we could bring closure to the victims in this case, the victims being the lawyers and the clerks out at the law firm,” Hall said. “They were basically terrorized for a year or more.”

For more details regarding this case: Journal-news.net.

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DeWitt lawyer sentenced for not filing tax returns
By Jim O’Hara
The Post-Standard

DeWitt lawyer Bonnie Strunk was sentenced this morning to a three-year conditional discharge for failing to file tax returns for 2008.

That plead deal to a felony charge of fourth-degree criminal tax fraud satisfied other charges that Strunk stole the identity of her former law partner’s husband to open up a credit card account.

Strunk today maintained she was innocent of any wrongdoing involving those allegations but agreed to pay restitution in the credit card case.

She also claimed she was the victim of “malicious, fraudulent and criminal conduct” by Faith and Robert Seidenberg. Faith Seidenberg is Strunk’s former law partner. Dr. Robert Seidenberg is her psychiatrist husband and the victim in the identity-theft case.

Strunk and the Seidenbergs have made local news for decades as crusaders for civil liberties. The local chapter of the Civil Liberties Union has named an award for Faith Seidenberg. Her husband was the first male president of a local chapter of the National Organization for Women. Strunk, a one-time candidate for district attorney, has championed gay rights.

The prosecution contended Strunk used Dr. Seidenberg’s identity to open up a Capitol One MasterCard account and then stole about $17,000 by using the account to pay veterinary bills in Georgia, PayPal accounts in California and for airline tickets on JetBlue Airways.

The prosecution filed the felony tax fraud charge after efforts to work out a plea deal in the identity theft case fell through. The prosecution contended Strunk failed to file personal tax returns in April 2009 and that she had a tax liability of about $11,777 for 2008.

For more details regarding this story, visit Syracuse.com.

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