In December 2005 the FBI rolled up "The Family" in coordinated arrests across four states — Operation Backfire, built on the cooperation of Jacob Ferguson, a heroin-addicted cell veteran who wore a wire into his old comrades' kitchens. Indictments covered seventeen arsons from Vail to the Eugene tree farms; most defendants pleaded guilty under threat of mandatory life terms, and several became cooperators in turn.
William Rodgers, the network's most committed member, suffocated himself in an Arizona jail cell on the winter solstice, December 21, 2005 — the movement's martyr of the roundup. Fugitives scattered abroad: Josephine Overaker remains wanted two decades later; Joseph Dibee, captured in 2018, was sentenced in 2022. Backfire ended the ELF's classic period and opened the courtroom battle over the word "terrorism" itself.