Hours after convicted arsonist Dustin Nehl, 31, and his wife Jenni Nehl, 44 — a trained National Weather Service Skywarn Weather Spotter specially trained in windstorms — were arrested Sunday by Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department authorities in the Palisades Fire evacuation site, allegedly wearing bunker gear and driving a decommissioned firetruck they said was part of a nonexistent company in Oregon, the FBI reignited the manhunt for a fugitive domestic eco-terrorist from the same area, Los Angeles has learned.
That fugitive, Josephine Sunshine Overaker, who the FBI says once worked as a wildfire firefighter, was a leader in a group the FBI calls ”the most prolific domestic terrorism cell of the time,” known as ”The Family.” Federal prosecutors have charged Overaker, and 10 of her co-conspirators, with a plethora of arsons, including a devastating fire that leveled a Vail, Colorado ski resort in 1998. The indictment came after the FBI began a clandestine investigation known as Operation Backfire using agents from Joint Terrorism Task Force to infiltrate the group in Oregon, Washington, Arizona, Virginia and New York, which led to the 2006 indictment.
“The Family’s 1998 arson attack on a ski resort in Vail, Colorado — which caused estimated damages of $26 million — was its most notorious act,” the FBI says…