No-Contest Plea Entered in 1984 Explosives Case

A Northridge man pleaded no contest Friday to felony charges stemming from the confiscation of an enormous cache of explosives at his house during the 1984 Olympic Games.

Under a plea-bargain agreement, Richard Max Cole, 28, will be sentenced Sept. 19 by Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Michael Tynan on seven counts of possessing explosive devices and one count each of possessing armor-piercing ammunition and deadly weapons.

Authorities were led to Cole, a gas station employee at the time, by John Steven Blackwell, 40, a self-styled anti-terrorist arrested for tailing a bus carrying Olympic athletes in a car containing five homemade bombs.

Blackwell, who told authorities that he received the bombs from Cole, said he was a “street warrior” attempting to protect the athletes from street criminals. Blackwell was sentenced to four years in state prison after he pleaded guilty to one count each of possessing a destructive device in public and possessing an outlawed martial arts weapon.

In accepting Cole’s plea, the district attorney’s office agreed to drop charges of possessing destructive devices in public in exchange for the no-contest plea on possession of explosive devices. The latter carries a maximum prison term of three years, half the maximum for possessing destructive devices in public.

The cache of explosives found at Cole’s home has been described by prosecutors as the largest ever seized in Los Angeles, capable of blowing up much of his Northridge neighborhood.

Included were rifles, shotguns, automatic pistols, 107 pounds of gunpowder and 1,700 feet of detonation cord. “I just collect the stuff,” Cole told authorities at the time.