"Retro" Calendar of Conspiracy: A Chronicle of Anti-Government Extremist Criminal Activity for January 1 to April 18, 1995

A Militia Watchdog Special Report

INTRODUCTION

In January 1997, the Militia Watchdog began posting the “Calendar of Conspiracy,” a quarterly chronology of right-wing extremist criminal activity in the United States. This is a valuable resource for people wishing to understand the nature and extent of such activity. However, the starting date for the chronology is unfortunate, in that it picks up the “narrative” in the middle of a resurgence of activity. What happened before January 1997 is hard for the average person to discover.

Thus the purpose of this “Retro” Calendar. The “Retro” series is a new series of chronologies designed to fill in the gaps, so to speak, in this chronicle of criminal activity. The first in the series covers the year 1994 and was chosen because the militia movement essentially began in the first few months of that year; thus it seemed a particularly apt time to start. This, the second in the series, covers that portion of the year 1995 before the Oklahoma City bombing and the vast wave of publicity about the extreme right that swept the nation in its wake. Future entries in the series will cover the years 1995 and 1996, as well as some of the period before 1994.

Readers should be aware of the liabilities of these “Retro” Calendars. The current issues of the Calendar of Conspiracy are compiled from a wide variety of sources, including newspaper databases, websites, press releases, and similar sources. The “Retro” Calendars, on the other hand, are compiled essentially from one large computer database. As a result, the “Retro” Calendars can simply not be as comprehensive as current Calendars are. Similarly, the further one goes back in time, the fewer newspapers one finds that input their stories into computer databases. Together, these factors may well falsely minimize to some degree the level of extremist activity.

In addition, as with the current Calendars, some incidents never get reported in the news, such as tax protest convictions or the filing of bogus liens. Other incidents may get reported, but an extremist connection is never revealed. For instance, a hate crime may be committed, but no news story reveals that a member of a white supremacist group committed the crime. As a result, it would not find its way into the Calendar. So here too there is some degree of false minimization.

Readers should also understand that in reporting these incidents, the final status of each individual or case was not checked; thus the appearance of an arrest item in the Calendar should not be construed to mean that the individual arrested automatically was convicted later. It is possible, if unlikely, that the person was acquitted, unless there is another item specifically mentioning a conviction or a sentencing. This sort of “error” is very rare, but it could conceivably happen.

The events that are listed here took place in major cities as well as in remote rural areas. Fourteen states are represented by entries here, as well as three foreign nations, but in actuality, some level of activity takes place in every state.

JANUARY

January 5, 1995, Colorado: Eleven white supremacists from the Denver area are arrested, following an investigation of various acts of vandalism in April 1994. A “small arsenal” of assault weapons are seized; eventually 21 people will be charged, on charges ranging from aggravated robbery and assault to felony menacing to conspiracy. Virtually all of the defendants are in their early twenties, and are current or past associates of the Ku Klux Klan, the White Order, the Nationalist Movement, the Colorado Skinheads, the Confederate Hammerskins, or similar groups.

January 27, 1995, Florida: Three central Florida tax protesters receive prison terms for filing bogus liens against federal judges in Orlando in 1994. Janice and Bud Chess receive 18-month sentences, while Carlos Montalvo receives a two year sentence. All three had pled guilty.

January 30, 1995, California: Black musician Kerry Boles is stabbed in the stomach while sitting next to a white woman at a pier in Ventura County. A seventeen-year-old skinhead, Robert Reeves, is arrested for the crime several days later.

FEBRUARY

February 3, 1995, California: In Southern California, two white supremacists are charged with murder and commission of a hate crime for the September 1994 shooting death of a black man in Huntington Beach. Jonathan Kinsey, a skinhead, and his friend Robert Woffard, face twenty-five years to life if convicted; Kinsey is also charged with attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon and commission of a hate crime for an August 1994 shooting of two Hispanic men in Huntington Beach.

February 6, 1995, Florida: Tax protester Charles Kimmig of central Florida is convicted of interfering with federal agents by using a threat of force in connection with a November 1994 confrontation with IRS agents. However, he is acquitted of a felony charge of rescuing a truck seized by the IRS.

February 16, 1995, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania Ku Klux Klan leader Roy Frankhauser is convicted on three counts of obstructing an FBI investigation into the New Dawn Hammerskins skinhead group in 1994. Frankhauser convinced a relative of arrested Hammerskins to destroy evidence.

February 26, 1995, Texas, Florida: Thomas Michael Donahue, a former Texas talk show host, Libertarian Congressional candidate and tax protester convicted in a money laundering scheme in 1994, escapes from his federal prison camp in Florida twenty days after his arrival.

February 27, 1995, Virginia: Gun dealer Paul David Petersen, a member of the Blue Ridge Hunt Club, a fledgling militia group, pleads guilty to conspiring to circumvent firearms laws. Five members were arrested in September 1994 following a lengthy investigation.

February 27, 1995, Pennsylvania, Michigan: Two skinhead teenagers, Bryan and David Freeman of Salisbury Township, Pennsylvania, murder their mother, father, and eleven-year-old younger brother, then flee. The parents were opposed to their sons’ skinhead life style, which included tattooing the words “Berserker” and “Sieg Heil” on their foreheads. They are caught in Michigan on March 1 and arrested. A cousin, Nelson Birdwell III, also a skinhead, is arrested with them on minor charges.

February 28, 1995, Minnesota: Douglas Baker and Leroy Wheeler, members of the anti-government Minnesota Patriots Council, are convicted of possessing a deadly poison as a biological weapon. The two manufactured quantities of ricin, an extremely deadly biological poison. Other members of their group are alleged to have plotted to use the ricin against perceived enemies.

February 28, 1995, Florida: A St. Petersburg skinhead, Steven Sultana, pleads guilty to aggravated battery in connection with a January 1995 beating of a black man by a group of skinheads.

MARCH

March 6, 1995, California: Police arrest the last of three skinheads wanted for firing shots at a car with black passengers on February 21, 1995 in Lancaster, California. Two passengers had were grazed by bullets. Arrested are Robert Garland, Robert Andrew Jones and, finally, Chris Parker. They are charged with four counts of attempted murder, commission of a hate crime and child endangerment.

March 8, 1995, Texas: Federal charges are filed against three men from Lubbock, Texas who murdered a black man and wounded two other men during a shooting spree in October 1994. One of the suspects, Roy Ray Martin, is a skinhead member of South Bay Nazi Youth. The other suspects are friends of his, Eli Trevino Mungia and Ricky Rivera Mungia. The three allegedly plotted to start a race war that would eliminate blacks. They are charged with violating federal civil rights and gun laws and face a possible death penalty. They also face state charges of murder and attempted murder.

March 9, 1995, Wisconsin: Three members of Family Farm Preservation, an offshoot of the Posse Comitatus, are indicted on charges relating to the distribution of more than $65 million worth of bogus money orders. Arrested are Leonard Peth, Thomas Stockheimer and Mark Van Dyke.

March 9, 1995, Pennsylvania: Three white supremacist skinheads are sentenced to prison for attacking a black man in 1994. Micah Ross and Jason Hayden, who pled guilty to aggravated assault, simple assault, reckless endangerment, conspiracy, and ethnic intimidation, receive sentences of two to four years each, while Mark Miller, who pled guilty to ethnic intimidation and conspiracy to commit aggravated assault, receives a sentence of from 11 ½ to 23 months. The three attacked a black man on a bicycle while driving through a mostly black neighborhood.

March 14, 1995, Texas: Skinhead Anthony Micheli is arrested in San Antonio, Texas, for beating a black man with a baseball bat. John Glover was walking home on February 19, 1995, when he was attacked by six people who identified themselves as white supremacists. Micheli’s arrest is the first stemming from the incident; he could face life in prison.

March 15, 1995, New Jersey: Four members of the S.S. Action Group are arrested in Trenton, New Jersey, for beating a 14-year-old girl who was trying to leave the skinhead group. Three men and one woman lured her into a wooded area, then beat her 20 times with part of a pool cue. Arrested are Douglas Moditz, charged with aggravated assault, armed robbery, and attempted murder, and John Helms (arrested in Ohio), with similar charges. Two juveniles are also arrested, to be charged with similar crimes.

March 17, 1995, California: Robert Reeves pleads guilty to stabbing a black musician in Ventura County earlier in the year (see above). He pleads guilty to assault with a deadly weapon, and that the crime was racially motivated. Though a juvenile, the skinhead was prosecuted as an adult. He will be sentenced, however, to eight years in a juvenile detention facility.

March 23, 1995, Nebraska, Denmark, Germany: Nebraska neo-Nazi Gary Lauck is arrested in Denmark by Danish authorities on a warrant from Germany. That country had sought Lauck for years for distributing illegal Nazi materials to Germany, incitement, encouraging racial hatred, and belonging to a criminal group.

March 24, 1995, Florida: William Marrerro of Ovieda, Florida, is sentenced to 14 years in federal prison for his role in a multimillion dollar investment scam. Marrerro, a member of the tax protest group American Citizens Alliance, was convicted in December 1994 on charges of conspiracy, fraud, money-laundering and obstruction of justice while helping run Premier Benefit Capital Trust. Four other defendants in the case have already been sentenced.

March 30, 1995, Nevada: A bomb explodes outside the Carson City office of the U.S. Forest Service, while a second bomb explodes at a Humboldt National Forest campground on the other side of the state. Three days later, the headquarters office for the Toiyabe National Forest is closed after officials receive a bomb threat.

March 30, 1995, Wisconsin: Family Farm Preservation and Posse Comitatus leader Thomas Stockheimer of Shawano County is sentenced to 16 years in prison for assaulting two police officers in October 1994.

APRIL

April 11, 1995, Pennsylvania: “Patriot” Fred Urban is arrested at a rest stop along I-80 with a station wagon full of dangerous explosives. A quilt shop owner, Urban became increasingly agitated after the Branch Davidian standoff and apparently wanted to create a stash of explosives for when “the shit hit the fan.” However, Urban decided to sell some explosives to a person who turned out to be an undercover officer.

April 12, 1995, California: In Long Beach, a Molotov cocktail is thrown into the home of an African-American family. Arrested for the crime twelve hours later is skinhead Raymond Scheffner.

April 13, 1995, Florida: A bomb explodes in Jacksonville, Florida, in front of a tax collector’s office but next to an abortion clinic; authorities are not sure which building was the target of the bombing.

April 13, 1995, Michigan, Canada: An Ottawa court finds George Burdi, head of white power record company Resistance Records, guilty of aggravated assault for a 1993 fight between skinheads and anti-racist demonstrators in Canada.

April 14, 1995, New Hampshire: Tax protesters Stuart Tulchinsky and Cathie Schneider, owners of two drug paraphernalia shops, are convicted of tax evasion in Concord, New Hampshire. The two claimed that taxes were voluntary after attending a seminar by tax protester Irwin Schiff. They failed to pay more than $130,000 in income taxes.

April 17, 1995, California: Nearly 30 people are arraigned on a variety of charges ranging from auto theft to narcotics sales after a series of SWAT team raids that capped a month long investigation of an Anaheim white supremacist group.