DIALING UP NEW FREQUENCY : COURT VICTORIES SPUR SPREAD OF PIRATE RADIO BROADCASTERS.

Byline: Keith Stone Daily News Staff Writer

When police found a bound and bullet-pierced body, Bob Marston quickly packed his home-built radio transmitter and 8-foot antenna.

He boxed his circuit boards, soldering iron and frequency counter.

He told detectives all he knew about the murdered man, Michael Taylor, a part-time public radio reporter and full-time community activist who was trying to launch his own pirate radio station.

He gave them the transmitter he had built for Taylor. And then Marston ran.

No one had ever told the 39-year-old self-styled anarchist that starting an illegal station in Los Angeles could be fatal.

``Right from the very beginning,'' he said, ``it has been something out of a spy novel.''

With Taylor's death last month, there was no question that Marston would have to delay turning on his own pirate station, Radio Echo, one of at least three unlicensed, illegal FM stations preparing to broadcast in Los Angeles.

His plan had been to beam Radio Echo from atop the Santa Susana Mountains, into cars and homes across the Valley - defying federal law in a static-free display of civil disobedience.

``I want to come up with a political alternative,'' said Marston, a computer engineer by day who ran unsuccessfully for the 23rd District congressional seat in 1994. ``One of the things I would like to do is get people to report on local items in the Valley here.''

If anything, Marston expected the Federal Communication Commission to try to shut down Radio Echo, just as it is asking a judge to silence Free Radio Berkeley in a case that bootleggers see as a test of their survival.

But now Marston knows he has more to fear than the FCC.

Detectives, who are still investigating Taylor's murder, have arrested three men on suspicion of murder for hire. They say Taylor appears to have been killed in a dispute with partners who were bankrolling his pirate station.

They agreed to pay $500 for the transmitter, but then against Taylor's objections began to sell advertising, police say.

And then he was found murdered execution style.

``He was keeping pretty true to the vision of what everyone is trying to do with this, maintaining an unadulterated voice of the community, that is not commercially driven in any manner or fashion,'' said Stephen Dunifer, who runs Free Radio Berkeley.

Nationwide, there are 12,069 legally operated FM stations, according to the FCC. No one knows how to count exactly how many illegal stations are on the air at any one time, although one estimate places them at several hundred.

``They crop up all the time and unless someone files a complaint or unless we happen to hear them - we don't know,'' said Beverly Baker, chief of the FCC Compliance and Information Bureau.

Until the late-1970s, stations with as few as 10 watts could be licensed. But the FCC eliminated that class of license, choosing instead to grant to larger outfits that could reach more people.

``It had to do with efficient use of the spectrum,'' said Robert Greenberg, supervisory engineer for the FCC audio services division.

That did not stop pirate radio. In fact, by all accounts, bootleg stations are on the rise, largely because of one man: Stephen Dunifer and his Free Radio Berkeley.

To pay for his station and spread micropower, Dunifer manufactures low-cost transmitter kits and has sold about 300 in the past two years alone.

``In the present situation,'' he said, ``unless you have the megabucks, you don't have a voice.''

But for between $300 and $600, Dunifer sells radios that generate from a half watt to 40 watts of power, enough to hit a 10-mile radius in cities or 20 miles from atop a hill.

Dunifer's kits have ended up with technologically inspired hippies, militants, union organizers, and all manner of activists and electronic widget freaks.

What draws them together is the gospel of pirate radio, what some call ``the leaflet of the '90s.''

``Communities can be empowered to have their own voice, to do whatever they want, to create a greater sense of themselves and to foster a truly grass-roots type of democracy in this country,'' Dunifer said.

Perhaps even more important to the movement was 45-year-old Dunifer's victory last year against the FCC, when a judge refused to shut down his station.

He also beat back a $20,000 fine from the FCC, only to be tagged with a $10,000 fine, which he said he will not pay.

``I feel it is an illegal request,'' Dunifer said. ``I feel what we are doing is a legally protected First Amendment right - and the FCC itself is acting illegally.''

Now Dunifer - and the entire world of bootleg radio - await yet another court ruling, this one on a permanent injunction against his 3-year-old Free Radio Berkeley.

``The legal situation won't resolve itself anytime soon,'' he vowed.

The FCC contends that micropowered stations interfere with legal stations.

``They like to paint themselves as going up against these big, monolithic broadcasters, but the people they are disadvantaging are the people in their homes who are trying to listen to the radio,'' Baker said.

The bootleggers maintain that there is more than enough room on the dial for everyone, although Dunifer keeps churning out transmitters.

Marston assembled his transmitter from a kit that Dunifer sold him for $300, not a difficult task for someone who has been tinkering with radios since his childhood in Long Island, N.Y.

A group of Latinos in Highland Park are getting ready to switch on a Dunifer transmitter. And another will give a voice to the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers International Union Local 1-675, based by Carson's towering refineries.

The union plans to use the power of radio to amplify its pickets and to organize workers behind factory walls.

``We would be able to get our message across as people drive by instead of them just seeing our pickets,'' said Jeff Higgins, the 34-year-old organizer who built the transmitter.

``The airwaves do belong to the citizens of this country, and what the government has done is sell them off to the highest bidder,'' Higgins said.

Public radio just isn't public enough, the bootleggers say.

Like Taylor, Marston got his start in radio at listener-sponsored KPFK-FM (90.7), based in North Hollywood. And like Taylor, Marston quit KPFK to start his own station.

``I was disgusted with what public radio is doing now, which is to emulate commercial radio,'' Marston said.

Radio Echo will be different, opening its microphone to virtually anyone for virtually anything, he said. ``You will hear anarchists, you will hear communists, and if there are people of the extreme right wing who want to challenge it - so be it,'' he said.

At KPFK, general manager Mark Schubb said his 112,000-watt station serves the community but draws a line at airing divisive, racist and sexist views.

``Our mission is, in fact, to bridge understanding between communities, not to be a public access facility,'' Schubb said.

Since Taylor's death, Marston has been living on friends' couches, but he said he plans to come out of hiding eventually.

One evening last week, Marston drove out to the edge of the Santa Susana Mountains to test his new 20-watt transmitter. No bigger than a toaster, the radio runs off his car's cigarette lighter and beams through a copper antenna.

And Radio Echo will live, he vowed, hitting the air by late August if for no other reason than to honor Taylor's death.

``He has given his life for this,'' he said, ``so it has given me more reasons to move on and push on with it.''

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PHOTO (color) Bob Marston plans to broadcast an illegal rad io station into the San Fernando Valley.

Joe Binoya/Special to the Daily News