By Tom Parsons - The Associated Press

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — A white supremacist convicted of three murders as part of a plot to set up a new nation in the Pacific Northwest was sentenced Friday to life in prison without parole.

U.S. District Judge G. Thomas Eisele pronounced the sentence on Chevie Kehoe, 26, of Colville, Wash. When the judge asked Mr. Kehoe if he had anything to say, he responded, “I would just like to continue to maintain my innocence in this situation.”

Mr. Kehoe and Danny Lee, 26, of Yukon, Okla., were convicted last month of three counts of murder for slaying Tilly, Ark., gun dealer William Mueller, his wife Nancy and her 8-year-old daughter Sarah Powell in January 1996. Mr. Kehoe and Mr. Lee also were both convicted of one count each of conspiracy and racketeering.

Although prosecutors portrayed Mr. Kehoe as the leader of the plot, the jury rejected the death-penalty option for him while recommending it for Mr. Lee, who has a court hearing Tuesday.

Messrs. Kehoe and Lee were convicted in what prosecutors said was a plot to set up a new nation where people of Asian, black, Hispanic and Jewish descent would be banned.

Prosecutors had said Mr. Kehoe and Mr. Lee also were responsible for other illegal activities, including the bombing of City Hall at Spokane, Wash.

Mr. Kehoe and his brother Cheyne were involved in a 1997 shootout with two police officers in Wilmington, Ohio, that was videotaped and has been seen several times on national television.

Chevie Kehoe agreed to plead guilty in February, 1998, to attempted murder, felonious assault and carrying a concealed weapon in return for the state dropping eight others involving the Wilmington shooting.

His sentencing was deferred pending conclusion of the Arkansas case. His brother was convicted of felonious assault and sentenced to 24 years in prison.

The Cincinnati Enquirer

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Chevie O'Brien Kehoe, a pot-smoking 25-year-old who looks like he could be the logger next door, grew up dreaming about playing a starring role in the white supremacist revolution he was sure was just around the corner.

While only a boy of 12, Kehoe heard about the exploits of Bob Mathews, a self-styled white revolutionary who tried to live out a novel's vision of race war and died in a fiery shootout with the FBI in 1984.

Today, court documents on file in three states — Ohio, Washington and Arkansas — claim that Kehoe was grimly successful in achieving his life's dream of following in the footsteps of Mathews and becoming a blood-drenched Aryan warrior. He is tied to more acts of domestic terrorism that any other right-wing extremist arrested in the United States in the last decade.

As the alleged founder and leader of the so-called Aryan Peoples Republic, he is accused of involvement in five murders, the attempted murder of several police officers, bomb-making, armed robberies, burglaries and selling stolen property. Among other attacks, he allegedly pipe-bombed City Hall in Spokane, Wash.

Officials are prohibited by a judge's gag order from discussing the Kehoe case. But the case stems from an investigation that began three years ago, stretches from coast to coast and in many ways offers a road map to the topography of today's radical right.

Kehoe, who goes to trial on racketeering charges starting Feb. 16 in a federal courtroom in Little Rock, Ark., could face the death penalty. In addition, he could face state charges of murder and other crimes in connection with a five-year crime spree.

Kehoe's plan — as far-fetched as it may sound to many — was to carve out a new, independent country in the United States that would limit citizenship to whites. All others were to face forcible deportation or death.

According to the indictment, Kehoe "patterned his enterprise's activities after the actions and ideology" of Mathews' group — The Order — that was responsible for a series of armored car heists that netted $4 million and the murder of at least two people.

An 8-Year-Old Is Murdered

Kehoe's alleged violence was truly grotesque.

Among other things, Kehoe is accused of masterminding three Arkansas murders, including that of an 8-year-old girl who had a plastic bag duct-taped over her head. As Sarah Elizabeth Powell suffocated to death, she was apparently tortured with electric cattle prods to reveal where her gun-dealer stepfather hid his gold and other valuables.

Officials also believe the little girl first may have been forced to watch while her stepfather William Mueller, 52, and mother Nancy, 28, were suffocated in a January 1996 triple homicide that shocked even seasoned murder detectives.

The attack may not have been a complete surprise. Less than a year before, William Mueller told authorities that his home near Tilly, Ark., had been burglarized of firearms and other items worth more than $50,000. Mueller told friends that he feared the perpetrators — whom he hinted he might know — would return after the February 1995 burglary.

Officials now say that the proceeds from this burglary, including a 28-foot travel trailer stolen near Harrison, Ark., were taken to the Pacific Northwest by Kehoe, who earlier had teamed up with neo-Nazi Skinhead Danny Lee and federal prison escapee Faron Lovelace at Elohim City, a compound of religious extremists in eastern Oklahoma.

'A Liquid Diet'

After the Mueller family's bodies were tossed into a bayou near Russellville, Ark., Kehoe and his companions joked that the victims were on a "liquid diet," court records say. It would be six months before the badly decomposed bodies were discovered by a local fisherman. Investigators initially were completely stumped.

But small flecks of auto body paint were found on the duct tape used on the victims, eventually becoming the forensic clue that convinced federal ATF agents and Arkansas state investigators that Kehoe was connected to the three murders. The flecks scientifically matched paint found a year later on a freshly repainted pickup truck used by Chevie and his brother, Cheyne, authorities say.

The Arkansas killers stole a trailer full of firearms, ammunition, gold and militia supplies that the Muellers used to sell at gun shows, usually those tailored in part to militia fanciers and others interested in the same kind of antigovernment rhetoric that attracted Kehoe and his family.

Kehoe and his white supremacist cohorts are accused of transporting the stolen firearms and half a million rounds of ammunition from the 1995 and 1996 thefts in Arkansas to Spokane, stopping at Elohim City on the way. The stolen loot was hidden in a garage at The Shadows Motel & RV Park in north Spokane, where Kehoe and his band of Aryan warriors holed up for a period of time in 1995 and 1996.

Later, the stolen items were kept in storage lockers rented under fictitious names in Oldtown, Idaho, and Thompson Falls in western Montana.

The Shadows during this period was home to an underground trade in guns and, apparently, bombs. A former manager recalls that Kehoe spent time making his own blasting caps and pipe bombs, detonating the devices under stacks of telephone directories.

The manager also says that he saw Kehoe's stash of stolen firearms and other items he's accused of stealing from Mueller — including a handful of Mueller's business cards. Kehoe told the manager that he bought the guns, ammunition and survivalist supplies from a gun dealer who had gone broke, and authorities were never notified.

Timothy McVeigh in the Shadows

A tantalizing connection also emerged at The Shadows.

In early 1995, the former manager recalls, a man resembling Timothy McVeigh met Kehoe at The Shadows. The manager also says that Kehoe showed up hours before the April 19, 1995, Oklahoma City bombing and excitedly demanded that the manager turn on the CNN news channel, a hint that Kehoe had advance knowledge of McVeigh's plan.

The Shadows' former manager is not the only one to place McVeigh at the motel. A Spokane couple claims that a white supremacist who is now accused of molesting their children told them that he'd met McVeigh at the motel.

But the FBI has been unable to establish that McVeigh was ever at the motel — or, indeed, anywhere in the Pacific Northwest prior to the Oklahoma bombing.

It may not have been coincidence that The Shadows is a few steps from a bar that was one of Mathews' favorites hangouts in 1983 and 1984. (The bar also once hosted Madonna, who starred in a high school wrestling movie filmed there.)

But instead of drinking or spending much time at the bar his hero frequented, Chevie, or "Bud," as friends called him, seemed to prefer spending his time at the motel, regularly smoking marijuana.

Chevie wasn't the only Kehoe to occasionally live at The Shadows. His father, Kirby Keith Kehoe, and other members of his family apparently did so as well, frequently traveling 60 miles north to Colville, Wash., where the family once lived.

Officials say that Chevie and his father supported themselves while based in Spokane by brazenly selling some of the stolen Mueller firearms at gun shows around the country — a dangerous practice that may ultimately have led to the undoing of the Kehoe gang.

The first stolen weapon to surface in the case was a .45-caliber Colt pistol that authorities now say was Nancy Mueller's personal handgun. Seattle police seized the gun in February 1996 when they arrested a suspected drug user who was spotted carrying the gun in a pawn shop.

The man later told investigators that he got the gun from Kirby Kehoe, who was secretly indicted in Spokane in June 1997 for possessing the stolen firearm.

That revelation was the first break for state and federal investigators who jointly were investigating the Mueller murders. But it would be another 17 months before Chevie Kehoe and other alleged gang members were behind bars.

A life of Extremism

The Kehoe saga began long before.

Chevie Kehoe was born on Jan. 29, 1973, in Orange Park, Fla., to Kirby and his wife, Gloria. His name, a family friend who lives in Spokane recalls, came from a family preoccupation. "His father was a real good mechanic and particularly liked Chevrolets, and that's why they named their first son Chevie," the friend said.

The elder Kehoe was a Vietnam veteran, whose dislike and distrust for the federal government intensified as Chevie was growing up. Chevie, Cheyne and the six other brothers who followed sometimes attended public schools, but mostly were home-schooled by their parents, who deeply distrusted public education.

Chevie listened and learned.

The family was itinerant, with the parents building pole barns, planting trees and doing other jobs — mostly just getting by in the underground economy that attracts so many in the extremist movement. They lived in Florida, Arkansas and elsewhere before moving to northeastern Washington state, near the Canadian border, in the late 1980s.

Somewhere along the way, the elder Kehoes connected with the Christian Identity belief that whites are the true Israelites, God's chosen people, who have a moral obligation to fight for the preservation of their race. They heard the Identity message, which also emphasizes that Jews are the children of Satan, at Elohim City, the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations compound in Idaho and a small church called The Arc, north of Colville.

In his mid-teens, Kehoe met Jake Settle, a former Marine and ex-cop who was living in the area. Settle, who frequented the Aryan Nations compound with his wife, Susan, shared the Kehoe family's Identity beliefs. As Chevie matured, he became somewhat estranged from his father and came to see Settle as his mentor. "He really liked Jake and looked up to him as a big brother, even a dad," a former friend recalls.

Polygamy and the Chosen People

In the early 1990s, Chevie and his family began visiting Aryan Nations, where they listened to the Identity teachings of leader Richard Butler. A decade earlier, Butler had been the inspiration for Mathews, Bruce Carroll Pierce, David Lane, Gary Yarbrough, David Tate and other young men who soon grew tired of merely listening to Butler's hate-filled speeches and decided to take action by secretly forming The Order.

Ultimately, Chevie would decide to avoid the mistakes of Mathews, whose downfall came largely because of the size of his group, which numbered more than 30. Following the strategy of "leaderless resistance," Chevie allegedly kept his group of Aryan warriors much smaller, determined to avoid the attention of the authorities.

As he grew toward manhood, Chevie became increasingly interested in polygamy, arguing that it was accepted in biblical times and permitted under the Identity doctrine, according to the federal indictment. He told friends and family that it was his obligation to enhance the population of the white race by having multiple wives and as many children as possible.

Ultimately, the indictment says, he saw the practice of polygamy as vital to building the Aryan Peoples Republic that he envisioned.

Soon enough, he was turning those words into action.

In 1993, Susan Settle introduced her 18-year-old sister, Angie, to Chevie, who by then was married to Karina Gumm. Chevie later went to Angie's house in Spokane, hoping she could supply him marijuana. Before the encounter ended, Angie had agreed to become Chevie's second wife in a polygamous relationship that lasted less than two months.

Chevie took both wives to the 1993 Aryan World Congress, an annual event hosted by the Aryan Nations, apparently hoping to impress others that his polygamous ways would help ensure the vitality of the white race. While there, Kehoe assaulted Karina, who was seven months pregnant.

She suffered a black eye and a bloody lip, apparently because she was having trouble accepting her role in Chevie's polygamous family.

Enter the Aryan Republican Army

Chevie, Karina, Angie and one child spent a couple of weeks in a small cabin near the Canadian border, north of Kettle Falls, Wash. Soon they headed to Elohim City, where Chevie's polygamy was accepted by others pursuing a similar lifestyle.

After 54 days of marriage, Angie grew homesick, tired of the marriage and the domestic violence that accompanied it. With the help of another woman at Elohim City, she planned her flight. But she soon learned she had an ally in Gloria Kehoe, who convinced her son to allow Angie to return home to her parents in Spokane.

While at Elohim City, a community to which his parents had originally introduced him, Chevie met up with a group of like-minded white supremacists. Authorities now believe that beginning in 1994, Chevie began supplying firearms to members of the Aryan Republican Army, a group that would steal $250,000 in a series of 22 bank robberies in the Midwest.

It's unclear if the group, with a name remarkably similar to the Aryan Peoples Republic Chevie was striving to create, was connected to him in other ways.

Soon, Chevie was staying at The Shadows and, in a parallel to McVeigh, traveling the gun show circuit. It was in this period as well that authorities now believe he was involved in the murders of two neo-Nazi Skinhead associates.

In the summer of 1995, prosecutors allege that Kehoe ordered Faron Lovelace to murder Jeremy Scott. The reason: Kehoe had convinced Scott's wife to join him in a polygamous marriage and Scott stood in the way.

Prosecutors say the other man, Jon Cox, may have been killed because Kehoe believed he was telling friends of Kehoe's alleged plans to rob a series of armored cars, just as Mathews had done a dozen years before. Members of Mathews' Order had also killed a suspected informer, Walter West, whose body, just like Cox's, was never recovered from the wilds of the Pacific Northwest.

By late 1996, after Nancy Mueller's handgun was found in Seattle, investigators were closely examining Chevie and Kirby Kehoe in the Mueller case. They also were looking for one of their alleged associates, Timothy Coombs, who remains a fugitive in the attempted assassination of a Missouri state trooper shot through his kitchen window.

The Muellers had lived in a home that was once owned by Coombs.

The Net Begins to Close

Another big break in the case came on Dec. 10 of that year, when a Spokane Skinhead was arrested while getting a traffic ticket in South Dakota. In Sean Haines' vehicle, police found a Bushmaster .223-caliber assault rifle stolen from Mueller.

When Arkansas and federal investigators began talking to him about the possibility of being charged in a triple murder, Haines quickly rolled over and implicated Chevie Kehoe.

Apparently hearing of the arrest, Kehoe hit the road. First he moved from The Shadows to another Spokane recreational vehicle park. Then he convinced his brother, Cheyne, and Cheyne's young family, to join him and his wife in leaving Spokane in a motor home that allegedly was purchased with proceeds from stolen goods.

The families moved fast, passing through Nevada, Texas and Alabama, before checking in to an Ohio campground. Then, on Feb. 15, 1997, two Ohio police officers stopped a Chevrolet Suburban with expired Washington plates.

Cheyne came out shooting.

In a dramatic exchange of fire captured on a police car video camera and broadcast around the nation, no one, amazingly, was killed, and the Kehoe brothers escaped. A few minutes later, Chevie opened up on other officers, again escaping unhurt.

A nationwide manhunt was on. Officials put up a wanted poster and offered a $60,000 reward. But the Kehoes had disappeared, moving through a murky antigovernment underground, selling Mueller weapons as they went, and ending up in southern Utah. There, the brothers and their families found ranch work under assumed names.

The Final Target: Chevie's Own Family

They might have remained hidden, officials say, if not for Chevie's tendency to extreme violence. While at the ranch, he allegedly began speaking of killing his parents to secure a pricey gun collection.

Cheyne remembered well how Chevie had spoken calmly to friends of killing his own wife, Karina, after learning she might be part Native American.

To top it off, Chevie had developed an unhealthy interest in Cheyne's wife.

So Cheyne fled. In June 1997, he drove straight through to his family's old hometown of Colville and, accompanied by Identity minister Ray Barker, turned himself in to local authorities. The next day, armed with a map Cheyne had provided, FBI agents arrested Chevie as he walked into a feed store in Gunlock, Utah.

Cheyne cooperated fully, and federal officials asked a state judge for leniency. But the judge handed him a 24-year sentence on charges stemming from the Ohio shootout, pointing out that Cheyne had guns stolen from a murder victim and had tried to kill several Ohio police officers. Cheyne's wife reportedly got the $60,000 reward.

Lovelace is now on death row after a state conviction in Jeremy Scott's death. Chevie, his father Kirby and Danny Lee go to trial in February on the federal racketeering charges. And Cheyne is being hidden by prison officials who fear he could be killed at the hands of imprisoned white supremacists who see him as a traitor.

Like his fallen hero, Bob Mathews, Chevie appears unrepentant. Suckled on the theology of Christian Identity, he has promised to fight to his dying breath.

In an undated letter to his wife seized by authorities in Utah, Chevie allegedly wrote that he would "rather die on my feet than live on my knees." He told Karina that he "had to represent the ideals that I [have] so long honored." Then, in a postscript to federal agents, he added that he would "'forever and always' seek to destroy you and yours.

"I will see to it on earth if alive and will see to it in the heavens if made a 'GOD,' either way my fears and pains [will] torment you and yours forever."

The Kehoe Gang

A national saga

The saga of Chevie Kehoe, his family and the men who followed him is one that stretches across many states and years. Here, drawn from court records, interviews and media accounts, is a timeline of significant events.

Although criminal cases have established some facts, many events listed here are allegations from the government's indictment of Kehoe and other sources that have not been proven in a court of law.

Jan. 29, 1973 Chevie Kehoe is born in Orange Park, Fla., the eldest son of Kirby and Gloria Kehoe. Nurtured from an early age in the tenets of the racist and anti-Semitic Christian Identity religion, Chevie will adopt radical antigovernment views as he grows up that shape the rest of his life.

1991 Chevie's rage at the government is heightened by a federal raid on a neighbor's house near his own family home in Colville, Wash.

A year later, the deadly Ruby Ridge, Idaho, standoff between authorities and the family of white supremacist Randy Weaver adds to Chevie's hatred of the government.

1993 Chevie and others launch a terrorist conspiracy to create the Aryan Peoples Republic, a whites-only homeland. Eventually, at least five people will be murdered.

1994 Around this time, Chevie meets members of the Aryan Republican Army, along with members of his own future gang, at Elohim City.

Members of the white supremacist ARA gang later go to prison in connection with the robberies of 22 Midwestern banks meant to finance a revolution. It's later established that the ARA used weapons supplied by the Kehoes.

Feb. 12, 1995 Tilly, Ark., gun dealer William Mueller tells authorities that masked men took $50,000 in guns, coins and equipment in a home invasion.

Later in the month, Chevie and Faron Lovelace stop at Elohim City with a truckload of Mueller's weapons.

March-April 1995 Witnesses place Chevie at The Shadows Motel and RV Park in Spokane, Wash., where he's involved in illegal gun sales.

A former manager later tells The Spokesman-Review newspaper that he believes Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh met Chevie at the motel. The former manager says Chevie appeared to have advance knowledge of the April 19, 1995, Oklahoma bombing. The FBI says it can't confirm the report.

June 12, 1995 Supermarket owners Malcolm and Jill Friedman are robbed and kidnapped near Colville by a man dressed in camouflage, who authorities later identify as Lovelace. Malcolm is kidnapped but released unharmed near The Shadows Motel.

Chevie, who once worked at the Friedman's supermarket, and his father Kirby allegedly drove Lovelace to the Friedman home.

July-August 1995 Chevie orders Jeremy Scott's murder in north Idaho after persuading Scott's common-law wife to become his polygamous second wife. Lovelace is later convicted of the killing.

Sept. 20, 1995 Lovelace robs Colville jewelry wholesaler and gun enthusiast Dick Morton of his gun collection during a home invasion. Morton also is driven to Spokane and forced to withdraw $480 from a bank machine before being released near The Shadows Motel.

January 1996 Chevie and associate Daniel Lewis Lee leave Yukon, Okla., where they have been living, and head for the Mueller home in Tilly, Ark. Jan. 11, 1996 Mueller, his wife and her 8-year-old daughter are abducted, robbed and murdered as they leave their Arkansas home for a gun show. The killers tape plastic bags over their heads and shock them with electric cattle prods as they suffocate.

Later that month, Chevie buys a motor home with $10,000 cash. Weapons owned by the Muellers are eventually linked to the Kehoe brothers and Kirby.

February 1996 Travis Brake is arrested while carrying a gun traced to the Mueller collection. He tells authorities he bought the weapon from Kirby at a Seattle gun show, giving investigators their first break in the Kehoe case.

April 29, 1996 A pipe bomb goes off outside Spokane City Hall. Cheyne Kehoe later says that his brother Chevie carried out the attack. Eventually, Lee also is indicted in the bombing.

June 28, 1996 A fisherman finds the found bodies of the Mueller family in a bayou near Russellville, Ark.

The same month, neo-Nazi Skinhead Sean Michael Haines, an Aryan Nations youth leader, allegedly swaps guns with Chevie at The Shadows Motel.

Aug. 18, 1996 A heavily armed Lovelace is arrested after being lured from his home to Priest River, Idaho, to assassinate supposed Hispanic drug dealers recruiting young girls into prostitution — a story concocted by agents to trap Lovelace. Lovelace leads authorities to Scott's buried body.

August 1996 Apparently fearing arrest after Lovelace's capture, Chevie and his family abandon a stolen trailer home where they had been living in the Kaniksu National Forest in Idaho. Chevie heads to "the Yaak," a river valley in northwest Montana, where his parents are living.

Dec. 10, 1996 After being arrested in possession of a Mueller rifle at a freeway rest stop in Sioux Falls, S.D., Haines implicates Chevie in the Mueller gun theft.

Learning of the arrest, Chevie convinces Cheyne to join him in his flight from the Spokane compound where both have been living. They sell stolen Mueller weapons as they go.

January 1997 The Kehoe brothers and their wives pay a month's rent in advance at a campground near Frankfort, Ohio.

Feb. 15, 1997 Police making a routine traffic stop are fired on by Cheyne. The ensuing shootout is captured on a patrol car video camera.

In the Kehoes' Chevrolet Suburban, police find heavy weapons, 4,000 rounds of ammunition and FBI caps. In a second shootout a few minutes later, Chevie shoots at other officers, wounding a bystander.

The Kehoe brothers escape separately, and a nationwide manhunt begins.

Feb. 28, 1997 Officials find the Kehoes' abandoned motorhome, containing bomb-making components, outside Casper, Wyo.

Chevie reportedly travels through Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana before making his way to Utah. Cheyne's path takes him through Wyoming and Arizona before he arrives in Utah, where both brothers live under assumed names with their families. The two fugitives find work on a ranch near Gunlock, Utah.

June 16, 1997 Cheyne flees the Utah ranch, saying later that he feared his brother. He drives straight to his hometown of Colville and gives himself up to authorities. He immediately begins cooperating.

June 17, 1997 With information from Cheyne, authorities arrest Chevie as he goes into a feed store in Gunlock.

July 1, 1997 Authorities begin a fruitless search in north Idaho for the body of a Chevie associate, neo-Nazi Skinhead Jon Cox. Chevie is believed to have murdered Cox because he was writing to friends about Chevie's plans to rob a series of armored cars.

March 18, 1998 Kirby is arrested in Springdale, Wash., by agents who seize hand grenades, machineguns, and ammunition. He had been sought after violating a judge's order to remain in Montana while facing charges of possessing a handgun stolen from the Muellers.

In May, he pleads guilty to federal weapons violations.

July 7, 1998 A federal grand jury in Little Rock, Ark., issues an amended indictment accusing Chevie, Kirby and Lee of racketeering and other violations. Lovelace, already on death row for the murder of Scott, is dropped from the initial indictment, issued on Dec. 12, 1997. The trial is set for Feb. 16.

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