The thing is, by right-wing extremist standards, this arsenal may not even be the most impressive ever.
My friend Mark Pitcavage, who is now the ADL's Director of Fact Finding, compiled the following list of other arsenals seized from right-wing extremists. His pick for the most impressive arsenal:
- May 14, 1998, Washington: Police seize an arsenal of more than 70 pipe bombs, 28 pounds of C-4, as well as 200-300 firearms (including two dozen machine guns), a 20mm cannon, a grenade launcher, 100,000 rounds of ammunition, and 56 hand grenades, from Gregory McCrea, a suspected child rapist. McCrea is suspected of having ties to militia or other extremist groups. According to a former friend, he also had buried fifty 55-gallon barrels (each with a rifle, a handgun, and ammunition) throughout the Pacific Northwest.
The other runners-up, along with Krar, are:
- March 31, 2000, Maryland: During a narcotics raid on the house of Michael Lee Burtner, a pizza restaurant owner, police find 128 guns (including stolen and unregistered weapons), 38,000 rounds of ammunition, drugs, and a variety of antigovernment videotapes and pamphlets. Police suspected Burtner of selling crack cocaine.
March 12, 2000, Washington: Police discover an arsenal of weapons as they arrest Stephen Ferguson in an eastern suburb of Seattle on weapons charges after a neighbor called 911 when seeing the man dragging an ill and unconscious housemate out of his house. Searching the house, they find more than 60 firearms, including 20 fully automatic weapons and machine guns, a grenade launcher, and 50,000 rounds of ammunition; they also discover marijuana plants, books on explosives, and Nazi paraphernalia.
October 8, California: Authorities seeking to arrest probation violator and white supremacist Jeffrey Stuart Martin discover an arsenal of more than sixty-five weapons, including assault weapons, at his house. When Martin refuses to open his door, law enforcement officers force their way inside to find him hiding in the attic. Authorities also arrest his mother, Kathleen Rose Ezakovich, her husband, Charles Ezakovich, and Greg James Hallahan on drug charges, after police find a half-pound of methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia. Martin had previously been convicted on a hate-crime violation.
January 3, 2000, Tennessee: Nashville tax protester Rodney Lynn Randolph receives a four-year prison sentence on weapons charges. Randolph, whose house was foreclosed on in 1998 when he stopped paying on his bank loans, resisted an order to vacate the premises. A trespassing charge was filed against him; while searching his home, police found an arsenal of weapons that included a hand grenade, bomb-making materials, and automatic weapons parts, as well as blueprints for silencers, 200,000 rounds of ammunition, and a .50-caliber "anti-tank" weapon. Randolph claimed he was not subject to U.S. laws, but eventually pled guilty.
March/April 1996, Pennsylvania: The ATF raided two homes in March and April, uncovering huge caches of illegal weapons. The two survivalists, both with militia ties, were Russell Fauver, 45, of Evesham, New Jersey, and William Kay, 59, variously mentioned as being from Skippack and Collegeville, Pennsylvania. Fauver had on his property 24 handguns, rifles, assault weapons, shotguns and a flamethrower, as well as 100,000 rounds of ammunition, while William Kay had five Sten machine guns, a Maxim machine gun, two grenade launchers, an Uzi, a hand grenade, and silencers. Fauver was a former member of the Christian Patriot Defense League, while Kay was a chaplain with the Unorganized Militia of Pennsylvania.
February 26, 2002, Kentucky. Charlie Puckett, the head of the Kentucky State Militia, the nation's most active militia group, is arrested on nine counts of weapons violations. According to the indictment, Puckett, a former convicted felon, was found in the possession of various guns, pipe bombs, and nearly 35,000 rounds of ammunition. Puckett's arrest comes just after he finishes an interview with the television show "Unsolved Mysteries," which is doing a story on Puckett's friend and former militia colleague Steve Anderson, currently a fugitive accused of shooting at a Bell County, Kentucky, sheriff's deputy in October 2001.
June 10, 1998, Michigan: Redford Township resident Mark Gaydos is killed in a shootout with township police after a traffic stop confrontation. Gaydos was pulled over for not having a driver's license and told he would be arrested. He fled on foot and fired at police officers pursuing him, injuring one; they returned fire and killed him. Following the incident, police search his parents' home (where he lived) and discover an arsenal of guns, bullet-proof vests, 35,000 rounds of ammunition, a pipe bomb, an upside down flag with the words "Remember Waco" printed on it and other assorted paraphernalia. Also discovered during the search was evidence that suggested Gaydos had been the person who had harassed a state representative's reelection campaign in 1996, shooting up the official's campaign signs and placing them outside his campaign headquarters, as well as making harassing phone calls. The representative had refused to back a concealed carry law.
February 9, 2001, Oregon. A cache of white supremacist literature, illegal weapons, bombs and explosive materials, and illegal drugs are found when Clackamas County sheriff's deputies and federal agents arrest two men and one woman during a raid. Arrested are Forrest Bateman, a former skinhead previously convicted in 1989 of racially intimidating a high school student; Anthony Huntington; and Jennifer Williams. Officers seize a machine gun, a grenade launcher, an assault rifle, a sawed-off shotgun, 3000 rounds of ammunition, ammonium nitrate, homemade C4 explosives, six homemade grenades, dynamite blasting caps, primers, fuses, black powder, and 200 timing devices, as well as fifty marijuana plants. Huntington and Williams are subsequently released and not formally charged, while Bateman is held on outstanding warrants for previous charges of assault and illegal possession of an assault rifle. An investigation is ongoing.
June 13, 2001, Texas. Police in Forth Worth seize "volumes and volumes" of militia and anti-government literature, a number of assault weapons, bomb-making materials, and more than 9,000 rounds of ammunition from a storage unit and motel room rented by Fort Worth resident Michael Joseph Toth. Toth faces charges of possession of explosive components and possession of a prohibited weapon. Toth had been arrested on June 7 after allegedly pointing an assault rifle at the head of a man outside a pool hall. According to police, Toth had enough materials to produce 700 to 1,200 pounds of explosives.
October 4, 2001, Illinois. Local and federal law enforcement officers seize a cache of weapons from a group of Pike County survivalists who call themselves the United Survivalists of America. Authorities say the group had amassed an arsenal of weapons, pipe bombs and other explosives, and more than 12,000 rounds of ammunition. The only person arrested is group leader Thomas Wanick of Jerseyville, charged with unlawful use of a weapon.
When I was working the Montana Freemen case I kept coming across off-the-record accounts of hidden arsenals being stashed by "Patriots" throughout the Northwest. I mentioned one in In God's Country directly related to the Freemen [p. 104] and the unusual circumstances in which it was uncovered:
- While their legal defeats were coming in rapid succession, the Freemen’s recruiting was going well. Another key follower showed up at the Freemen ranch that fall: Dale Jacobi. A Canadian businessman who had moved from Calgary in the 1980s south to Thompson Falls, Montana, Jacobi became involved in the radical right while operating a propane-gas business in the little Clark Fork River logging town just a few miles east of Noxon. He fell in with John and Dave Trochmann, and also became acquainted with another local Constitutionalist, John Brush.
Brush decided to move to Musselshell County in 1994, partly to be closer to the Freemen, so he bought a parcel of land out in the distant woods and set about raising and training horses with his wife and daughter. Jacobi, who became a Freemen follower after Trochmann recommended their four-day courses in the Militia of Montana newsletter that spring, sold his business and moved onto Brush’s land, living in a trailer on the property.
In one afternoon that fall, though, Brush not only disavowed Dale Jacobi but the Freemen as well. He later explained why to John Bohlman, the Musselshell County prosecutor:
One morning, Brush told Bohlman, when he drove into town for supplies, Jacobi took Brush’s 8-year-old daughter, with her dog in tow, out to a remote part of their land. He carried with him a stool and a piece of rope. Under a tree, Jacobi set up the stool and placed the little dog on it. Then he made a noose with the rope, placed it over the dog’s neck, and slung it over the tree. He pulled the open end of the rope tight and held it at a distance from the dog, then told the girl to come stand in front of him. Call the dog, he told the girl. She did. It jumped off the stool and hung itself as Jacobi held the line taut.
The girl was in hysterics when her father returned home. Enraged, he asked Jacobi why he did it. Jacobi told him he felt the girl needed some toughening up, and that this would help her. Brush screamed at Jacobi to leave and never come back. Jacobi packed his things into his car and left. He found an open room at [Freemen leader Rodney] Skurdal’s ranch, and soon was named one of the group’s constables. Brush announced he wanted nothing more to do with that bunch -- and asked Bohlman to remove the arms cache Jacobi had left behind. Bohlman and a deputy went out Brush’s place and found PVC pipes hidden under some brush, stuffed with a few guns and a massive load of ammunition, reloading tools, powder and bullets, enough to make thousands of rounds with. Brush also told Bohlman he knew of similar caches like this in strategic spots throughout the Northwest.
Of course, what really puts the Tyler arsenal on an even higher threat plane than any of these cases is the presence of the sodium-cyanide bomb and the stockpile of materials for making them. Such a bomb, according to the experts, packs an explosive and killing capacity well above that of 28 pounds of C-4; the FBI says it is capable of killing everyone inside a 30,000-square-foot facility within moments of its detonation. Put in perspective, this would typically be a concert or meeting hall that would comfortably seat about 3,000 people.
More on the case momentarily.
No comments:
Post a Comment