Reenactor pleads guilty to placing pipe bomb at battlefield

HARRISONBURG, Va. (AP) — A Civil War reenactor has pleaded guilty to charges that he planted a pipe bomb at a Virginia battlefield in 2017 and wrote letters falsely claiming that antifa protesters were to blame. Prosecutors on Tuesday announced the guilty plea from 63-year-old Gerald Leonard Drake of Winchester. Drake admitted during a hearing Monday in federal court in Harrisonburg that he planted a pipe bomb at Cedar Creek Battlefield during an annual reenactment in October 2017. The bomb did not detonate, but it resulted in cancellation of the reenactment after its discovery. Drake was a Civil War reenactor who regularly participated in events at Cedar Creek until he was expelled from his unit in 2014.