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The Quiet Retooling of the Militia Movement
Arrests, Convictions and Other Recent Activities
Posted: September 7, 2004
Since the militia movement began in 1994, militia-related arrests and convictions have been common. Most involved illegal weapons or explosives charges, or related conspiracy charges. Even as the number of militia groups declined in the 1990s, the level of militia-related arrests remained constant.
Several significant militia-related arrests have occurred:
• June 2004. Michigan militia members Jeffrey Thomas Horvath and Donald Joseph Koshmider were arrested on weapons charges in connection with what prosecutors claimed was a plot to attack police in retaliation for the shooting of Scott Allen Woodring in 2003. A third suspect, Norman David Somerville, had been arrested the previous fall on drug and weapons charges.
• May 2004. Tracy Brockway, the last of six members of the Project 7 militia from Flathead County, Montana, to be indicted on federal weapons charges, was arrested in Atlanta. Brockway had earlier received a suspended 10-year sentence after pleading guilty to harboring a fugitive militia leader, David Burgert (later convicted on weapons charges). Authorities alleged that the group was plotting to kill local judges and law enforcement officers. Others indicted include Larry Chezem, Steven N. Morey, James R. Day, and John W. Slater.
• May 2004. In Tyler, Texas, William J. Krar received an 11 year sentence in federal prison after pleading guilty to possessing a deadly weapon; his companion, Judith Bruey, received a lesser sentence on a related conspiracy charge. An anti-government extremist originally from New Hampshire, Krar had ties to militia and anti-government groups in that state before moving to Texas, where he amassed an arsenal of more than 100,000 rounds of ammunition, more than 60 pipe bombs, machine guns, and a sodium cyanide bomb. The investigation that led to Krar's arrest in 2003 began after fake IDs Krar had manufactured for a New Jersey militia member were accidentally delivered to the wrong address.
• March 2004. Darrell W. Sivik, active in the Pennsylvania Citizens' Militia and the Bucktail Militia, was arrested on weapons charges for allegedly purchasing an illegal machine gun from an undercover officer so that he would not have to register it with the government. Also arrested was George Bilunka, head of the Christian American Patriot Survivalists.
• July 2003. Michigan Militia member Scott Allen Woodring killed a Michigan State Police officer during a standoff at Woodring's home. Woodring escaped from his surrounded residence during the night, but four days later was killed in a confrontation with police after they were tipped off as to his whereabouts.
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