Last Updated March 7, 2000

"Retro" Calendar of Conspiracy:  A Chronicle of Anti-Government Extremist Criminal Activity for the Year 1994

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.  Readers will notice that most of the acts in this Calendar were committed by white supremacists, but as the months go by, acts by militia and “sovereign citizen” adherents begin to appear, representing the rise of activity of such groups.  Readers may also notice the high level of violent incidents involving racist skinheads, a situation that is really no less disturbing today, but is not often noticed in the media.

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 such as Chicago and Los Angeles, as well as in remote rural areas in Washington or Tennessee.   Twenty-nine states and the District of Columbia are represented here, but in actuality, some level of activity takes place in every state.

JANUARY

January 4, 1994, Maryland:  Charles Edward Altvater, leader of the World Church of the Creator in Baltimore, receives an addition of seven years to his 18-year prison sentence.  Altvater had pled guilty to bombing a police officer’s house and another officer’s patrol car in 1992 after police towed his car away.  At his original sentencing in August, Altvater had received a sentence less than the 25 year maximum, but now a three judge panel reviewing the case decides to impose the maximum sentence.

January 10, 1994, California:  Eric Lord Jeffrey is sentenced to five years in prison for making pipe bombs.  The alleged Orange County white supremacist was reportedly intending to use them against minority drug dealers.  Police seized fourteen bombs.

January 13, 1994, California:  Two southern California white supremacists receive prison sentences for an attempt to attack a black church and a synagogue in order to start a race war.  Christopher Fisher, an Orange County member of the Fourth Reich Skins, is sentenced to just over eight years in prison following his guilt plea to conspiracy to manufacture and use explosives on 17 occasions with the intent to cause public harm and encourage acts of violence.  Carl Boese is sentenced to four years and eight months in prison.  Fisher, Boese and six others were arrested in July 1993.  The others were charged with weapons violations, while Fisher, Boese and a juvenile had been plotting to assassinate Rodney King, attack a synagogue in Orange County and blow up an AME church in Los Angeles.

January 21, 1994, Washington:  White supremacist Mark Kowalski, head of a group called the American Front, is sentenced to 140 months in prison for a bombing of an NAACP office in Tacoma, Washington, in July 1993.  Kowalski pled guilty to transporting and using explosives and for conspiring to violate the civil rights of blacks and Jews.  Kowalski said that he and others plotted the violence as part of a race war to drive minorities out of the community.  Kowalski, Jeremiah Knesal and Wayne Wooten, Jr., bombed the NAACP office, then drove to Portland, Oregon, with rifles and pipe bombs, hoping to bomb a Jewish Federation building there, but couldn’t find it. 

January 21, 1994, Connecticut:  Authorities arrest four Klansmen on weapons charges following raids on several residences.  Those arrested include the New England leader of the Unified Ku Klux Klan, William Dodge, as well as three other people.  Police recover a pipe bomb that had been delivered to Dodge as part of a sting operation launched after Wallingford police learned that KKK members in the area were seeking explosive materials, silencers, and equipment to convert automatic weapons.  Also arrested are Scott Palmer, Martin Regan, and Dean Hucal, on various weapons charges.  Three more will later be arrested as well.

January 24, 1994, California:  Teenager Richard Joseph Campos is charged as an adult with 12 felony counts related to a series of racially motivated firebombings in 1993.  The charges include an attempt to murder a Sacramento city councilman by bombing his bedroom, as well as firebombings of an NAACP office, the office of the Japanese American Citizens League, a synagogue, and a state anti-discrimination office.  An anonymous caller claimed responsibility in the name of the “Aryan Liberation Front.”

January 25, 1994, Wisconsin:  Shawano County sheriff’s offices and the FBI conduct a raid on two apartments in Tigerton linked to the distribution of bogus money orders.  This will eventually result in the conviction of several members of a group called Family Farm Preservation, an offshoot of the Posse Comitatus active in Tigerton in the 1980s, and will herald a rash of such money orders produced by extremist groups ranging from the Montana Freeman to the Republic of Texas.  By February 1994 they will have been found in at least 20 states, mostly coming from Family Farm Preservation.

January 28, 1994, Illinois:  Skinheads Joshua Cadieux and Jon Peracki plead guilty to two felony charges of aggravated battery and two misdemeanor hate crime charges in a 1992 stabbing of a Hispanic man.  Cadieux receives a three year sentence and Peracki a four year sentence.  A third suspect, a juvenile, will be tried later as an adult. 

January 28, 1994, Arkansas:  A federal appeals court upholds the murder conviction of white supremacist Richard Wayne Snell.  On November 3, 1983, Snell murdered William Stumpp, a Texarkana pawnbroker.  He was sentenced to death on August 15, 1985 (but is also serving a life sentence for a 1984 murder of an Arkansas State Trooper, Louis P. Bryant).  Snell’s death sentence will eventually be carried out:  on April 19, 1995.

January 30, 1994, California:  In a vicious attack that will herald the resurgence of the “common law” movement, a group of extremists follow Stanislaus County Clerk-Recorder Karen Mathews to her home and beat her.   The extremists were angry that Mathews had refused to file their bogus liens on public officials.  Eventually a number of them will be caught and convicted.

January 31, 1994, California:  Christopher Berwick receives a two and a half year sentence—the minimum possible—after pleading guilty to helping manufacture illegal machine gun parts to sell to a white supremacist group

FEBRUARY

February 1, 1994, California:  Jill Marie Scarborough receives a sentence of one year’s probation for possessing an unregistered sawed-off shotgun.  Scarborough and her boyfriend, Geremy C. Von Rineman, a member of the World Church of the Creator, were among a number of skinheads arrested in southern California as the result of a 1993 investigation.

February 2, 1994, Illinois:  Tax protest movement leader William Benson is convicted of failing to file income tax returns for 1980 and 1981, as well as tax evasion.  Benson, a former investigator for the Illinois Department of Revenue, became a celebrity in the movement for declaring that the Sixteenth Amendment, which allows the income tax, was never properly ratified.

February 3, 1994, California:  Terrance Grew, an Alameda building supply salesman, pleads guilty to evading $154,363 in taxes through the use of sham trusts obtained from Nassau Life and International Business Association. 

February 5, 1994, Mississippi:  Byron de la Beckwith is convicted of murdering black civil rights activist Medgar Edgars in 1963.  Two previous trials, with all-white juries, had deadlocked, and there was evidence of jury tampering.

February 10, 1994, California, Washington:  Two members of the World Church of the Creator plead guilty to bombing an NAACP office and a gay bar in Washington state.  Jeremiah Gordon Knesal and Wayne Paul Wooten had already pled guilty on explosives and weapons charges.  Each face up to ten years in prison for these charges, but also still face other related, state charges (see January 21).

February 18, 1994, Maryland:  Tax protester Jabari Zakiya, a NASA engineer, receives a sixteen-month prison sentence and a $25,000 fine for convictions on tax evasion and failure to file tax returns.   Zakiya, a member of the Save-a-Patriot Foundation and a co-founder of the Progressive African Liberation Movement, owes $117,000 in taxes from the 1980s.

February 24, 1994, Texas:  The FBI begins an investigation of possible jury tampering in the murder trial of eleven Branch Davidians.  At least eight jurors—who are supposed to be anonymous—received letters highly critical of the government’s case.  One month earlier, the jury nullification group Fully Informed Jury Association mailed nullification propaganda to all 300 prospective jurors called in to possibly sit on the Davidian case.  That list was not private.

MARCH

March 1, 1994, California:  Josh Lee of Costa Mesa pleads guilty to possessing a sawed-off shotgun.  He is one of a number of people arrested during an investigation of southern California skinheads (see above) in 1993.

March 3, 1994, Arizona:  Tax protest leader Marvin Cooley is convicted on charges of willfully failing to file a 1986 federal income tax return.  Cooley, who has twice before been sentenced to prison on tax protest charges, faces up to one year in prison this time.  He vows that he will never “bow to the beast.”

March 4, 1994, Colorado:  Three Pueblo white supremacists are sentenced for illegally making aluminum flashpowder, a powerful explosive.  Antonio Estevan Sandoval, Blue Elaine Gacnik, and Steven Carroll Gade receive sentences ranging from 56 months to 22 months in prison.

March 4, 1994, Massachusetts:  A Franklin resident, skinhead Donald A. Pilkington, is arrested on charges of attacking black and Hispanic students at Dean College.  Pilkington, who has a history of hate crimes, faces up to ten years in prison.

March 4, 1994, Texas, Colorado:  A federal court in Amarillo, Texas, convicts We the People leaders Roy and Leanna Lois Schwasinger on two conspiracy charges and eleven obstruction of justice counts, as well as Darrell Sturgess on one count of conspiracy to obstruct justice.  The defendants had been charged with trying to impede officials investigating a gigantic fraud scheme the Schwasingers had masterminded by using bogus liens and other harassing documents.

March 11, 1994, Arizona:  Tax protester and former school superintendent Frank Ellena is released from jail before trial after a federal judge noted that his time spent so far in jail awaiting trial would be basically the amount he would have to serve if convicted.  Ellena had been a fugitive for more than a year before being arrested in Alaska in November 1993.  He will soon become involved with the Montana Freemen.

March 16, 1994, Wisconsin:  Posse Comitatus member Roy G. Dobbs is sent back to jail for eighteen months.  Dobbs had been convicted of tax evasion earlier but only given probation.  However, Dobbs failed to pay his back taxes as ordered by the judge in 1993.  Dobbs continues to claim that the courts have no jurisdiction over him.

March 20, 1994, Montana:  A Salt Lake City, Utah, newspaper article notes in passing something going on up in Montana: “what may be the latest rage in grass-roots paranoia—armed citizen militias.”  This is one of the first mentions of the brand-spanking new militia movement (the Militia of Montana was officially started in January 1994).

March 21, 1994, California:  Christopher Garrett Horn pleads no-contest to a felony charge of arson and is sentenced to seven years in prison.  Horn, 19 years old, had caused more than $1 million to the Davis Community Church in Yolo County.  The skinhead reportedly set the fire as a diversion to allow him to rob other locations.

March 21, 1994, New York:  IRS agents remove sixty dairy cows from the farm of Chautauqua County tax protester Roger Crumb, who owed more than $104,000 in taxes.  Crumb, who claims that he is not a “United States citizen,” has already served time in prison for refusal to pay taxes.

March 23, 1994, Massachusetts:  William Murray, the Woburn, Massachusetts leader of the Michigan neo-Nazi SS-Action Group, is charged on nine counts of illegal possession of firearms, 16 counts of possession of dangerous weapons, and one count of possession of ammunition.  Murray reportedly recruited skinheads from other states to come to Massachusetts to use his address to obtain federal Firearms Identification Cards in order to buy weapons and turn them over to Murray.

March 23, 1994, Florida:  Unsealed federal arrest affidavits charge a mother and son team, Janice Weeks-Katona and Jason Spencer Weeks, with conspiring to kill a federal judge and several other people.  The two were involved in a scam called the Premier Benefit Capital Trust, which was shut down in 1993, and also involved Theodore Navolio and Harry Marrero.  Weeks-Katona was associated with various right-wing figures and causes, including Emilio Ippolito, Charles Eidson, and the Pilot Connection Society, a notorious tax protest group.

March 24, 1994, Indiana:  A federal jury in South Bend, Indiana, finds Robert Rogers guilty of participating with five other men (who had all pled guilty) in a 1992 attack on a black couple.  Most of the men were members of the local Ku Klux Klan.  Rogers is convicted of conspiracy against civil rights, interfering with housing rights, possession of an unregistered sawed-off shotgun, possession of a gun with no serial number and using a gun while committing a crime of violence.  He faces up to 50 years in prison.

March 29, 1994, California:  Ralph Allen, a Sylmar, California, tax protester, is ordered to begin serving a 630-day jail sentence for failing to file state income tax returns after an appellate court rejects his appeal. 

March 30, 1994, Maryland:  Skinhead Christopher Jacobs is sentenced to seven years in prison in a plea bargain.  Jacobs pled guilty in January to assault with attempt to disable following an October 1993 gang attack on a teenager.  As part of the bargain, Jacobs agrees to testify against the other attackers.

March 30, 1994, Texas:  Charles Arthur Daughenbaugh is convicted on five counts of sending threatening communications through the U.S. mail.  Daughenbaugh, already a prisoner, had sent death threats to a number of judges in Texas, warning them that they would be executed by the “Aryan Warrior.”

March 31, 1994, Georgia:  Five Ft. Benning soldiers—Mark Abbott, Thomas M. Kelly, Jr., Christopher Bowers, Michael W. Stacy and Kennan Zimmerman—are accused of participating in a network to provide arms and explosives to white supremacist groups in the South.  A three-year probe resulted in the arrests of 35 suspected white supremacists in thirteen states in connection with the case, in addition to the soldiers, who face courts-martial.

March 31, 1994, Arizona:  Michael Anthony Bloom is jailed for violating the terms of his probation by communicating with known criminals and having access to guns.  Bloom, a skinhead, pled guilty in 1990 to conspiracy to commit arson and misconduct involving weapons as part of a plot to bomb 37 buildings owned by minorities. 

APRIL

April 4, 1994, Georgia:  Skinhead Joseph Lindsey Durham is charged with kidnapping with bodily injury and robbery in Gwinnett County, Georgia, following an episode in which five men and women kidnapped an 18-year old man, threatened him with torture, and beat and robbed him. 

April 5, 1994, Connecticut:  Ku Klux Klan member George Steele pleads guilty to illegal possession of a firearm.  He and four other Klan members had been arrested months earlier on a variety of weapons and explosives charges.  Steele is the first to plead guilty.

April 16, 1994, Florida.  Five people are arrested during a march organized by the Populist Party, a group with anti-Semitic and white supremacist ties, to support the flying of the Confederate Battle Flag in Hollywood, Florida.  Included in the arrests was the spokesman for the event, Ku Klux Klan activist Hank Pritchard, charged with threatening the lives of police officers and disorderly conduct; Anouk McKeever, charged with aggravated battery on a police officer and resisting arrest with violence; John Gruner, charged with four counts of battery, disorderly conduct, obstructing justice; Donald Lane, charged with resisting arrest with violence, four counts of battery, disorderly conduct; and Lazaro Sotelo, charged identically to Lane.

April 16, 1994, California:  U.S. Forest Service agents arrest five men and one woman for conducting paramilitary activity in national parks and forests in California.  The men dug bunkers in the Los Padres and Angeles forests, as well as Sequoia National Park, filling them with weapons and gear.  They also reportedly threatened to kill a sheriff’s deputy.  Two others will be arraigned later.

April 20, 1994, Texas.  White supremacist  Edith Marie Johnson is sentenced to 40 hours of community service after pleading guilty to threatening to shoot new black residents of a once all-white housing complex in Vidor, Texas.

April 22, 1994, Maryland:  Federal and local law enforcement agents raid the headquarters of a neo-Nazi group in Baltimore, arresting three leaders and seizing four assault weapons and 2,000 rounds of ammunition.   The two men and one woman, were leaders of a skinhead group called the “American Resistance.”

April 27, 1994, Illinois:  Following an appearance on the “Jerry Springer Show,” five skinheads attack employees of a Chicago Wendy’s fast-foot restaurant and vandalize the men’s restroom with racial slurs.   Four men and one woman were arrested after fleeing the building and charged with one felony count of a hate crime, one misdemeanor count of battery and one misdemeanor count of damage to property.  One suspect, Aaron Stockwell, was also charged with aggravated battery.  Also arrested were David Lynch, Robert Suggs, Kim Schnackenberg, and a juvenile.

April 29, 1994, Illinois:  Neo-Nazi Jonathan Preston Haynes is found guilty of murder, for having killed a Chicago-area plastic surgeon in 1993 to protect “the integrity of Aryan beauty.”  One week later he will be given the death sentence.

April 29, 1994, Illinois:  Tax protester William Benson, famous for “proving” that the 16^th Amendment was never enacted, is sentenced to four years in prison on tax evasion charges.  This was a resentencing following an earlier overturned conviction.

MAY

May 3, 1994, Connecticut:  Stephen Gray pleads guilty to selling a firearm to a convicted felon as part of a plea bargain.  Gray was one of five Ku Klux Klan members arrested on weapons and explosives charges in January 1994.

May 6, 1994, California:  Tax protester Richard Allen Bellon is sentenced to five months in federal prison, five months of house arrest and a year on probation, following a confrontation with an IRS agent, Bonnie Smith, in which he dragged her into his houseboat, “arrested” her, and refused to let her leave.

May 6, 1994, Wisconsin:  Former Posse Comitatus leader Donald Minniecheskie of Tigerton Dells is arrested for practicing law without a license. 

May 16, 1994, Arizona:  Tax protester Marvin Cooley, a leader in the movement, is sentenced on tax evasion charges to one year in prison and a fine of $25,000 for not paying more than $100,000 in taxes.  It will be Cooley’s third time in prison.

May 24, 1994, Arizona:  Skinhead Michael Bloom receives an 11 year sentence for violating his probation, following his release from jail for having plotted to blow up minority-owned buildings in the Phoenix, Arizona, area.  In March, police found three rifles and 2,500 rounds of ammunition in his home.

May 26, 1994, Connecticut:  Klan Grand Dragon William Dodge pleads guilty to possessing a pipe bomb.  Dodge was one of five Klan members arrested earlier this year on weapons and explosives charges.

May 26, 1994, Indiana:  Seventeen-year-old Jaden Thompson is sentenced to 20 years following his guilty plea to attempted armed robbery.   Thompson and three others were members of a white supremacist gang called the White Brotherhood, who decided to rob and assault blacks addicted to crack cocaine.  On December 21, 1993, they robbed and murdered Cathy Long.

May 29, 1994, California:  In Huntington Beach, police arrest two skinheads caught with drugs, weapons, a homemade bomb and thousands of dollars worth of stolen property.   Arrested on various charges are John Francisco Montiel and a juvenile.

JUNE

June 2, 1994, Illinois:  Robert Rogers receives a sentence of 22 years in prison following convictions on five counts of civil rights and weapons violations related to an attack on a black couple in 1992.  Rogers and five other men (including members of the Ku Klux Klan) planned and executed what judge Robert Miller characterized as “an act of domestic terrorism.”  Earl Douglas Martin is sentenced to more than nine years in prison on similar charges for his role in the same attack. 

June 3, 1994, Illinois:  Albert Ostertag and Brian Gill receive sentences for their role in an attack on a Chicago-area black couple in 1992 (see above).  Ostertag receives a sentence of over ten years in prison, while Gill receives a term of seven and a half years in jail.  The two had pled guilty.

June 10, 1994, Connecticut:  Klan member Edmund Borkoski is convicted on charges of conspiring to purchase a silencer for a weapon he threatened to use on his sister’s black boyfriend.  Borkoski is one of five Klan members arrested on various weapons and explosives charges in early 1994.

June 14, 1994, West Virginia, Pennsylvania:  Keith Brian McCullough, a fugitive from Pittsburgh, shoots himself in the head after police pull over the vehicle he was riding in, injuring himself critically.  In the vehicle, McCullough had a live grenade, various bomb-making chemicals, and literature from Aryan Nations, among other items.  McCullough had an extensive criminal history.  He will die on June 17.

JULY

July 1, 1994, Washington:  Michael Perry receives a 27-year sentence from a Pierce County judge for murdering Chad Petterson in a gravel pit.  Perry pled guilty in May to first-degree murder.  He and two other skinheads, high on amphetamines, murdered Petterson because they believed he had doctored their beer.

July 13, 1994, Oklahoma, Washington:  Clair Neal McCulley, from Seattle, Washington, is convicted in on tax evasion charges.  McCulley was a leader in a Tulsa, Oklahoma, tax protest group known as the Freeman Education Association. 

July 20, 1994, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania:  Brian Joseph Clayton, founder of the skinhead group New Dawn Hammerskins, is arrested in Pennsylvania for vandalizing Jewish synagogues and the car of a Jewish high school teacher in Brockton, Massachusetts.  Three juveniles are also charged.  The group also intimidated blacks at a shopping mall with baseball bats, Mace, bricks and other weapons, and assaulted two black girls.   Clayton faces up to eleven years in prison.

July 21, 1994, Arizona:  Tax protester and former school superintendent Frank Ellena is sentence dto time already served (five months) on two misdemeanor counts of obstructing IRS agents.  He had originally been charged with five counts of intimidating and obstructing IRS agents following a confrontation in July 1992 in Phoenix.  Ellena will eventually become involved with the Montana Freemen.

July 28, 1994, Connecticut:  Klan leader William Dodge is sentenced to slightly over five years in prison for possessing a pipe bomb (see above).

July 29, 1994, Florida:  Former Presbyterian minister Paul Hill is arrested for shooting a doctor who performed abortions and his driver in front of an abortion clinic in Pensacola, Florida.  It was the second slaying of a doctor over the issue of abortion in as many years in Pensacola.  Hill was the founder of an extreme anti-abortion group known as Defensive Action.

July 31, 1994, Utah:  A federal jury in Salt Lake City convicts Michael and Karen Jensen on tax evasion charges.  The two tax protesters were members of the National Commodity and Barter Association, a tax protest group based primarily in Colorado.  Before being indicted in 1993, the two had evaded paying almost $60,000 in taxes.

AUGUST

August 2, 1994, Texas:  White supremacist Jimmy Dale Jarrell is sentenced to six years in prison for having possessed an illegal homemade silencer, as well as stolen goods.  Jarrell had already been arrested in March for possessing a homemade hand grenade.

August 4, 1994, California:  San Leandro police arrest three white supremacists and seize an assortment of weapons and literatures in a raid following the appearance stickers on a local store.  Police arrest Joe Costa on suspicion of possession of assault weapons, possession of a dangerous weapon and parole violation.  Also arrested are Jason Branscum and Larry Stewart. 

August 6, 1994, Maryland:  Life insurance salesman and tax protester Ronald Brodt, Sr., is convicted of failing to file state income tax returns for three separate years.  Brodt stopped filing returns after becoming involved with the Save-A-Patriot Fellowship, a well-known tax protest organization.  He will later be sentenced to eighteen months in prison.

August 7, 1994, Iowa:  Des Moines police search for suspects following an incident in which a black man is attacked by a group of self-proclaimed skinheads with clubs who were apparently angered at his being with his wife, a white woman. 

August 9, 1994, Oregon:  Maynard Campbell, who instigated a day-long standoff in 1992 during an attempt to arrest him for logging violations, is sentenced to twenty-two months in prison for convictions on three counts of threatening to assault a federal officer and one count of using a firearm to commit a felony.

August 11, 1994, Alabama:  Skinhead Louis Oddo is convicted of murder for slaying a homeless black man in Birmingham in December 1993.  A second skinhead, Adam Galleon, pled guilty in 1993 and was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison.

August 12, 1994, Florida:  Two husband-and-wife couples from the Orlando area are charged with harassing federal judges by forging their signature on bogus liens.  Arrested are Janice and Bud Chess and Carlos and Hannelore Montalvo, on charges of obstruction of justice, impeding a federal investigation and conspiracy.  The couples were members of the tax protest group American Citizens Alliance.

August 24, 1994, Washington:  Keith Engstrom, a former Seattle police officer and tax protester, is convicted for the third time of failure to file federal tax returns.  Two previous convictions were reversed on appeal. 

August 29, 1994, California:  Sacramento resident Richard Campos is convicted on five felony counts of possessing and igniting an explosive device,  relating to two racially motivated firebombings, but the jury deadlocks on seven counts related to three other firebombings and a mistrial is declared on those counts.  Campos firebombed the home of a Chinese-American and the offices of the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing.  The jurors could not decide if he was also responsible for firebombings at three other places.

August 30, 1994, Kentucky:  Ku Klux Klan member Brian Grayson Tackett is sentenced to nearly 13 years in prison with no parole following a conviction on conspiracy and arson charges for having burned down a Bowling Green, Kentucky, church whose leader had criticized the Klan.  Earlier, Earnest Glenn Pierce, Sr., was sentenced to four years and four months in prison for ordering Tackett to commit the arson.  Federal charges are pending against another Klan member for threatening the life of a federal agent investigating the arson case.

SEPTEMBER

September 1, 1994, Florida:  Janice and Bud Chess (see above) plead guilty to one count each of obstructing justice for having filed bogus liens against a federal judge in central Florida.

September 8, 1994, Connecticut:  Ku Klux Klan member Stephen Gray is sentenced to six months in a halfway house for helping another Klan member illegally obtain an assault rifle.  Gray was one of a number of Klan members arrested in Connecticut in 1994 on various weapons and explosives charges.  The next day Scott Palmer will be sentenced to 63 years in prison and Edmund Borkoski to 54 months in prison.  William Doge was previously sentenced to 63 months in prison, and a fifth defendant, George Steele, committed suicide before sentencing.

September 13, 1994, Illinois:  White supremacist Randall Scott Anderson pleads guilty to civil rights conspiracy charges stemming from the bombing of a roller rink frequented by blacks, as well as vandalism of a synagogue in 1992. 

September 14, 1994, Michigan:  Three Michigan militia members become fugitives after skipping out on a court date following an arrest on weapons charges.

September 16, 1994, Texas:  Three Texas Ku Klux Klan members plead guilty to various charges stemming from intimidations attempts at the recently-integrated but formerly all-white housing project at Vidor, Texas.  Pleading are Judith Ann Foux and her sons Steven Joseph Foux and David Carl Foux.

September 17, 1994, Pennsylvania:  Two skinheads, Micah Ross and Mark Allen Miller, are arrested in Westmoreland County following the beating of a black teenager.  They are charged with simple assault, aggravated assault, harassment, stalking, ethnic intimidation, conspiracy, disorderly conduct and reckless endangerment.

September 19, 1994, California:  Jonathan Russell Kennedy, an Orange County skinhead, is charged with the attempted murder of two Hispanic men in August 1994.  Kenney is already in jail, having been charged with killing a black man the previous week, for which he faces first-degree murder charges.  A juvenile is also charged with the murder.  A third man, Harry Jordan, is arrested later, after police learn he had a baseball bat that might have been used in the beating.

September 21, 1994, Florida:  David Martell, a suspended lawyer from Orlando, is charged with obstructing justice and mail fraud for helping two couples (see above) file bogus liens against federal judges.  Martell was associated with tax protest groups such as the American Citizens Alliance and We the People.

September 26, 1994, Texas, Colorado:  Coloradoan Roy Schwasinger, leader of the group “We the People,” is sentenced in Texas to sixteen years in prison for his involvement in a multimillion scam and his efforts to intimidate public officials from investigating it.  Also sentenced are his wife, LeAnna Hoyt, to 12 ½ years in prison, and Darrell Sturgess, to five years in prison.  They had all been convicted of obstructing justice, conspiring to obstruct justice and conspiring to injure and impede an office of the United States.  Seven others charged made plea bargains allowing them to avoid prison.

September 28, 1994, Washington:  Tacoma resident Wayne Paul Wooten, Jr., is sentenced to nearly five years in prison for helping to bomb a Seattle gay bar in 1993, as well as for other explosives and weapons charges.  Wooten, a member of the World Church of the Creator, pled guilty in February.  Also arrested at the time was Jeremiah Gordon Knesal and Mark Kowalski.  Kowalski was sentenced in January to nearly 12 years in prison for a bombing of an NAACP office, while Knesal was sentenced to six and one-half years in prison.

September 29, 1994, Texas:  Thomas Michael Donahue is sentenced in Dallas to eight years and four months in prison for various conspiracy, money laundering and similar charges.  Donahue, host of a radio talk show known as “America’s Town Forum,” as well as a tax protest movement activist, was involved in a fraudulent peso exchange program that bilked investors of more than $40 million.  Fifteen other defendants were convicted in Texas and Oklahoma. 

OCTOBER

October 2, 1994, Pennsylvania:  Ku Klux Klan member Romie Young is arrested for plotting to blow up a dam near Huntingdon, Pennsylvania. 

October 12, 1994, Tennessee:  Police arrest white supremacist Lee Smith after an eight hour standoff at the home of convicted white supremacist murderer Byron De La Beckwith, where Smith was living in a basement apartment.  Smith is charged with four counts of aggravated assault with intent to commit murder, aggravated assault, resisting arrest, disorderly conduct and cruelty to animals.

October 14, 1994, Maryland, Pennsylvania:  Self-proclaimed white supremacist and Klan member Michael Todd Birkl of Altoona, Pennsylvania,  is arrested in Eklton, Maryland, following a 6 ½ hour standoff with state police.  Birkl had taken a hostage, a doctor’s receptionist, who was recovered unharmed.  Birkl said that taking a hostage was the only way he could “get his message out.”

October 15, 1994, Nevada:  White supremacist Justin Suade Slotto pleads guilty in Reno, Nevada, to murdering a gay man in July 1994.  Slotto stabbed the victim more than 20 times and, according to Slotto, wanted to carve a swastika on the body, but did not have time.  Three juveniles were also arrested at the time.

October 20, 1994, Kentucky:  Ku Klux Klan member Chris Conner is convicted of twice threatening the life of an ATF agent investigating a 1991 arson, and of threatening to shoot up an employment services office in Bowling Green, Kentucky. 

October 24, 1994, Massachusetts:  New Dawn Hammerskins leader Brian Joseph Clayton pleads guilty in Boston to two counts of conspiring to intimidate and violate the civil rights of Jews and blacks in relation to vandalisms at synagogues and other activities in 1993.  He faces up to eleven years in jail.

October 24, 1994, Washington:  In Parkland, Washington, a suburb of Tacoma, a teenage boy, Shane Patrick Dallas, is arrested after using racial epithets then opening fire on a group of African-American and white teenagers in a parking lot.  An eleven-year-old onlooker was wounded in the attack.  The suspect, believed to be a member of a white supremacist skinhead group, is charged with six counts of first-degree assault.

October 24, 1994, Georgia:  Four Ku Klux Klan members are arrested for allegedly murdering William Eddie Tucker of Hull, Georgia.  Arrested are Mary Samantha Doster, William Mark Mize, and Terry Mark Allen, all charged with murder.  Also arrested is Christopher Hattrup, charged with murder, tampering with evidence and giving false information.  Tucker himself was a member of a variety of white supremacist groups.

October 26, 1994, Florida:  Suspended lawyer David Martell pleads guilty to helping two couples (see above) file bogus liens against two Orlando federal judges.  He was charged with mail fraud and obstruction of justice.

October 28, 1994, Washington:  James William Hamilton surrenders to authorities in Pierce County, Washington, and is charged with rendering criminal assistance.  Hamilton had been sought in connection with the shooting spree of Shane Patrick Dallas (see above); he allegedly provided the weapon and advised Dallas to pick up spent shell casings.

October 29, 1994, Washington, D.C., Colorado:  Francisco Martin Duran opens fire on the White House with a semiautomatic.  He is charged with possession of a firearm as a convicted felon, destruction of federal property, assaulting a federal officer, and using a firearm in the commission of a violent crime.  Duran was adherent of the anti-government “patriot” movement.

NOVEMBER

November 10, 1994, Florida:  Central Florida millionaire and tax protester Grant McEwan is arrested on charges of attempting to interfere with the administration of IRS laws and filing a false document to obtain money from the government, in connection with the filing of a bogus lien against the IRS.

November 16, 1994, Illinois:  Skinhead Jason Carlson is convicted of attempted murder for a racially motivated assault on a Hispanic man near a bowling alley in 1992.  Two other defendants, Joshua Cadieux and Jon J. Peracki, had previously pled guilty to aggravated battery.

November 18, 1994, Florida:  Central Florida tax protester Charles Kimmig is arrested for using a firearm to stop the seizure of vehicles he owned by the IRS.  He is charged with impeding IRS revenue officers in seizing property and attempting to recover seized property. 

November 21, 1994, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts:  Former Ku Klux Klan leader Roy Frankhauser of Reading, Pennsylvania, is charged with conspiring and attempting to obstruct justice in relation to a investigation of skinheads in Massachusetts.  Frankhauser is alleged to have induced witnesses to destroy or conceal evidence.  Authorities were investigating the activities of the New Dawn Hammerskins (see above).

November 30, 1994, California:  In San Francisco, a mistrial is declared in a major case involving the Pilot Connection Society, one of the largest tax protest groups in the country.  Founder Phillip Marsh and seven associated had been charged with conspiring to interfere with the operations of the IRS, but the jury acquits one defendant and fails to reach verdicts on almost all of the other charges.  It is a major defeat for authorities hoping to halt “patriots for profit”—those people who scam other members of the “patriot” movement.  The Pilot Connection Society had sold more than 11,000 “untax” kits that it promised would allow people to avoid taxes.  Eventually a retrial later will result in some convictions.

DECEMBER

December 13, 1994, Illinois:  Skinhead Randall Scott Anderson, who threw a pipe bomb into a roller rink frequented by blacks in 1992, is sentenced to nine years in prison.   Two other accomplices, both juveniles who cooperated with authorities, are sentenced to a few months in jail.

December 14, 1994, California:  In Sacramento, white supremacist Richard Campos is convicted on all counts, including attempted murder, for a series of firebombings against minority targets.  A previous trial had resulted in jury deadlock on the most serious charges.  Campos can receive up to eighteen years in prison.

December 28, 1994, Florida:  Tax protester Rocco Del Monaco, Sr., is arrested in Fort Lauderdale for filing bogus tax forms against members of the board of directors of a bank that had foreclosed on his mortgage, as well as others who had irritated him, including a federal judge.  The forms alleged that the members had received millions of dollars of income from Monaco and were designed to trigger audits.

December 31, 1994, Massachusetts, Virginia, New Hampshire:  John Salvi is arrested in Norfolk, Virginia.  The New Hampshire resident had engaged in a shooting spree against abortion clinics in Boston and Norfolk, killing two women and wounding five others.