PART V: Former CSA members detail crimes as Ellison and others go to trial

Editor’s note: This is the fifth installment of a series detailing the Covenant, Sword and Arm of the Lord, a religious commune located south of Pontiac in the 1970s and 1980s. The anti-government, paramilitary and white supremacist group of more than 100 people lived together on a 224-acre peninsula, just across the state line in Arkansas. See the last four week’s editions or search www.ozarkcountytimes.com for Covenant, Sword and Arm of the Lord to read the previous parts of this series.

After officers executed a search warrant on April 22, 1985, at the Covenant, Sword and Arm of the Lord compound, south of Pontiac, they found a “mind-boggling” cache of firearms and war weaponry. 

The shocking discovery included 30 machine guns, more than 100 other firearms including a WWII weapon made to take down airplanes and helicopters, a LAW rocket marketed to pierce the armor of a tank, dozens of grenades, blocks of C-4, a central-detonating minefield, a 30-gallon barrel of cyanide, targets painted to look like highway patrolmen and a plethora of other highly concerning evidence. 

Ellison, 44, was arrested April 23, 1985, after peacefully surrendering himself to officers following four days of intense negotiations in which nearly 400 officers were brought in to help secure the area and avoid an all-out war with the group. Second-in-command, Kerry Noble, who served as the spokesperson for the CSA, and several other CSA group members were arrested in May, as a result of a federal indictments filed against them. 

The testimony of former CSA members and other witnesses used at trial shared an alarming number of domestic terrorism plots that members had planned, including some that were successfully executed. Noble shared other botched plans in his book, “Tabernacle of Hate,” as well as in various documentaries, radio interviews and other publications. 

Aimed at taking down the government

In prosecuting the incidents, U.S. Attorney Asa Hutchinson said officers believed Ellison’s purpose in the violent acts was “to create disorder, to bring on the end, to speed up the collapse of society,” a goal he shared and worked in coordination with other anti-government, white supremacy groups at the time to achieve. 

Noble said Ellison was set on bringing down the government, and in the early 1980s, he intensified his preaching toward strong anti-government sentiments. He said that was when the group went from a more defensively-minded force to planning various offensive attacks as part of a greater network of right-wing extremists, coordinating together. The crimes they planned were horrifying. 

“[Ellison preached] that there were people that wanted to do away with all the different nations, especially the United States, and form a one-world government,” Noble said in the documentary episode of the TV series Dangerous Persuasions. “This was a reason to rise up.”

By September 1980, Ellison had taken on a God-complex and told members that “my word is the word of God.” He also ended all of his sermons with the Nazi stiff-arm salute. He steered the group toward a goal of ending the government and killing Jewish, black, gay and other people of other various different races, religions and beliefs they didn’t agree with.

April 18, 1980: Troxel home arson

One of the earliest crimes mentioned in court documents was the 1980 burning of the home of Ellison’s sister, Jean Troxel, in Tecumseh. Ellison and CSA elder William Thomas, were charged with arson in connection with the incident. 

As officers closed in, Thomas agreed to be a state’s witness in the federal trial against Ellison. Former CSA members Randall Rader and Michael Morris also testified. 

Radar told the jury that on April 18, 1985, he, Ellison, two of Ellison’s sons and others from the CSA camp went to the Troxel home with a plan to burn the place down. 

He said Ellison first tried to ignite a fire inside the vacant home but was unsuccessful. He said the group then went outside, where they were able to catch the residence on fire from the exterior. The home burned to the ground, and as a result, the Troxels collected $11,000 in insurance money.

The fire itself wasn’t reported in the Ozark County Times, but in the May 8, 1980, Dawt community items, correspondent Mrs. Jaretty Nesbit, reported that a “fire shower” was held for the Troxels at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Willard Thompson after they’d had the misfortune of losing their home and household furnishings by fire. 

1982: Taking a second wife

Noble said that Ellison called a meeting in 1982 and told the CSA congregation that God told him to take a second wife. Despite the strong objections of all of the church’s elders, who were adamantly against polygamy, Ellison said he didn’t care what they said, and he would marry the woman no matter what. Noble was the only elder who sided with Ellison in support of the additional marriage. 

A service was held at the camp, and 42-year-old Ellison married the daughter of a Minnesota minister, 29-year-old Annie. She then joined the family with an unpleased Ollie, Ellison first wife, who he married in 1976. Annie moved into a trailer about 100 feet away from the Ellison main home.

The marriage was taboo and very controversial for the CSA congregation. Noble said many members decided to leave the CSA after the wedding to join other white supremacy and paramilitary groups they felt better aligned with their beliefs.

April 9, 1983: fire at Springfield church

Thomas detailed an arson at a Springfield church in the spring of 1983. He told the jury that he and other members of the CSA first learned that a predominantly gay congregation attended services at the Metropolitan Community Church in Springfield through various media outlets. Avidly against homosexuality, the group agreed that the church should be destroyed.

He said on Aug. 9, 1983, he and Ellison, along with others from the CSA camp, drove to Springfield with a plan to burn the church down. Thomas said while Ellison and others drove around the block, he tried to stuff a half gallon plastic jug filled with gasoline into the church’s mail slot in the front door. He said the gasoline spilled onto the front porch, and when he lit it, the porch burst into flames.

October 1983, Oklahoma City bombing plan

Another major plan was made in October 1983 when Ellison and the others planned to bomb the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City. 

“We started making plans for retribution against the federal government. This guy came to Jim and said, ‘There’s a federal building... the Murrah building in Oklahoma City,” Noble said. “...There is no security at that building. The building would be such an easy target to send a message across the country.’ Jim estimated that 500 people could die... For 500 people to die at one time, in one incident that we caused, now that was overwhelming,” Noble said.

After researching the building more, Noble realized that the Murrah building didn’t just house federal offices. There were other offices there, including a daycare where children spent their days. 

“I specifically said ‘What about all the kids there? And he said, ‘What about them?’ I said, ‘Well, I mean these are children.’ He said ‘They’re just casualties of war. If they’re not supposed to die, they’re not going to be there.’”

Confident in the plan, Ellison asked CSA munitions member, Richard “Wayne” Snell, to build a rocket launcher that was capable of bringing the building down. Ellison and other CSA members then traveled to Oklahoma City and scouted the building themselves. But, prior to leaving to carry the plan out, the CSA members were stopped in what they referred to as divine intervention. 

The first sign from God, Noble said, came after Snell was testing the rocket launcher he’d built  for the Murrah building, and it exploded in his hands.

A second sign came soon after. “...during the process of putting the thing together, members of the group were arrested for harboring fugitives from another right-wing extremist movement,” Noble said. 

That turn of events redirected the CSA members’ actions to a new target, a more personal one. 

Although, they didn’t carry out the Oklahoma City bombing then, it did set the foundation for what happened more than a decade later, on April 19, 1995, when Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols successfully bombed the Murrah building, killing 168 people. The building still included a daycare, as Noble warned, and 19 children who were in the nursery that day died in the explosion. There were also 684 people injured. It remains the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history. 

McVeigh’s and Nichols’ actions were partially based on initial scouting and plans made at the CSA compound. “That building...was the same building that we targeted in 1983. That target was picked because of what we actually began,” Noble said, later recounting the plans.

Investigators later discovered that the bombing was further connected to the group, as it was purposefully carried out on the execution date of CSA member Wayne Snell. He was the man who had the rocket launcher explode in his hands back in 1983 and helped concoct the original plan at the CSA camp. Officials think he was in contact with McVeigh before the 1995 bombing because on the day of his execution, he predicted the tragedy, telling those holding him in custody that a bombing was going to take place that day.

1983, plan to bomb homes of judge, FBI

Circling back to the CSA, the group’s members who were arrested were Lawrence and Norman Ginter. They were accused of harboring tax protestor and CSA acquaintance, Gordon Kahl. Kahl was the subject of a nationwide search after killing two North Dakota federal marshals and, later, Lawrence County Sheriff Gene Matthews in a shoot out June 3, 1983, at the home of the Ginters near Smithville, Arkansas. Kahl died in the gunfight. 

Noble said the CSA leaders decided to “find out who the judge, the prosecuting attorney, the FBI agent was in charge of this whole operation,” Noble said. They thought, “Let’s target them.” They knew the murders would make a huge statement. “There had never been a federal judge assassinated. So, yeah, that’s going to send some ripples across the country.”

FBI agent Jack Knox told investigators that Ellison and other leaders made plans to bomb the home of Judge H. Franklin Waters in order to intimidate him. Although the judge was specifically mentioned during Ellison’s arraignment, Noble said that the group had also planned to kill other officials too. Agent Knox was one of the targets.

“The plan was for them to go to each individual home the day after Christmas, knowing that every Christmas after that, the families of these people would have a bad Christmas,” Noble said. “...[We would] knock on the door, the person answers, and pew. You kill them. Then you go in, and you kill the children, the wife. Doesn’t matter who’s there. Everybody has to die.”

Ellison later testified in 1988 saying Wayne Snell gave him a copy of a floor plan of Agent Knox’s house after breaking in the officer’s home. The FBI agent later viewed the floor plan in court and said it was accurate. Knox said he suspected someone had been in his home back then because when he returned from a trip in the summer of 1984, he found that the ceiling in the lower level of the house had flooded. He inspected the air conditioning unit and discovered the condensation drain was plugged by three cigarette butts. He said they were not his. 

Once the plan was hatched, Ellison and Noble got to work. On the snowy day after Christmas, they took off in the back of a van, ready to kill the FBI agent, prosecutor and judge, along with their wives, children and any other family members who were home that day. However, on the way there, the CSA member driving the van slid on the slick road and hit another vehicle head-on, totaling the vehicle. 

The police arrived soon after and discussed the collision with both drivers, but they left without running the license plates of the CSA van (which was stolen) or looking in the back of the vehicle, where the men had stored the illegal weapons they planned to use to commit the murders.

Ellison later testified that: “It was obvious we were going to have to leave in the car. I told [the other CSA members] ‘Surely you can see God doesn’t want you to carry out this plan today.’”

Again, the plan was dead in the water. Although Ellison claimed divine intervention stopped the prior plots, he didn’t take it as a sign to discontinue the violence. Instead, he said God was just redirecting him to other plans of action. The CSA regrouped and plotted new ways to make a statement. 

Aug. 15, 1983 fire at Jewish community center

In court, Thomas detailed the next crime, an Aug. 15, 1983, incident in which he said he and Michael Morris burned a Jewish community center in Indiana while they were both CSA members. He told the jury the fire was an improvised plan from Ellison’s original directive. He said Ellison had ordered him and the other man to rob a bank, but Thomas said he couldn’t bring himself to do it and decided to light the fire at the center instead. 

Morris also testified in Ellison’s case, giving more detail about the fire at the Jewish Center. He said that the arson occurred while the two men were accompanying Ellison and others to a convention of right-wing group leaders near Bloomington. He also said Ellison hadn’t directly said to bomb the Jewish community center, but nevertheless, Ellison was very pleased when he heard of the men’s actions on behalf of the CSA; although, he said Ellison told him he wished they’d taken the gold handles from the center’s scripture rolls before setting the blaze because they were valuable.

Nov. 1, 1983: Murder of pawn shop owner

Among the charges against Noble was interstate transportation of stolen property, stemming from jewelry and firearms taken by Wayne Snell at a pawn shop in Texarkana.

Ellison testified that Snell and two others went to Texarkana in November 1983 and returned to the CSA camp three days later with firearms and jewelry. Ellison said he’d learned through news reports that Snell had killed a man in the process. He said when he asked Snell about it, he waived it off as a minor detail to his heist.  

“Wayne Snell said [the pawn shop owner] was an evil man, a Jew, and he just needed to die,” Ellison said. 

Later, the state’s medical examiner testified that pawn shop owner William Stumpp died from two shots to the back of the head and one to the neck. The examiner said the gun’s muzzle was touching the man’s head when the shots to the head were fired. Stumpp, a former Texarkana police officer, was not Jewish. 

Snell also shot and killed Arkansas State Trooper Louis Bryant, a black man, near DeQueen, Arkansas, on June 30, 1984, after the officer stopped Snell. 

June 1984, Noble attempts to kill gay people

In the spring of 1984, Noble, who had been married to his wife Kay for many years, even prior to their life at the CSA camp, said he became attracted to another woman who lived on the compound. 

He went to Kay, who was 8 months pregnant at the time, and told her God had spoken to him, and like Ellison, he told him to take a second wife too. Kay said she didn’t want him to marry the other woman and was heartbroken at the thought, but said “if it was what God wants, I’ll do it.” However, when Noble told Ellison of the plan to marry a second woman, Ellison forbid the marriage in a fit of anger. 

The fallout about Noble’s request for the second wife led to tension between two. Desperate to regain Ellison’s good graces, Noble began to make his own plans. “I asked him, ‘Do you want the war to start? I’ll start the war.’”

Noble said he’d been told there was a park in Kansas City that was frequented by gay individuals at night. 

“I told [Ellison] we’ll go to this park around midnight, and I’ll just kill whoever is there,” Noble said. “Jim said OK. He had our weapons guy put together a weapon with a silencer. He also put together a bomb in a briefcase.”

Noble said the device was easy to use and would cause mass destruction. “You raised the lid up a little bit. You flip this switch and walk away...” he said. 

“I was at the end of my rope. [I thought] maybe this is what I was created to do. If it means I lose Kay, if it means I’ll lose my kids, if it means I’ll lose my life, I don’t care what happens anymore.”

Around 8 p.m. June 23, 1984, Noble and another CSA member left the compound and drove to Kansas City, arriving there as scheduled, around midnight. 

“We circled the park five or six times. I’ve got this gun with a silencer, and I’ve got the window rolled down. So, all I’ve got to do if I see somebody is call them over, and pow! You’re dead,” Noble said. “But, nobody showed up.”

The other CSA member Noble was with told him that he had an idea. “He said, ‘Let me take you to the Baptist church that I was saved in and raised as a kid.’ He said, ‘It ain’t the Baptist church anymore. It’s a gay church.’ We both kind of looked at each other, and I said, ‘I guess this is the target now.’”

The next morning the two men went to the church with the suitcase bomb, which Noble placed under a church pew after sitting down. “This was the first time I’d ever been around gays. I was expecting some sort of an orgy,” he said. “When we walked in, they had their arms around each other, heads on [each other’s] shoulders... the more I keep looking at them, the more I start thinking to myself, ‘My gosh. They look normal. They’re no different than me.”

Noble started to second guess himself. “I’m thinking this is a big bomb. We’re going to walk out, and five minutes later, this whole building is going to be gone. I mean, a huge explosion. I start picturing these people getting killed, thinking about the damage. At this point, it would be the largest domestic terrorist act in the history of the United States. 

“[I thought] these are still people. Is that really what God wants? Then the music starts. I start seeing people raising their hands up to the Lord, looking up. I could see the expressions. They were honest expressions of reaching out to God... For the first time, to me, they were no longer gays. They were no different than me. I could feel that inner turmoil of ‘I don’t fit... in society.’.. and for the first time, I could identify with that. I always felt like a dork. No matter what I did, I was trying to fit in and never could just be me. That’s when I knew it was time to quit. [I thought] I don’t know how to explain this to Jim, but I don’t care. This is not what we’re supposed to do. For me, it was over.”

He packed up the undisturbed bomb, the gun and silencer and left. Despite his inner turmoil, he said that when he returned back to the compound and prayed about it, God told him it wasn’t time to leave yet. Noble stayed with the group up through the standoff with police in 1985

Nov. 2, 1983: Bombing pipeline in Fulton, Ark.

In another bout of testimony, Thomas said he joined other CSA members Steve Scott and Wayne Snell in executing a bombing of a natural gas pipeline near Fulton, Arkansas. The pipeline stretched from the Gulf of Mexico to Chicago. He said they detonated several sticks of dynamite and plastics explosives that caused an explosion at the pipeline. Despite the effort, the pipeline was only rocked but didn’t rupture. 

He said it wasn’t Ellison who came up with the pipeline plan. It was Snell who had persuaded Ellison that it would be a good idea because another group was doing similar things at the time and “we were going to help them and cause disorder in the country,” he said. 

Noble said they felt the bombing would “possibly cause riots to begin, plundering... cause chaos within Chicago.”

Convicted of racketeering, pleas on weapons charges

A federal jury deliberated for less than two hours before returning a guilty verdict for Ellison on racketeering charges on July 18, 1985. 

Ellison and Noble also pleaded guilty as part of plea agreements on federal charges of conspiracy to violate federal weapons laws. Ellison pleaded guilty to another charge, possessing an unregistered automatic weapon. In exchange for his plea on those two charges, two others were dropped and the prosecution agreed to cap sentencing. Ellison was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison. Noble was sentenced to five years. Several other CSA elders, members and former members also faced various charges and were sentenced accordingly - too many to detail in these articles. 

Betraying ‘the cause’

In Noble’s book, “Tabernacle of Hate,” he discussed the day Ellison’s appeal began to wear off for him. 

“When I was arrested and placed in a cell with James Ellison, I got to see the man he really was, and this was a revelation to me.

“Ellison had been in jail for 40 days when I got there. At first, I was excited to see him, but almost immediately he just wanted to get down to business. He showed me a list of every person he could think of that had been associated with the right-wing, when he had met them and any discussions with them that might prove they were guilty of something. 

“The purpose of this list? To trade information with the FBI in exchange for his freedom. To snitch out the brethren after less than six weeks? To betray ‘the cause’ so quickly? This, from a man who swore vengeance on any who would betray him? Who swore to shoot you in the back should you run during the fight? I simply could not believe it. 

“Many at the CSA were convinced that Ellison was untouchable and that God would miraculously release Jim and me from jail, with all charges dropped, or that we would go to trial and be found not guilty. Either way, the group told itself, Ellison would somehow return and tell everyone what to do again, so the CSA could go on. In my heart, however, I knew the CSA was dead.”

While Ellison worked with the authorities and the prosecution team to work out the details of his testimony, Ellison tried to convince Noble to tell the police that he was actually in charge of the CSA and all of its violent actions. He asked Noble to sacrifice himself so Ellison could be released and return to lead the CSA. 

“I don’t give a damn about the CSA! I cared about Zarephath-Horeb, and you let it die,” Noble told Ellison, referring to the original church Ellison founded in the late 1970s before all of the paramilitary influence. “All you care about is yourself.”

Ellison and Noble’s testimony

In the end, Ellison and Noble negotiated a deal in which they agreed to testify against 14 members of other right-wing members in exchange for early release from prison. 

The trial began Feb. 16, 1988, and became known as the Fort Smith Sedition Trial. 

During the proceedings, Ellison told a jury about a 1983 poisoning scheme discussed at an Aryan Nationals convocation in Hayden Lake. He said at the time, he had more than 200 pounds of sodium cyanide in his possession, and they planned to dump the toxic substance in the water supplies of Washington or New York. 

At the same conclave, he said, several white supremacist leaders discussed the idea of abolishing the U.S. government and setting up an “Aryan state” instead. 

Ellison reportedly passed around a paper that all the other white supremacy group leaders signed. Ellison then told the group, “All of us today entered into a conspiracy against the government of the United States.” The meeting ended with all of those in attendance giving the Nazi stiff-arm salute. The group also discussed counterfeiting, robbing armored cars and banks and whatever else it took to overthrow the government and continue to fund their plans.

Ellison told the jury that in July 1984, former grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan and second-in-command of the Aryan Nationals Church, Robert E. Miles, came to the CSA compound where Ellison briefed him on what the CSA was doing on behalf of the Aryan Nations, detailing many of the incidents and plots they’d had prior to that.

Miles told Ellison that pawn shops were not good targets, because they did not have enough money involved to make it worth the effort. “He said the men in the northwest are doing real good. He said he knew we had the capabilities and we needed to be into bigger things,”

Noble testified the CSA stole vehicles, used food stamps illegally and committed other unlawful acts in order to raise money to pay the organization’s $608-per-month mortgage on its 224-acre property. 

The jury heard many other testimonies from various witnesses about various plans organized by the white supremacy groups working together from various witnesses; but, despite the lengthy testimony, not one of the 14 men charged were convicted. One man’s case was dismissed by the prosecution due to lack of evidence, and the other 13 were acquitted of all charges on April 7, 1988. That only fueled the fire of the extremists, allowing them to believe they were, in fact, untouchable.

Where are they now?

Where are Jim Ellison, Kerry Noble and other key leaders now? What happened to the CSA compound and the rest of the congregation? In next week’s edition, we’ll detail the fractured paths that came after the gavel hit in the final article of this series.