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Posted: July 2, 2003
Anti-government extremist and fugitive Ned Kevin Schroeder, who had eluded authorities for five years, was arrested June 23, 2003, in Shelby County, Ohio, after refusing to move his van when asked to do so by police.
For a fugitive, Schroeder, 48, was not very inconspicuous, driving a van with a cardboard license plate with "State of the Sovereign" written on it. Asked for his driver's license by Shelby County sheriff's deputies responding to a noise complaint, Schroeder handed the deputies a "World Identity Card," claimed to be Aaron Lee Hess from the "Republic of Illinois," and said he was the son of "Yahweh."
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Ned Kevin Schroeder
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According to sheriff's deputies, Schroeder resisted arrest and had to be restrained with mace before being taken to Shelby County Jail.
During a subsequent search of Schroeder's home near Houston, Ohio, deputies found bomb-making materials, chemical suits, hollow point bullets, explosive igniters, a machine gun, gas masks and 1,000 rounds of ammunition, as well as anti-government extremist videos and a pre-paid airline ticket to Switzerland. According to Sheriff Kevin O'Leary, authorities also found instructions, downloaded from the Internet, on spreading chemicals using a small aircraft.
Schroeder, formerly of Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, was a cocaine dealer indicted on drug and weapons charges in 1994, but after his mother posted $30,000 bond, he fled to Canada. He was eventually caught by Canadian authorities and returned to Wisconsin to stand trial.
In 1995, Schroeder was sentenced to eight and a half years at a federal prison in Milan, Michigan, for conspiracy to distribute cocaine and possession of a machine gun.
According to Deputy U.S. Marshal Doug Bachert, Schroeder, while serving time in Milan, shared a cellblock with members of the Posse Comitatus, an extremist group active in the 1970s and 1980s that spawned the extreme anti-government sovereign citizen movement. U.S. attorney Gail Hoffman said Schroeder's anti-government extremist beliefs flourished in prison; at one point Schroeder sent threatening letters to two judges and two federal prosecutors after convening a phony court in his jail cell.
Schroeder also harassed government officials by putting bogus liens on their property. Among those he targeted with false liens were U.S. Attorney Thomas P. Schneider, U.S. Magistrate Judge Patricia J. Gorence, and U.S. District Judge Thomas J. Curran, who sentenced Schroeder in 1995. This "paper terrorism" tactic is a hallmark of the sovereign citizen movement.
In 1997, Schroeder was transferred to the Federal Prison Camp in Terre Haute, Indiana, the minimum security prison from which he escaped on June 28, 1998.
In his June 25, 2003, hearing before U.S. Magistrate Sharon Ovington, Schroeder continued to insist that he is Aaron Lee Hess, one of several aliases, and refused representation from a public defender. He told the judge she had no jurisdiction over him, saying, "I am a sovereign and am not subject to your rules and regulations….The state of Ohio is a fiction of entity and trust."
Schroeder was ordered to be returned to Indiana to face escape charges and could face an additional five years in prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted.
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