During the visitation, Vilhelmsen says, Northrup handed her a packet of documents. He asked her to drive off prison property and open the packet and take the documents to the Graham County sheriff's department if she felt it was necessary.
Five days later, a friend at her workplace, Dunlap Oil in Willcox, informed her that she had been contacted by Fort Grant correctional officers who said they were investigating Vilhelmsen for fraudulent activities at the fort.
Jackie Mercandetti
A piece of a building at the Fort Grant dump.
Jackie Mercandetti
Inmates finishing work on the Fort Grant dump in late May.
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According to Vilhelmsen, the friend said the two guards had visited her home and asked her to listen in on Vilhelmsen's phone conversations and monitor her activities in the office, particularly Vilhelmsen's use of the company fax machine.
The friend confirmed in an interview with New Times that she was contacted by officers, but asked that her name not be used in this story. The friend told the officers she would not spy on Vilhelmsen.
Vilhelmsen found out the next day that her boss had twice been contacted by correctional officers about Vilhelmsen's use of the Dunlap Oil fax machine. Vilhelmsen had sent faxes to Northrup at the prison during her break times using a calling card, her boss told the officers. It was not an issue.
Vilhelmsen and those around her saw the "investigation" as nothing more than attempts to intimidate her into keeping quiet about the dump. She sent an angry letter to DOC and other state officials.
"It appears that . . . I now am enjoying reprisals set forth by DOC or their staff," she wrote.
In the meantime, inmates were becoming more vocal about their health concerns over the asbestos.
Abney says that one member of the construction crew complained about nosebleeds and other health problems to a correctional officer and the officer told him "to shut up or you'll end up buried out there too."
Other inmates say they were told that if they did not shut up, they would be charged with trying to incite a riot.
In early April, inmates were told by Neubauer and other landfill supervisors that they needed to speed up completion of the job because inspectors of some sort would soon be visiting the fort. Abney says he was told by Ray Snow to take shovels and bury all the remaining medical bags that could be seen strewn across the dump.
"He told me EPA or somebody was coming," Abney says.
In fact, the rumor was wrong. Inspectors apparently were called out to the Safford area to inspect a different dump.
But at the end of April, the dump did get inspected. Abney says Meg Savage, an assistant director for DOC who oversees prison operations in the Safford area, came to Fort Grant.
Abney says he overheard Savage angrily asking the prison's warden and deputy warden who had authorized the material to be buried.
DOC spokesman Mike Arra tells New Times that Savage "never made any such visit" and that she wasn't available for an interview.
Neubauer, however, says he met Savage at the work site that day.
"What the heck are they thinking?" Neubauer says. "She introduced herself to me at the landfill. We had to get the whole fort in tip-top shape for her visit. I know who she is. And I know she was there."
About the time of Savage's visit, Abney decided he could no longer just stand by as he and fellow workers got sick. Abney marched into the fort headquarters and demanded to see one of the fort's top supervisors, Captain Jim Bond.
Earlier this month, that supervisor refused to answer questions about the dump, instead referring all questions to the DOC's public information officers in Phoenix.
In mid-May, two weeks after his discussion with Bond, Abney was released from prison. With help from the Vilhelmsens, Abney landed a construction job and found an apartment near downtown Phoenix.
"I'd like to put all this behind me," Abney says. "But I promised the guys who are still out at Fort Grant that I would tell our story. There are just too many people affected for me to walk away quietly."
The Vilhelmsens and the Fort Grant inmates now are hoping for a full investigation by state or federal authorities of Fort Grant and its landfill.
"Whoever is responsible for this, they need to pay," Carolyn Vilhelmsen says. "They've put so many people in jeopardy.
"In my mind, they've done nothing less than give everybody out there a sentence of death."
