Biography
Peter DeMott was a Catholic Worker, Vietnam War veteran, and prolific Plowshares activist. On December 13, 1980, he drove a van into the rudder of the USS Baltimore at Electric Boat in Groton, Connecticut, in a one-person protest against nuclear weapons. He participated in multiple subsequent Plowshares actions including the Pershing Plowshares (1984) and the St. Patrick's Day Four (2003) action against the Ithaca Army Recruiting Station on the eve of the Iraq invasion. He was the husband of Ellen Grady (sister of Mary Anne, Clare, and Teresa Grady) and the father of four. He died in 2009 at age 62.
The Catholic Worker reports convictions arising from the 1999 Hiroshima Day vigil on the Pentagon steps and announces an October 24, 2000 sentencing hearing in Alexandria, Virginia. This is an announced hearing, not evidence that a particular prison term had already been served. The Catholic Worker, October–November 2000, vol.LXVII no.6, original PDF page 6. Source: https://merton.bellarmine.edu/files/original/988bea858ac72ddbebb6f3a798f4ffbd552c5dcc.pdf#page=6
Plowshares Number Four custody reconstruction
The original January 1983 report names all seven and dates the action and arrest to November 14, 1982. It reports December 22 release on a promise to appear, after initial imprisonment. This 38-day detention is separate from the later sentence, so time outside prison is excluded.
The May 20, 1983 disposition was one year. A separate record preserves that sentence without equating sentence length with time actually served or copying the initial arrest into later custody.
Autumn release forecasts in issue 19 are likewise not actual release evidence.
Sources: The Nuclear Resister 14, January 14, 1983, pages 3–4; issue 17, June 6, 1983, page 5; issue 18, July 7, 1983, printed page 6; Art Laffin participant chronology.
The older composite record combined several actions with a 1980-to-2008 span. That is not evidence of uninterrupted imprisonment: contemporary sources establish intervening release. Its unsupported December 30, 2008 endpoint and derived 28-year count were removed. Laffin dates the original van action/arrest to December 13, 1980, correcting December 12. Its actual individual release remains unresolved; the preserved composite charge text does not establish one continuous stay.
The separate 1980 Electric Boat prosecution
The March 1981 National No-Nukes Prison Support Collective newsletter, page 1, describes Peter DeMott ramming a van into the rudder of the USS Baltimore at Electric Boat in Groton on December 13, 1980. It explicitly dates sentencing to March 6, 1981: one year on a felony and six months on each of two misdemeanors, running concurrently. The June 20, 1981 issue, page 3, confirms that he was physically released during the first week of June after nearly six months. The source does not identify an exact discharge day. This is not a sledgehammer action against the USS Florida and is not combined with his later Plowshares cases.
Separate six-month parole-violation custody reported in 1981
Original page 3 of the September 19, 1981 newsletter reports Peter De Mott jailed at FCI Petersburg for six months after his June White House arrest led to a parole-violation finding in the earlier submarine case. This reports an intervening release/parole and a later custody episode; it does not justify continuous imprisonment from the December 1980 submarine arrest. Exact later admission, sentencing and actual release are not printed, and the announced six months is not proven completed time served.
National No-Nukes Prison Support Collective newsletter No. 7, September 19, 1981, original pages 1–4
Later 1981 custody location and segregation
The October 30 issue identifies Peter DeMott, register 10891, at Lewisburg Federal Prison during the separate six-month parole-violation custody arising from the June White House arrest. It reports segregation after refusal to repair human targets at prison shooting ranges. This is a later custody-location/status report, not a new admission date or continuous imprisonment since the 1980 Electric Boat action; no release endpoint is supplied.
National No-Nukes Prison Support Collective newsletter No. 8, October 30, 1981, original page 1.
December 1981 release-month estimate
The January 17, 1982 newsletter, original page 2, names Peter DeMott among those released from prison during the Christmas season. December 1981 is recorded as a contextual month-level estimate from that wording, as requested; the source does not print an exact discharge day. December 1 is only the storage anchor for a month-precision date, not the actual day of release. No exact custody total is calculated.
This is the later 1981 parole-violation custody following the June White House arrest, not the earlier Electric Boat detention that had already ended in June 1981.
National No-Nukes Prison Support Collective newsletter, January 17, 1982, original page 2. The December 12, 1981 issue supplies the preceding custody context.
Contemporary memorial and custody limits
Jack Gilroy’s personal memorial in the Lent 2009 Hartford Catholic Worker explicitly states that Peter DeMott died on February 19, 2009 after falling from a tree he was trimming. This directly corrects the previously stored September 27 date. The same article recalls DeMott’s St. Patrick’s Day Four prosecution and states that all four defendants actually went to prison for four or more months. That is a retrospective minimum-range description, not an exact individual four-month term or a calendar endpoint. The existing legacy composite case already explicitly names the 2003 St. Patrick’s Day Four action, so this account is preserved here without creating an overlapping duplicate case or assigning another numerical duration.
The memorial also recalls a September 1980 submarine action and a one-year imprisonment. Those recollections do not override the separately reviewed contemporary reports that date the Electric Boat action to December 13, 1980 and describe release in early June 1981 after nearly six months; one year was the imposed term. Its account of a second Trident action with Ellen Grady in 1982 is likewise not a new episode beyond their already reconstructed Plowshares Number Four cases. The February 1979 Rosemont and 1985 Seneca references establish reported arrests or background, not individual physical-custody endpoints or completed additional stays. Its characterization of the St. Patrick’s Four offenses is an obituary summary, not a substitute for a judgment or statutory charge record.
Jack Gilroy, “R.I.P. Peter DeMott: Gentle Rock of Peace,” original PDF page 6; continuation, original PDF page 7. Sarah Karas’s separate house letter, original PDF page 10, also reports his fatal fall, without supplying another day.
The Finnish Sivari & Totaali 4/2000 roster lists Peter De Mott in connection with blocking access during the August 6, 2000 Hiroshima Day protest at the Pentagon. It prints a sixty-day sentence, Alexandria County Jail and a prison-reporting date of October 23. The reporting date does not independently confirm physical admission or discharge, and the sentence is not treated as actual time served.
The December 2000 Azione Nonviolenta peace-prisoner roster individually lists Peter DeMott as currently confined at Alexandria County Jail, serving a nominal 60-day sentence from October 23, 2000 following passive resistance at the Pentagon Hiroshima Day protest. Its masthead closed November30 and its introduction expressly concerns current imprisonment on December1; this corroborates actual admission after the earlier Finnish roster had only announced reporting. October23 is the beginning of this distinct2000 sentence custody, not an arrest date inferred from the protest. No completed 60-day total or actual release is supplied. Earlier and later episodes remain separate.
The contemporary report documents a separate custody episode: Four months prison, then four months community confinement; $250 contempt fine.
In his first-person narrative De Mott explicitly describes his initial arrest as the February1979 arms-bazaar protest in Rosemont, Illinois, with Roy Bourgeois. This is separate from the1980ElectricBoat aggregate and subsequent Plowshares episodes. Record only February1979 arrest at MONTH precision; February1 is a storage anchor. Prison admission, actual release, conviction and duration remain unknown. Current exact birth/death and all existing cases are preserved; no similarly spelled profile is merged.
