A Mountain Grove man was sentenced Friday to 10 years in federal prison without parole for mailing a pipe bomb with the intent to injure and intimidate another person, said John F. Wood, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Missouri.
Donald W. Schamber, 60, pleaded guilty on Feb. 8, to mailing a pipe bomb. He received the statutory maximum sentence for the violation.
A postal carrier found the pipe bomb, which was wrapped in brown packing paper and addressed to the West Plains Police Department, in a mail collection box in West Plains on June 1, 2007. The alert mail carrier notified law enforcement officers about the suspicious package, which was X-rayed to reveal the pipe bomb. The functional explosive device was designed to initiate upon the opening of the box.
Investigating officers discovered materials to make the pipe bomb were purchased from a Wal-Mart Supercenter in West Plains. Photos from the store’s surveillance video were placed on a reward poster, which was distributed to the media.
Two days after the package was discovered, a citizen contacted the West Plains Police Department and identified Schamber from the reward poster. He was arrested the next day when he was encountered by law enforcement officers in front of the police department.
Schamber, a Texas County resident at the time of the crime, told investigators that he mailed the pipe bomb as part of a plot to incriminate his ex-wife’s current husband, in an effort to restore his relationship with his ex-wife. Schamber deposited the remnants of the items used to make the bomb in his ex-wife’s yard as part of the plot.