True Crime All The Time - Chevie Kehoe

Episode Date: July 30, 2018

Chevie Kehoe grew up in a household filled with white supremacist and extremist rhetoric. He would grow up to be one of the most infamous extremists in recent years. His idea was to take on the US government and carve out a piece of the country where only white people would be allowed. Join Mike and Gibby as they discuss the life and crimes of Chevie Kehoe. This is a man that was willing to bomb, rob, and murder to help fulfill his dreams.You can help support the show at patreon.com/truecrimeallthetimeVisit the show's website at truecrimeallthetime.com for contatct, merchandise, and donation informationSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

everyone and welcome to episode 89 of the True Crime All the Time podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson and with me as always is my partner in True Crime. Mike Gibson, Gibby, what is going on? What's happening, man? I'm doing good. Yeah, doing all right. I'm ready to crank out a good episode. What episode number? 89. 89, man. That's great. We got to throw a party at 100, I think. We should. I think so. We put out our Patreon episode. It was a big hit. It was. We're really, we're well. So I think we're we're going to look to put at least one out a month. I think that's good. Moving forward. Do that for our Patreon members for sure. Based on response, it seemed to be really, really good. And we figured out a way to put an RSS feed so people can download it to their, to their phone. Yeah. To their podcast app. So they can save on their download. Exactly. Yeah. So let's give some Patreon shout-outs. We had Adrian Houston, Barrett Kristen Nilsson. That's a mouthful.

A little bit. Yeah. Ashley Bridges. Brian McElroy. Spencer Pascall. Mark Anthony. Oh, yeah. Got him.

We got him. Hooked him. J-Lo. J-Lo? Yeah. Renee Crawford. Todd Plouffe. Ploof?

You crack me up. Any name where you can make a sound effect, you will do it. I loved it. Donna Joplin jumped out at our highest level. All right. Aaron White. Chelsea Moss. Brendan Will Hyde, Sarah Jones, Ella.

Ella? Just Ella. Ella, chant it? Under my umbrella. Yeah. Brittany Waynick. Hey, Brittany. Rebecca Resnick.

Lisa. Just Lisa? Just Lisa. Amanda Tedrick. Got some rhymers here. Yeah. In the last name department. Michelle Charmack.

Becky Tate. Yep. Kelly Slatton. Jody Peterson. Jimmy Chambers. Tarnia and Ange. Tarnia? Tarnia and Ange.

Close, yep. Michael Milhouse, Nick Maitland, Astra Barry, Astra. Kyle Monopoly. Ooh, that's a good name. That's a cool name. Yeah.

Barbara Forbes Rooney. That's a power name. It is. That's two power names coupled together. Lobita Works is back with us. Hey, Labita. And Kimber Monks jumped out of our highest level. Hey, thanks, Kimber.

And if we go back in, to the vault Gibbs. All right. This week we selected Warner Hobart. Hey Warner. Big supporter, been with us a long time. We really appreciate that. We appreciate all the new Patreon supporters and all the people that continue to support us

month after month. Absolutely. We also had some great PayPal support. We had Jessica Metz. Thank you. James Rose and Dusty Lawhorn. Thank you all. That's awesome.

It's awesome. So right now we have an episode out on. True Crime All Time Unsolved. We do. We took a break last week, but we're back. We're back. And we're talking about the Hinter-Kifek farm murders. So we're going to Germany.

Going to Germany, man. Which we'd never been, correct? I think it's Otto Bonn. Getting your V-E, your VW, man. You said auto-bine? I did. I think it's Otto Bonn. It might be, yeah.

Actually, I'm sure it is. Yeah. But we're in Germany. We're about, what, Gibbs, an hour outside of Munich. Just slightly an hour. Yep. So it's an interesting episode because there are a lot of pronunciations. There is.

To mess up. Just say it angry. Just say it angry. It's how, you know, when you want to pronunciate that, you know, you say it angry. Oh. Like naï. It just makes it sound German. Yes.

If I say it like I'm angry. Absolutely. All right. But check that out. But let's dive right into this episode. I'm ready to go. Okay. Because this is one that I've thought about doing for a long time.

So we're talking about Chevy Kehoe, a white supremacist. Yep. Who, you know, set out to commit acts of domestic terror in order to bring down the government of the United States. It's a big task, man, to bring down the USA. It is. Yeah. But the reason that I've been thinking about doing it is because it's something that you

and I remember. He didn't live here, but he blew through town. He did. Very close to us. Yep. Something big happened. that obviously we're going to talk about. Right.

And it's something that a lot of people around here remember. Yeah, I remember it plain as day. Yeah. So I've had him on the list for a long time. But he didn't want to just take down the government. He wanted to create his own independent country within the U.S. That would limit citizenship to white people only. Really?

Well, he was a white supremacist. He just wanted to carve that little chunk of land out. Yeah, however big. Whoever was living there, if you didn't fit the criteria, you had to leave? Yeah. Okay. He even talked about deporting people that didn't meet the criteria. All right.

I'm not sure the criteria was that hard to define. It was white people. Because I think, you know, as far as he was concerned, anyone that wasn't white could either live somewhere else or to him, they could die. Yeah. He didn't care. He didn't. He ends up forming his own militia, which we'll get into, but he was involved in five murders, the attempted murder of several police officers, you know, some bombings, armed robberies,

burglaries, selling stolen property. And this guy, he did a lot. He was one of the most prolific right-wing extremist slash terrorist, domestic terrorists in recent history. Now, there have been a lot of others, Timothy McVeigh and people like that, and we're actually going to touch on them. But let's start with background, Gibb. You know, that's where we like to go first. Yeah, let's do that. Chevy Kehoe was born January 29th, 1973 in Orange Park, Florida, to Kirby and Gloria Kehoe.

He was their first child, but they would go on to have seven more boys. Wow. So eight boys. That's a lot. That is a handful. That's a big family. Well, eight on its own would be big. But to have eight boys, number one, can you imagine the grocery bill?

I could not. For eight growing boys. It would not want to imagine it. Your son puts quite a dinn into it. Yeah, I can't imagine having seven more like that. Have seven more like that. So apparently Chevy's father Kirby was a good mechanic, and he was fond of Chevroletes. And that's where he got the name, Chevy.

Now, it's not spelled like you normally see Chevy. It's I-E at the end. But what if he could have been Ford? Could have been Osmobile. He could have been fond of Ugo's. Could have. The kid could have been named Ugo. Remember the old Ugo's.

I remember those. Pulled that one out of my hat. Yeah, you did. But they never really went anywhere, didn't they? The Ugo's. No, because I'm pretty sure most of them broke down within like a mile of your house. Yeah.

They didn't last too long. They were small and light. You can push them. Very cheap. But shortly after Chevy was born, Kirby moved the family to North Carolina, and it was up in the mountains. He wanted to get away from people. And this would be the beginning of, you know, a long stretch of years of isolation,

living in poverty. Then in 1985, he moved the family to Colville, Washington, which is near the Canadian border. And again, in Washington, they found a place where they could be isolated. You know, they could do their own thing. They got by by doing, you know, odd jobs here and there. Most of what little money they brought in was from doing the one thing that Kirby was good at. They would travel around to gun shows, buy guns, clean them up, and then sell them. That's how they made a lot of their money.

And you can look back at a lot of the white supremacists, extremists, whatever words you want to use, Timothy McVeigh did did the same thing. He traveled the gun show circuit. This is how a lot of these people financed, you know, what they were trying to do. But Chevy and his brothers, they learned from their father. Extreme anti-government, white supremacist beliefs. And at first, the boys, they didn't like it. You know, they bucked against their father.

They wanted to be normal kids. They wanted to do things like get a driver's license when they turned 16. but they didn't even have social security cards. I mean, they were essentially living off the grid. They definitely weren't living what most of us would consider to be a normal life. The dad Kirby was a Vietnam veteran and, you know, he had this dislike, this distrust for the federal government. And it intensified as Chevy was growing up. So you had Chevy, you had his younger brother Shane.

and then six younger brothers that we're not going to talk about. We're going to talk about Chevy and then we're going to a little bit about Shane. They did attend public school, but for the most part, they were homeschooled. Because of this, again, mistrust of the government, mistrust of the public education system. But what I found interesting Gibbs was that when Chevy was enrolled in junior high, he was an honor student and apparently had aspirations of joining the Air Force. But just a year later, you know, they were all yanked out of school and they would never attend public school again. The Kiho's were followers of the Christian identity religion, which apparently teaches that whites are the chosen people and that Jews are the descendants of Satan.

Really? Sounds scary. Sounds scary. Yep. Sounds wrong. Sounds completely wrong. Not telling people what to believe in, but. I guess if you don't have any CIR followers anymore, if you ever did, you're going to be okay.

Yeah. You're sleep okay at night. You know, if we lose our CIR audience, that's just a chance we're going to have to take. Yeah, we'll be all right. But then we get into the 1990s. And Chevy and his family, they get even deeper into the ideals of the Aryan nation. And they traveled around to hear and learn from some of the leaders. And there were a couple of incidents that happened in the early 90s that started Chevy even further down this kind of bad path that he was headed.

So the first was in 1991, federal agents raided a house of one of the neighbors of the Kehows. So they didn't like that, right? They didn't like federal authorities coming into somebody's house. They felt like it was a violation. Right. That ticked them off. And then in 1992, there was a big incident at Ruby Ridge. And most people will remember that.

That was the Randy Weaver and his family. There was a standoff. Some members of his family were killed. And Ruby Ridge incited a lot of, you know, these types of individuals, right? Timothy McVeigh was incited by Ruby Ridge and Waco and others. But I think this one really set Chevy Kehoe all. off because it was after this that he starts talking about becoming an Aryan warrior and throwing around this idea of, you know, setting out to build his own militia called the Aryan's People

Republic with the sole purpose, like I said before, of toppling the United States government. And like you said Gibbs, that's a heck of a task. A huge task. But he planned on doing it by murdering politicians. judges, bombing strategic targets, and he planned to finance it all by robbing armored cars. And he had studied some of the white supremacist leaders throughout the years and took some things from them. Robbing armored cars was one. But he also took a look at why they failed to accomplish their mission. And one of the things that he thought was that they got too big. So a leader would recruit

too many people. He'd have too many followers and that would put him on the radar of the government. So Chevy vowed that he was going to keep his militia small, no more than 30 people. Going to be hard to topple the government with 30 people. Very difficult to topple a local village. And as he got older, Chevy became enamored with the idea of polygamy. You know, he told friends and family. that it was his obligation to enhance the population of the white race, so he needed to have multiple wives and he needed to father as many children as he could.

Meshavie first married a woman named Karina, and then later on in 1993, he was introduced to an 18-year-old named Angie, who was a sister of a family friend, and eventually Angie became his second wife. I think we've talked about polygamy before, Gibbs. I can't remember. It is tough enough to have one spouse. Right. You know, that's a job. That is a job. To make a marriage work. I don't know how you have two, three, four. It'd be difficult, man. And try to topple the U.S. government at the same time. You're taking on a lot of projects at once. And robin-armor bank cars. Exactly. But later on in 1993, Chevy, Chevy, took both of his wives to this thing called the Aryan World Congress. Sounds important.

Well, anytime you put that Congress at the end of something. And world. And world. It means like, oh, so we're going to go to the podcast world of Congress meeting. Sounds very important. Sounds like everybody in the world's going to be there. You know, this is an annual event that was hosted by the Aryan nations. It does not sound like something I'd like to go to, but it was said that Chevy was hoping to impress others there with his multiple wives. But what happened is at this Congress, he assaulted his first wife, Karina, who at the time was seven months pregnant. And I guess she had a black eye, a bloody lip, all because she was having trouble accepting

her role in Chevy's new polygamous family. Shocker, that a woman that you married would have trouble accepting. another woman. Another woman in the relationship. Coming into the relationship. Yeah. What was he thinking? But Angie wasn't having it either because it was about 54 days into the marriage that she was tired of it.

She was tired of being away from home. She was tired of the domestic violence that she had endured. And she left and went back to her parents in Spokane, Washington. So we jumped to the next year, 1994. Chevy began supplying. firearms to members of another group called the Aryan Republican Army. And this is a group that robbed a large number of banks, 20 to 25 banks in the Midwest, and they stole approximately $250,000.

Now, by the next year, Chevy had created his own white supremacist organization called Aryan People's Republic. Sounds pretty close to the other one. It does. But I guess if you have the word Aryan in it, that's going to sound somewhat similar. And among the members were his brother Shane, his father Kirby, and two acquaintances, Daniel Lee and Farron Lovelace. So there were more people, but these are the key players.

You're going to say these are the key individuals that we're going to be talking about. And the first big thing that happens is in February of 1995. Chevy, along with his father Kirby, they go down to Tilly, Arkansas, and they rob a man by the name of William Mueller. And Mueller was a gun dealer that the keyhose knew from the gun show circuit. I mean, they knew a lot of people that went to these gun shows and they traded guns and they bought and sold. They also knew that Mueller was a pretty big player. He had money. He had a substantial stock pile of guns. So they went down and they robbed him. And Mueller told the police that masked men committed a home invasion against him, took off with Gibbs about $50,000. Wow, man, that's a lot of

guns. In guns and money, coins, things like that. He kind of hinted to police that he might know who it was, but he didn't give them a name. But he later accused the keyhos of committed. the robbery and took it a step further and said that he would kill them if he found out and could ever prove it. Wow. That's a big statement to say. Well, it's a strong statement knowing the kind of people that you're dealing with. So he's got a lot of guns, but they've got a lot of guns. You got to be careful what you say to people. Now witnesses would later put Chevy Kehoe and Farron Lovelace in Elohim City, Oklahoma, in that same month, with, you know, the truckload of weapons. And we have to talk about this Elohim city. It's a private community in

Oklahoma that, you know, through the years has been kind of a hot spot for extremist activity. You know, Timothy McVeigh is known to have been there and given his ideology and that of Kehoe, it's likely that they ran into each other and knew each other. I would say so. Yeah, definitely. And most people know what Timothy McVeigh did. You know, April 19th, 1995, he drove a truck up to the front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. And he set off a truck bomb. You know, 168 people killed. 19 of those were children that were attending a daycare center on the second floor.

And almost 700 people got injured. That was a, it was a major incident of. domestic terror. And everybody remembers it. It's got to be the, it's the biggest, right? I believe so. I'm trying to think of a bigger incident of domestic terror than that. And we talked about it a little bit, but, you know, much like Timothy McVeigh, Chevy Kehoe and his family, they spent a lot of time on the gun show circuit. And Chevy in particular spent much of his time at this motel in Washington called The Shadows. He would often hole up there smoking weed. But there have been some people, including the former manager of this motel, who claimed that Timothy McVeigh and Chevy Kehoe were seen at the motel together. And the same manager has said that Kehoe showed up just before the Oklahoma City bombing

and asked him to turn the TV to CNN. The manager said that just after the news broke on the TV of the bomb. going off, Kehoe said, it's about time. So he's putting together that Kehoe knew ahead of time what was going to happen. Now, the FBI looked into this. They've never been able to, to my knowledge, Gibbs, corroborate the fact that Timothy McVeigh was in Washington. But you have somebody that thinks they saw him with Chevy Kehoe. Yeah. And they felt strong about it. So, yeah. I mean, they felt strong enough to tell, you know, news outlets, CNN and news. newspapers and things like that. In June of 95, Kehoe and Lovelace kidnapped and robbed Malcolm

and Jill Friedman. And the Friedman's were a Jewish couple who owned a store in Colville, Washington, where Kehoe had once worked. So they robbed the Friedman's of more than $15,000. And Chevy got most of the money, and he gave some to Farron Lovelace and some to his dad, Kirby. Apparently they they used some of these proceeds to buy some land in Idaho. Again, I don't know if maybe their thought was

this is where they were going to build their sanctuary, carve out their border or what. They're a little compound. Their compound. But it's not too long after that, sometime in the summer of 95, that Chevy Kehoe

ordered the murders of two white supremacists, So he had fair and love lace murder a man by the name of Jeremy Scott, and then the two of them buried his body. But it's the reason behind this murder that really got me. Kehoe was in love with Jeremy Scott's wife and apparently had convinced her to join him in his polygamous marriage. Interesting conversation.

Well, it is when all of a sudden you're now your husband's dead. Yeah. Because he's standing in the way. of this union. It was also said that they thought Jeremy Scott might have been some type of government informant who was going to rat them out. But this comes up a lot.

It seems like there's multiple people that get killed who are then later said to where they thought they were federal informants. Oh, okay. That was like, I don't know if that was their... It's always the reasoning behind it? Yeah, the justification in their head. you must have been a federal informant. That's why we did it.

I think the real reason was that Chevy Kehoe wanted this guy's wife, plain and simple. And we've got to talk about this love lace character because he was on the run. He had escaped from a prison in Wisconsin where he was doing time for armed robbery. This guy was on the U.S. Marshal Service's most wanted list. That's a strong list to be on. That's what I'm saying. It's a list you really never want to be on, though. And if you're building a crew, maybe you don't pick the guy that's already on the most wanted list to join your organization.

Yeah, I would say you might want to stay away from that. I mean, I guess there's pros and cons. You know this guy's going to get the job done, whatever you need him to do. But they're also looking for him across the country. But let's not get into an argument, Gibbs, about how smart these people are. No, don't worry. Because they're not. And the second man to be killed in the summer of 95 was a man by the name of John Cox.

And it was said that Kehoe wanted him dead because he thought he was going to rat him out about some plans to rob armored cars and set off a bomb at City Hall. So again, it goes back to the fact that he keeps thinking these people are federal informants. They're going to rat him, this type of thing. And maybe they were. Or maybe it was in his head. I don't know. But later on, some of John Cox's things would be found in the possession of Daniel Lee. Right.

I mentioned him before. He was one of the guys in this militia group, whatever you want to call it that we were going to talk about. He was a member of the Aryans People Republic. Now, Lee was nicknamed Cyclops because he had lost an eye in a bar fight, probably to Gibby. Probably. I know you've been in a large number of bar fights. A handful. Probably taking some eyes here or there.

Or two. Across the country. But Lee was a very bad guy as well. You know, he had been involved in a robbery and murder of a man named John Wavera in Oklahoma City when he was only 17 years old. And this guy, John Wavera, his body was found stuffed into a storm drain, laying in a pool of blood. Now it was said that Lee didn't actually kill this man, but he provided the knife to his cousin who stabbed Waver to death. So either way, we're talking about a bunch of bad people. But we have to get back to William Mueller.

It's the gun dealer that the Kehoe's had robbed. Chevy Kehoe was infuriated. When he heard that Mueller said he would kill them, Chevy, Kirby, whoever, if he could prove that they were the ones that had stolen his guns. And it's in January of 1996. So if you notice, this is not a long period of time that we're running through, right? We're not fast forwarding five, 10 years. January of 1996, he decides to do something about it. Chevy does. So Chevy and Daniel Lee, they drive down to Arkansas to settle this once and for all. And they're disguised as federal agents, they ambush William Mueller, his wife, Nancy, and Nancy's eight-year-old daughter

from a previous marriage. They were returning from a family outing, and the two subdued Bill and Nancy handcuffed them. Then they questioned and most likely tortured Sarah to try to find out where Bill kept his valuables. They'd already stolen from him once before. Right. And now they're back the next year, but they're not just going to steal from him this time. Because eventually they place plastic bags over the victim's heads, which caused them to suffocate.

So they killed three people, one of which was an eight-year-old girl. Yeah, right there, man. An entire family. Yeah. Didn't hesitate. So they took the bodies, weighed them down with rocks, duct tape, and they dumped them in a by you. And at first, you know, Mueller's family, Nancy's family, they thought maybe that they had gone underground. Because this is kind of an underground culture, right? This extremist. Mueller was

fascinated by, you know, this right wing extremist ideals as well. He dabbled in this gun show, underground gun selling. So they thought, you know, he went underground. But the evidence didn't point to that. You know, authorities found a half-packed suitcase. They found Mueller's dentures. Apparently, he was like, he was 20 years older than Nancy. Oh, he was. Okay. So he was, you know, a little bit older. But they also found Nancy's medication. So this guy's not leaving home without his dentures. No. And Nancy's not leaving home with, you know, prescription medication that you know she needs. No, she would never. You need that, man. You never are going to leave home. You don't. You don't leave your home without your drugs, do you?

No. That's what I thought. All types of drugs. Yeah. Always. Always. I always have my drugs. It's important. Well, when you get as old as we are, Gibbs, there are some prescriptions you just got to take. Not those type of prescriptions. I know you always go there. I didn't go there. You said it. Well, police know, right? They see this evidence. They know something bad happened to this family.

It would be about six months later in June that the bodies of Bill, Nancy, and Sarah were found by some fishermen. So these fishermen, they saw a leg floating in the water. Of course, they got the authorities. The authorities came out. They got the bodies. They were in such bad shape that they had to use dental records to identify them. But they turned out to be Bill, Nancy, and Sarah.

And they started the investigation. And during that, the authorities learned a few key facts. one was that Mueller was set to transport a trailer of guns to a gun show just before the family disappeared. They would later find the trailer and it was empty. The other was that Mueller had recently come into some type of inheritance. It was like $50,000 just before the murders. So again, they got away with quite a bit of valuable. That was quite a bit of money.

There was a haul. It's not a bad adventure for them at that point. And both money and guns. So I mentioned Fair and Lovelace. U.S. Marshal's Most Wanted list, they finally track him down in August of 1996. He's living in this very isolated camp. It was said it was only accessible by off-road vehicles.

Gibbs, this guy did not want to be found. Definitely not. But they figured out where he was. and they tricked him. They tricked him into coming into town through this ruse and they arrested him. But at his place, they confiscated nine guns. One was a sought off shotgun. There was a bunch of other guns that were equipped with silencers.

They also found a ton of white supremacist writings and a lot of stolen property. And I guess this whole place around where he lived, was booby-trapped. So he had put mines, explosives. Again, he knew people were after him and he was trying to do whatever he had to do to stay out of prison. To stay out, yeah. He definitely didn't want to go back.

No, he didn't. But they got him. And it's like right away that he offers up the fact that he killed Jeremy Scott. And on top of that, he offers to take authorities to where they buried the body of Jeremy. Scott. Yeah, but he only does it because he wants something out of it. Yeah, he wants one thing. Yeah, but it's not what you think. It's not something that most people want. Because the only thing he wants out of this, he knows he's going to prison. He wants the death penalty. As he put it, he couldn't do any more time in prison. You know, the funny thing is, though, that's not funny.

So he doesn't want to do any more prison. But guess what? If you plead, if you get the death penalty, you're going to be stuck around for probably 20 years anyway. And today's legal system? Unless you do what Wesley Dodd did in our last episode, which is forego all appeals and then fast-track it. But even then it was, what, four or five years? Yeah. But he didn't want to do the rest of his life, I guess is what he was saying.

So he wanted to fast track it, you know, five, six years from now, boom. And he did ultimately receive two death sentences for murder and kidnapping in 1997. And I tried to look Gibbs. find where he's been executed. So I'm not sure if his, his plan worked exactly the way that, that he wanted to. It's probably more of like what you said. At a minimum, he's going to spend 20 years waiting around for them to put him to death. Yeah. But he's not going to serve 50 years, 60 years. And maybe that was his goal. I don't know. All right. So I'm going to back up for a minute and go back a few months to February of 1996 before Love Lace was.

captured because this is when Chevy and Kirby kind of hit the radar of investigators. And it happens after Nancy Mueller's handgun is found in Seattle. So why would it be in Seattle? Right. They lived in Arkansas. It shouldn't be in Seattle. Well, what happened was there was a 26 year old man by the name of Travis Brake. He lived in Bellingham, Washington. And one day, in February, he walked into this antique store. And the owner of the antique store is freaked out. I mean, number one, this guy's carrying a 45 pistol into the antique store. Number two, the owner can tell that he's whacked out on drugs.

So he calls the police. They come, they confront, break. They can tell he's high. But as they're questioning him, he tells them that he bought the gun at a gun show. And it's after police. police show him some photographs that this man, Travis Brake, picked out Kirby Kehoe as the man that he bought the gun from. He also picked out Chevy Kehoe as being at the gun show as well. So they're really on the radar of investigators for being tied in somehow with this Mueller case.

And another big break would come later that year in December. A Spokane man was arrested while getting a traffic ticket in South Dakota, this guy's name was Sean Haynes. And in his car, they found an assault rifle. It's a 223 Bushmaster brand assault rifle. And when they research it,

authorities find out that this was one of the guns stolen from William Mueller. Now, what Haynes didn't know was that the authorities had been staking out the shadows, motel, right? This is where Chevy Kehoe stayed a lot of the time. They had it under surveillance. Knowing that that's where he stays. Yeah. That's where some of a lot of legal activities going down. And they're, they're kind of onto him, right? They're trying to figure out how he's involved in all

this, but they don't have enough evidence at this point in time to arrest him. And I guess they hadn't even questioned the Kehos yet at this point because it was said that they were hoping that the surveillance would lead to something big. And they didn't want to blow it by tipping them off. So they showed the pictures of this surveillance to Sean Haynes and their pictures of him trading weapons with Chevy Kehoe. And they start to talk about the possibility of charging him in the triple murder of Bill, Nancy, and Sarah.

Now, Haynes didn't have anything to do with it, but it scared the shit out of him, as it would if somebody said they were going to charge you with triple murder. Sure. And he very quickly rolled over and said, hey, it wasn't me. It was Chevy Kehoe.

Any loyalty goes out the door really fast when someone starts talking to you about prison. The threat of spending your life in prison or getting the death penalty, you're right. You're like, you know, I like you, Gibbs, but I'm not doing a

life sentence for you. I never really liked how you eat your food in front of me, man. So it's all right. But you're exactly right. I mean, loyalties are, they're good to a point. Everybody has that breaking point. And for me, it's doing time in prison. I think it probably backs up a little bit before then, but I haven't even been charged and I'm already broken. Yeah. I've offered you up already. Just a, just a fake scenario and you're like, you're going down, Gibson. I called the police when you weren't. I called the police when you weren't looking and told him it was you. They're knocking on the door right now.

But Chevy got wind of the arrest of Haynes and it scared him. So he hit the road and he moved out of the shadows first moving to another recreational vehicle park in Spokane because the shadows was a motel but it was also like an RV park. It sounds very ritzie to me. Ritzy? Now, being facetious. Yeah, I can tell. I think there was a lot of drug activity.

and I'm not putting it down if anybody likes to stay there on their vacation or anything like that. And I've never actually been there. So I'm just going based on the reading and the research. Yeah. I'm not going to take my family there for spring break. Let's put it that way. Gotcha. Not going to visit.

No. He also convinced his brother Shane and Shane's young family to leave Spokane in this motorhome that he had purchased with proceeds. from the Mueller Hall, one or the other. I mean, there was multiple halls. And as they crossed the country in this motorhome, they would sell weapons that they stole from Bill Mueller. This is how they financed their life.

So they're crossing the country. At one point, the whole Kehoe family, so Chevy, Shane, some of the other brothers, the mom, the dad, all their wives, lives, their kids, lived in Montana in a rented house. This house was in the Yack River Valley, very isolated. Extremely, yeah. Region of northern Montana, but they only stayed there for a little while together. Chevy and Shane decided that they needed to move on. And when they did, they move fast. You know, going through Nevada, Texas, Alabama, eventually checking into

an Ohio campground. And this is where the story comes in of what you and I remember from the Chevy Kehoe case. Because it's on February 15th of 1997 that the Chevy suburban, that Chevy's driving, that sounds weird to say it that way. Yeah. Chevy's driving a Chevy. Chevy's driving the Chevy Suburban. Yeah.

But it's got expired Washington plates. So Chevy and Shane are pulled over by. two Ohio police officers, and that's when all hell breaks loose. It was just after 1.30 when the officer pulled over the blue Chevy Suburban with Washington State plates for a traffic violation. Neither man in the vehicle could produce ID, so the officer asked the driver to step out of the car. The man told the officer he borrowed the truck from a friend. He then refused to a packdown search.

Listen as the officer attempts to search the man for weapons. Any guns, not as clubs, stuff like that on here, sir? I don't want you to go on a search and through all my sister. I'm not searching through you, sir. I'm going to put you in my car. I'm not going to put you in my car. I see fine, but I don't want any guns, no problems or stuff like that on you. Very good.

Listen, sir, I don't want no problem. I'm not going to give you any problems, sir. Apparently, he did want problems. A few more minutes went by. Then the man ran back to his car in an attempt to get away. The passenger then opened fire on the police. Let's go! Go!

Go! Go! Go! Go! Please. As the passenger ran into the woods, the driver sped away. Amazingly, no one was injured in this exchange. A few minutes later, the driver pulled into a parking lot,

and when a Wilmington officer approached him, the gunfight continued. So that was an old news clip back from the 90s when it happened. The reason I like that, Gibbs, is because they're playing the dash cam footage. Right. But she's also explaining it a little bit. So she talks about the passenger coming out firing. That was Shane. Chevy's the one that you can hear talking to the officers.

And, you know, this was on every news station across the country. Now, the other thing that she mentioned was no one was killed and that the two brothers escaped separately. So Shane was outside of the car firing. And then he ran into the woods. Well, Chevy ran back, got into the suburban and left him. took off, got down the road aways, some Wilmington, Ohio officers approached him, and he opened fire on them and was able to get away. Now, no one was killed. The officers weren't even hurt. There was a passerby that was hit in the shoulder by a bullet fragment. But again, he left his

brother in the woods and took off. But this started a nationwide manhunt for the two brothers. So their pictures going up on wanted posters. It's being splashed all over the television. There was a $60,000 reward that was offered. But the two brothers disappeared. But I think one thing you have to think about is that these guys knew a lot of people that lived on the fringe, right, in the shadows. So probably easier for them to disappear than let's say you or I.

Well, me for sure. For you for sure. Yeah. Yeah. You with your special skills. I know you can disappear. But they did. They knew people that probably were willing to hide them, even knowing what they had done,

because those people were into some shady shit themselves. But ultimately, they end up back together in Utah. And they're living in tents. And this is where a Utah rancher finds them. They're hungry. And this guy takes them in. And it's not just. them. They've regrouped with their wives, their children, and this rancher being an unbelievably

nice guy, he takes them all in. And he allows them to live in a trailer on his 200-acre alfalfa farm. But it's on this farm that Shane really starts to figure out that he's got to get away from his brother. You know, apparently Chevy started talking about a plan to kill their parents to get their gun collection so that he would have even more money, basically the same thing that he did to the Mueller's. And Shane knew what Chevy was capable of. Apparently he had talked about killing his first wife, Karina. He never did, but he talked about it because he learned that she might be part Native American. And he couldn't have that. But maybe the kicker is that it was said that Chevy started showing an interest in Shane's wife.

And we already know that he was willing to kill to remove obstacles to get a woman that he wanted. He had done it before. And it's in June of 97 that Shane finally decides to take off. And he drives back to Colville, Washington. And he turns himself in to the local authorities. And he tells them exactly where they can find his brother Chevy. So what authorities do is they reach out to this rancher and they hatch a plan for the very next day.

And the plan is for the rancher to drive Chevy into town to the feed store. And he does. And when they get there, FBI agents are waiting on them and they pounce and they arrest Chevy without incident. He doesn't even put up a fight. Which is good. I'm sure he wasn't expecting it and probably wasn't armed the way he was. in the suburban, or he might have. So Shane cooperated fully with authorities.

And because of that, federal officials, they asked the judge to be lenient on Shane. But he really wasn't. You know, the judge handed down a 24-year sentence on the charges that came out of the Ohio shootout stating that, number one, Shane had guns stolen from a murder victim. and number two, he did try to kill several Ohio police officers. So for that, he got 24 years. Right. A month later, after that, Chevy entered into a plea agreement in Ohio related to the shootings,

and he only got 20 years. But he's going to have a lot more court dates than Shane is. Because we've talked about it. Chevy's done a lot of bad stuff. I'm not saying Shane was a saint, but he didn't do near the state. things that Chevy did. But what I found so strange about this, Gibbs, is that, you know, they offered Shane

the same deal. They offered Chevy 20 years. And he turned it down. So he actually got more time than his brother got, at least as it relates to the Ohio shootings. Right. Because he turned down the deal. Yeah.

Assume, I'm assuming that he thought because he had been so helpful to police. And if they were going to, you know, the federal authorities were going to ask Right, that he would... He thought he would get it, yeah. You know, eight years, ten years, whatever, but not 20 is probably what he thought. And he actually ends up getting 24. Now, the year before Chevy and Shane were sentenced,

Kirby was charged with possessing one of the stolen handguns that had come from the Mueller house. And he went before the judge. He was released and allowed to return home, but was arrested again in March of 98 after, a domestic dispute. And it was his wife, Gloria. And she starts talking to ATF agents, alcohol, tobacco, and firearms, telling them that Kirby had struck her and pointed an AR-15 assault rifle at her. And it's after this arrest that they're able to search his house. They also find a storage

locker in Montana that Kirby Kehoe had rented under another name. And when they get in this thing, they find an arsenal. Wow. I mean, we're talking tear gas, grenades, machine guns, thousands of rounds of ammunition. It's a pretty big hit. So he gets charged and he pleaded guilty to racketeering and he received a sentence of 44 months. And the judge said at Kirby sentencing, that he regretted the fact that he was unable to sentence him to more time. I guess if he had the authority to, he would have given him much more time. But he couldn't do it. I guess 44 months was all he could give him.

But that paves the way for the Arkansas trial. And Chevy Kehoe and Daniel Lee were charged in federal court. And they charged them with Rico. Did they? Yeah. Good. That's what they went after them with. they were charged with racketeering, conspiracy, and murder.

This was in 1998 after Chevy had gotten through with his Ohio trial. The trial in Arkansas took place in 1999. And the prosecution was seeking the death penalty. And they actually had a joint trial, Chevy and Daniel. And the prosecution laid out the facts of what Kehoe and Lee had done in murdering the Muehler's, Chevy's mother, Gloria, testified against him, as did his brother Shane. Gloria said that Chevy calmly told her all the details of the murders of Bill Mueller, his wife, Nancy, and her eight-year-old daughter, Sarah.

You know, how they broke in, how they suffocated them with plastic bags, and ultimately dumped them in the bayou. Now, Shane said he didn't know anything of that. about the murders until at one point on the road, his brother started filling him in on the, on the details. Because they were selling all these guns. You know, Chevy explained to Shane that they had come from the Mueller house

and he told them how he got all of these guns. Evidence was produced showing that ATF agents found a handcuff key at the house of Chevy Kehoe that was compatible with the handcuff. removed from Bill Mueller's body. I think they had a lot of evidence in this case, Gibbs, against Chevy and Daniel. Maybe one of the biggest pieces of evidence was something that they found on Chevy's truck. It was some paint. And authorities were able to scientifically match the paint on the truck to paint found on

some of the duct tape that was on the three victims. So they presented that in court. Now, the defense countered by trying to lay the blame on Shane. They basically said that Shane had pointed the finger at Chevy to take the blame off himself. And they tried to paint a much different picture of the Kehows. They tried to say that they were drifters who, you know, they sold guns and they sold cars, but they weren't outlaws. They weren't part of this militia that was trying to topple the government.

You know, Chevy Kehoe was just a guy trying to make a little money. He certainly wasn't an Aryan warrior Gibbs who had murdered five people or had a hand, at least, in the murder of five people. Right. He hadn't set off a bunch of bombs. He hadn't raised his own quote unquote army. That's what they wanted the jury to believe. And the trial lasted for two months. And in the end, Chevy was given multiple life sentences, but he was spared the death penalty.

Jurors later said that they did weigh the fact that he came from an extremely dysfunctional home. They thought he was heavily influenced by his father Kirby and all of that extremist rhetoric that he was exposed to as a child. So they took that into account. But Daniel Lee was not so lucky. Remember, he's being tried at the same time. They gave him the death sin, even though in court it was talked about, you know, what a bad childhood this guy had. So obviously, we weren't there. We didn't hear all the testimony. But the jurors definitely took Chevy's childhood into account in the sentencing portion, not so much the same with Daniel Lee.

in an interview that Chevy gave after his 1997 arrest, this wasn't a guy that did a ton of interviews, like a lot of people that we talk about. You know, in this interview, he blamed his family for the path that he chose. You know, he said, quote,

in my entire life, my dad always hated this or hated that and never gave me something to love or something to work toward. Okay. I think a lot of, guys could say that about their dad maybe. Not maybe as extreme as Kirby Kiho, but is that a reason to kill people? Is that a reason to set off bombs and kidnap and steal? Yeah. It's not. But you have to,

you know, you got to look at Chevy Kehoe. By the time he was 24 years old, that's one of the things I really haven't done a great job of Gibbs is talking about his age at certain points. By the time he's 24 years old, he was one of the most notorious white supremacist in the United States. He really was, man. At 24. A very young age. And by 26 or so, he was in jail. Yeah. It didn't last very long. Never does. But the guy bombed. He kidnapped. He murdered. Terrible, man. For what? For some ideology in his head. You know, he thinks that he can pull all this off. But it's the part that he wants to pull off that really. gets me to what to carve out his own little piece of the united states that he wants to be

whites only i mean really when you boil it down that's what the guy wanted how the hell was he ever going to get that he wasn't and so i guess for me that's why it's so strange to think that you would even be able to get that and to try to attempt it that's it that's the case of Chevy kehoe i know Chevy's the main character, but obviously we talked a lot about his family. There were other accomplices. That's just a lifestyle Gibbs that I cannot wrap my head around. Yeah, I don't understand it. I don't really want to understand. I like the melting pot that is the United States of America. But there's some people out there that don't. We know that. And you can study them. It doesn't mean they all do terrible things like Timothy McVeigh or Chevy Kehoe.

But they definitely have some different types of feelings than most of us do. All right, Gibbs, we've got some voicemails. You want to do those? Let's do them. All right. Hi, Gibby. Hi, Mike. My name's Johnny, and I'm calling you from Oklahoma.

I just wanted to call and share a little bit more of appreciation for you guys, what you guys do. The research that you guys or your guest writers, guest researchers, whoever does the research, it's very apparent that you guys take your time and you do it right. And it is appreciated. It's kept me coming back every single time to all of your podcasts, T-CAT, T-Cat insults, criminology, you name it. They're all top-notch. You guys do it better than anybody else. I just got finished listening to your Daniel Rackowitz podcast.

And I have to say, I did catch you, Fergie, using the name Daniel Radcliffe very early on in the episode. And for all the grief that you give Givie, I had to point that out. But you guys, the banner is great. The show is great. I couldn't imagine anybody else doing this podcast and doing it this well. So thanks for everything you do once again. Stay safe. Keep your own time ticking.

Don't eat the chicken, especially if it comes from Daniel Rackowitz. And don't kiss Gibby's new ring. Thanks, guys. That's a great voicemail from Johnny. It does also tell you a little bit about where we are on voicemails, much like Patreon supporters. Yeah. We're a little bit behind on voicemails.

Just a little bit. We can only put so many in. But the one thing about that, I did take some grief over the Daniel Radcliffe, but as I've pointed out to many people, either on social media through emails or whatever, you had put that thought in my head because you kept talking about Daniel Radcliffe. I did. And then the second point I like to make is you never caught it because you're sitting over there, not even paying attention. I don't know what the hell you do half the time. I thought I heard it. I didn't want to call you out.

Oh, yeah. You want to be Mr. Nice guy. being respectful. I got a kick out of it, though. Hey, Mike and Gibby. I just kind of call and let you guys know that I watch my podcast. It's awesome. I am an autographed designer for a local newspaper and your guys' podcast giving me through

a lot of the day. I was actually going to tell you about a case that went pretty nationwide in a town I live in. When I was in seventh grade, one of the kids that went to school with was murdered, beaten by two of his friends and killed in that autopsy was pretty graphic of the stab wounds. and all that. And the two kids, they were 12 and 13 years old. Pretty interesting. It would be something interesting to look into her.

Might make you guys interested. I just want to think you guys for everything. And you definitely get me through all my work day. So have a good one, guys. Keep your own time ticking. All right. We love to be with people at work. As long as we don't have to do the work.

Exactly. We love to be there with you. Yeah, we like to hang out with you. But we don't want to do your work for you. Now, that's the case I've never heard of, Giz. I'm going to have to research that. one a little bit. Could be an interesting one. Hey, this day.

Department is you here? I love it, Gibbs, how close people listen to the episodes. Yeah. So she says you and I could take over Rhode Island with a handful of people probably. But isn't that what everybody's looking for in New York is a rent-controlled apartment? They are, man. New York City. It's salsa.

I don't know what commercial. Don't even go down the commercial route. It's salsa. Barbecue sauce? No, it's a salsa. commercial. New York City. New York City.

Salsa's made in New York City. All right. I don't know what you keep talking about, but... All right. Somebody's going to maybe find it one day and prove me wrong, but until then, I'm going with the salsa commercial. Hi, guys. My name is Delta and I'm currently to Norway.

I just wanted to tell you that I love the podcast. You're doing such a great job. I heard the episode with Turkey about Scandinavian. I can't wait for you give this accent. Anyway, I have to comment on the microphone. You're right. It divides people. I work as a paramedic and those head wounds.

I've seen a lot of head wounds from falling. It's fairly normal that the scheme is sort of birth. It just seems so unfair that the police without experience judge that so quickly. You have a very weird justice system. See it with my regions, I at least. And I let you know that I'm team Mike. Bye.

We love to hear from our peeps in Norway. Do. How come everybody outside the United States in countries that English is not their first language, speak English so well. And most of us here in the United States, we don't speak a second language. I speak many languages.

Gibberish. You speak gibberish very well. Very well. Now, it always amazes me how well people speak English from other countries. They just really put an emphasis on it. Hey, Mike and Gibby, this is Sharonda, calling from Baltimore, Maryland.

And Mike, thank you for. for responding to my email. I enjoyed the podcast so much. I found your podcast back in May of this year, and I was looking for another podcast, but your podcast just got my attention. So I'm a podcast. Well, thank you, Sharonda.

We appreciate that. We do. That's cool. Gibbs, you and I talk about it a lot, right? We don't care how you find the podcast. We don't care if you were... I was glad you found it. Yeah, we don't care if you were looking for another podcast

and accidentally stumbled upon ours. As long as you listen, you like, we're totally fine with that. Or as Gibbs would say, if somebody steals your phone and forces the podcast in there, I wouldn't advise that. Could get in some type of trouble. Yeah, today people are pretty sensitive about their phones. They don't like you touching their personal property, getting your grimy fingers all over there. Yeah, yeah.

What, $1,200 iPhone? Don't touch my phone. However much they cost now. They're outrageous. Oh, they are. They're crazy. I mean, I think. My 17-year-old's pestering me for a new iPhone.

She wants the upgrade. Yeah. And I said, the one you have. have works perfect. Yeah. Why do you want to pay $8, 900 bucks for an upgrade? Exactly. Or like you say, get the X.

I think it's the X is the new. I'm sure that's the bigger one, which is like about $1,200 bucks. All right, Gibbs, that's it from voicemails. Let's dip into the mailbag real quick. Ooh, we got a couple of things. Yeah. Meg Weaver from New Mexico sent us some very fancy bags of pistachios. Pistachios.

For our birthdays, which I thought was cool. That is cool. Thank you. exotic. One's like green chili and the other ones like ranch flavored or something. Just ranch flavored. I haven't tried them yet, but they look really good. I haven't tried them either. Right, because I just told you about them today. I know. Other than that. Break them out. But the other thing she did was called herself Meg Jane Weaver. Oh yeah. Just for you. Because you're always talking about Jane Weaver. I do. So she put that in there just for you. Oh, thank you. And then Katie Finn sent me some chips from

South Dakota, which are very cool. So I appreciate that. All right, Gibbs, we've got to wind it down, man. Wind you down. That is it for another episode of True Crime All the Time. So for Mike and Gibby, stay safe and keep your own time ticking.