Firebombs & Shotguns
Presentation Under Construction
July 2026
I was but a meager innocent 10 year old care free child, but the events about to occur in my life were going to mature me beyond my young age. My family was being attacked, someone was trying to burn us alive.
I always knew that my father’s job made people hate me.
There was nothing I could do about the situation. ‘German Jimmy’ was one of those such people. His older brother had been found guilty of a crime and sentenced to 3 years in prison. He knew who I was and he knew my last name. He was a few years my elder, so if he caught me on any block in our small town of 5,000 residences, he would rough me up, push me off my bike, and steal my delivery newspapers. He dared anybody to do anything about his belligerent acts. Nobody ever stopped him. German Jimmy – who wasn’t German -hated me because my father was the District Criminal Prosecutor for 25 years, and it was my Dad that prosecuted Jimmy’s older brother and sent him to jail.
My father graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1957. He immediately moved to Garrett, Indiana and opened up a general Law Practice in the tiny downtown district. He selected this location for its proximity to his parents living in fort Wayne and the peaceful nature of the small Indiana town. It was a good location to raise the large family he planned on creating with my mother. It wasn’t long after his move to Garrett before he had a new office on main street and more babies to feed at home.
Soon after moving to Garret, my Dad befriended a lawyer by the name of Warren Sunday who had a law office in Auburn, Indiana, directly across from the county court house. We called him ‘Uncle Warren’ my entire life. Warren had a lucrative private Estates Legal Profession, and somehow he got elected as the District Attorney. Although ‘Uncle Warren’ was an excellent attorney in his specific areas of law, he wasn’t very skilled inside the courtroom. Thus, he hired my father as his Assistant Prosecuting Attorney and my father did the court room prosecutions a few days a week. My father’s general law practice slowly grew as he worked alongside ‘Uncle Warren’. It wasn’t many years after that partnership formed when my father won the election for the position of District Attorney.
My father was putting people in jail from the day I was born. And when my Uncle Warren faced the grime reaper on his death bed, I was sitting beside him as he turned the age of 83, trying not to cry, and recalling the hundreds of memories from Canadian fishing trips, golfing outings, attending major college sporting events, and just being a part of the family my entire life.
Warren had served as a pilot in World War II. After the war, he joined the Federal Bureau of Investigation (F.B.I.) which led him into completing a Law Degree from Indiana University. He was my father’s best friend and years later my siblings still recall him fondly in stories of our memories. He was a charismatic energetic person of integrity, a character of lasting impressions … … .
One night in the middle of May, when my family was attacked, he was one of the first to arrive on the scene.
Date: July 2026
Title: The Firebomb
By Christopher Lee Winans
Warren was standing in the yard that night as me, my elder brother, and my father arrived at the scene of the crime. He was part of many people who had just arrived after they put out the fire inside my house, where my mother and sisters had been sleeping upstairs when someone broke through the back patio door and tossed two firebombs inside the house and tried to burn us alive. They unsuccessfully launched a third firebomb and it splattered on the sidewalk.
By the Grace of God, and the quick response of the fire department the damage was limited to an inside porch area and burned playroom. The front side of the house was charred black from smoke, and the fumes were still in the air, as we arrived. To the concern of all, everybody was alive and unharmed physically.
Emotionally my Mother was traumatized from what she had experienced during the attack. In some ways, she never recovered from that trauma. She had been upstairs in bed ALONE and was awakened by the criminals as they broke through a sliding glass door.
Me, my father and my brother were 25 miles from my home during the attack, spending the night fixing the plumbing in our summertime Lake cottage.
It was 2:00 am in the morning when a uniformed Indiana State Trooper briskly pounded the back door of the summer cottage. By design, to keep peace of mind and escape work, no phones were ever allowed at the summer cottage. The knock on the door awaken my brother and I from our sleep, it interrupted my father’s non-skilled bathroom plumbing work. The Police officer whispered something to my father intending to conceal the information from our ears.
Something was wrong! My father pulled us out of bed, pushed us up two flights of stairs and into the car. Then, silently, without a word, and with his face full of never before seen stress, he drove a million miles an hour to our home in Garrett in record time. The State Trooper gave an escort to the highway, but he could not maintain enough speed to keep up with my father’s driving speed. My brother and I knew it was not the time to ask questions and we remained silent.
When the three of us arrived at our home in Garrett, Indiana, dozens of firefighters, police officers and people were standing in the street and yard under the lights of police cars and fire trucks.
Standing in a group holding one another were my sisters and my mother. That’s all I cared about at that moment. We all came to a group and hugged with tears in our eyes. Nobody knew precisely what had happened.
But everybody knew someone had tried to kill us because my father was a lawyer, a criminal prosecutor. It didn’t take an F.B.I. agent to know this was the situation. Nevertheless, not long after the incident occurred, there were plenty of Federal Agents and State Law Enforcement Officials on the scene of the crime. Trying to kill Judges and Prosecutors draws an instant large crowd.
In the end it was clearly determined what had happened.
Four guys, who had been prosecuted and convicted for crimes by my father, decided they would join together and fire bomb our house in order to get revenge on my father for him performing his duties as the criminal prosecutor in each of their separate criminal legal cases. The longest sentence given on any of the four men was four years. Each had served less time in prison than sentenced. Yet, they thought it justified to firebomb my house and try to burn my family alive.
They four men were eventually charged and all prosecuted for there crime of arson and attempted murder which they commit on that May night.
After that night, I went from a ten year old kid into an older child by experience, and a rude awakening as to how evil people can be, even in a small town, was permanently birthed.
I learned that my father’s profession produced people that would dispise me. In half of any of the civil legal cases he won, the loosing party and families would dispise my father. I the criminal cases the family of the convicted would hate my family. In a town of 5,000 people and a county with a population of 15,000, there is a large percentage of the population who are relatives to conficted criminal and civil case losers.
Good lawyers win cases they bring to trial. My father was a good lawyer. One of his secrets was to attempt to solve all legal issues and cases without bringing it to trial before a judge. He always said a letter with a proposal for a solution is much easier and cheaper than a legal case in a courtroom. His method solved more legal cases in his life without filing a lawsuit in court than he ever solved inside a courtroom. He held a similar approach to criminal law. It wasn’t pleasant to him sending people to jail. Lawyers such as this do not exist much in today’s world.
Date: July 2026
Title: The Shotgun
By Christopher Lee Winans
I wasn’t raised around guns and no one in my family was a hunter.
But not long after the firebomb crime on my family in our house, my father took measures to prepare the family to protect themselves against further possible attacks by purchasing a shot gun.
It simply was not going to happen again as it did, with my mother standing at the top of the stairs in dreadful fear of intruders with only a table light in her hand as a protection. A Shot gun would have been better protection. So faced with this reality, he purchased a shotgun and began teaching us how to properly use it as a weapon.
Against his wishes, he purchased a normal shotgun and a case of shells. This was the first gun I had ever witnessed in the house. Later, I learned my father had kept a small revolver side arm weapon locked in a box in the master bedroom study for my entire life. I never ever saw that weapon and he only wore the pistol in a concealed fashion during times of high risk due to the threats from criminals. Usually during prosecutions or immediately after prisoners had been released from jail. The lock case was never to be touched and was not penetrable without combination. He placed the newly purchased shotgun in his closet and the shells were on the shelf.
Later that same summer after the firebombing, in the woods behind the lake cottage, he taught my mother how load the gun, hold it by her side and fire one shot down a staircase if the situation she lived through again came up and it ever required such action. After one practices shot, she went crazy. She would not fire the shot gun a second time. It was a traumatic event trying to be taught to her, and reliving the night of the crime, was too much for her to handle.
He taught my older brother how to load and fire from his shoulder with no problems. Then, he reluctantly taught me how to stand at the top of a staircase, make double sure who it was that would be trying to break into the house and come up the stairs well, then, and only then, how fire the shot gun from my shoulder at a person coming up the stairs. Later he explained, if he or my older brother were not present when the family was being threatened, I was to be the person using the gun to protect the rest of the family. He knew, it was not in my mother to be able to perform the aggressive act if it ever would again be required. She didn’t like guns and she was not a violent person.
My Dad rehearse the procedure with me many times. I was to make sure it wasn’t him, my Uncle Warren, family, or anyone I knew who might be coming up the stairs and who I would be aiming a loaded shotgun at with intention to fire. I grew up fast that Summer as we practiced and rehearsed a few times on how to protect the family in case he was not at home.
By grace only, I never had to shoot anyone and I didn’t fire another gun until I obtained a licensed concealed carry arm permit. With exception to the day I was taught how to fire an Uzi – in close range combat -while in Israel, the only thing I ever shot in my life was a paper target.
In any case, by the age of eleven, I was prepared and trained to use a firearm for self protection and preservation.
My world view changed during that Summer of my youth.
Date: July 2026
Title: Basketball Resistance
By: Doctor Dunkenstein
(a.k.a) Christopher Lee Winans
The events of the summer including the house firebomb and the shotgun education change me as a basketball player. I t made me tougher and more determined.
I began to see that other players would hate me just because I was good. It angered many teammates that a younger kid – sometimes by many years – was better and more skilled at playing basketball. Sometimes they never got over their unfounded animosity toward me.
When the seventh grade and eighth grade boys rubbed my face in the snow because I was in the fifth grade and already better at basketball. It drove them nuts that I was the second best player on the team.
Somebody older was always sitting the bench throughout my high school career.
In my Freshman year in High School I was a starting player on the varsity boys basketball team. This angered many people, and many families in my hometown of Garrett.
The only solice that Freshman year of High School was that I was joined by Andy Herzer, another Freshman who started on the varsity team.
The older team members treated us with disdain. They were jealous. None of them had ever taken 30 minutes to even sit down and talk to me, they did not know anything about me. They kept their lockers at on end of the locker room and we dressed in a separate section away from them. On road trips and on the bus, they weren’t friendly.
I learned people will despise and disdain you for being good at something for absolutely no justification. Further, I learned team mates who did not feel any real animosity seldom tried to change the players who did things to hinder you.
When I arrived at Utah as Freshman basketball player, there were steps of acceptance and initiation, but it was a great felling to be amount players and team mates who wanted you to improve who were happy you were good at your sport. The team at Utah was full of guys trying to be the best in the entire country at playing basketball. We almost got there, and we had a great time getting close, twice … … .
I never had support from but perhaps five or six other teammates in my years of high school basketball. I had lots of people in my town, who did not like anyone with my family name. No other family in the county had our name, we were outsiders, as they would say, we came from Fort Wayne, a whole 25 miles away from Garrett.
The conclusion is: Find those people who do support and help you. Be prepared to endure, out work, and out perform those who hate you because you are good at something and better than they are at performing a given skill.
Eventually you will find the right pack of wolves to run with … … …
