PART VI: What happened to the CSA and its members after the raid ended

Editor’s note: This is the sixth and final installment of a series detailing the Covenant, the Sword and the 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 five week’s editions or search www.ozarkcountytimes.com for Covenant, Sword and Arm of the Lord to read the previous parts of this series.

So what happened to the Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord compound and its leaders after the dust settled from various arrests, trials and prison terms served?

CSA leader James “Jim” Ellison, second-in-command Kerry Noble and four other elders were arrested in the spring of 1985. Their arrests marked the beginning of the end of the CSA, although its dedicated followers didn’t know it at the time. 

‘The CSA is dead’

By July 1985, Ellison’s two wives, Ollie and Annie, said their husband had given the word from prison that the CSA was no longer a part of the Zarepath-Horeb community and church. The CSA, he explained, was just the political and paramilitary portion of the group. The church remained on the property, as did many dedicated followers.

Ollie was left raising 10 children. She married Ellison in 1976 and had six kids with him. She also helped raise four others from his previous marriage. Ellison took a second wife, Annie, in 1983, after he told his congregation that God told him to marry the additional woman. Annie and Ellison had another two children. 

Left without their husband to help guide the masses of extremists who came to the camp after his arrest, Ollie and Annie worked to get the word out that it was not their intention to step into their husband’s shoes to lead the group in the way he did. 

“We are not interested in the preservation of the CSA,” Ollie told the Baxter Bulletin shortly after Ellison was arrested. “As far as I’m concerned, the CSA is dead.”

Many of the more hate-fueled beliefs and activities of the CSA was embraced by church members in the years prior, Ollie said, but after Ellison’s arrest, the members had begun to doubt the righteousness of those teachings.“I still love what this country stands for, but I’m not going to embrace Nazism or The Order of the KKK,” Ollie said.

By the fall of that year, there were only about 50 people left at the compound, mostly women and children, who survived on food stamps and welfare checks, Ollie said. 

In August of 1985, the children of the camp attended public school for the first time, bused to classes at Oakland, Arkansas. The transition was difficult for the students, who’d been homeschooled at the CSA their whole lives. It was also hard on the small school, whose student population more than doubled to a whopping 32 students that year.

By late September, Ollie announced that the CSA land would be put up for sale. At that point, the land was owned by CSA sympathizer Jack Fredericks, a Branson-area man who paid the property off a few years before when the CSA was on the brink of foreclosure for missed payments. The group was then paying Fredericks monthly payments instead of the bank. 

Ollie said the decision to sell the compound was prompted by a federal judge’s orders that CSA members who were placed on probation following the series of trials were not allowed to associate with one another. She said that at that time, that there were only four women and 16 children remaining at the Zarepath-Horeb compound, and they could not make the monthly payments on the land by themselves. 

In January 1986, Ollie and her children moved to Georgia for a period of time, but returned to the CSA property that summer. Annie remained on the property, saying she believed Ollie just needed a break from the constant reporters and officers. 

In June 1986, Fredericks hired two men to be caretakers of the property, and by December of that year, they told the Springfield Leader and Press that none of the former CSA members remained. They said Ollie and Annie were among the last to leave. 

Noble explained in his book, “Tabernacle of Hate: Seduction into Right-Wing Extremism,” that almost immediately upon the vacancy, looters began to destroy the property. Noble said they stole windows, paneling and other materials from the houses. Ellison’s house and the group’s sacred church sanctuary were burned to the ground.

In October 1988, Fredericks agreed to allow the land to be used rent free for Project Love, a shelter for homeless mothers and their children. The organization’s founder Jackie Davis was given permission to use all of the 19 buildings on the property with the exception of the main structure, which Fredericks said he planned to use in the future. But due to the extensive renovations it would need, the Project Love board members said they’d feel more comfortable with a signed lease before investing time in money and time in renovating the place. That least wasn’t offered, and the project’s move never happened. The property remained uninhabited until 1993, when it was cleaned up, sectioned off into pieces and sold. 

Jim Ellison released after 6 years in prison

In September 1985, Ellison was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison after being found guilty by a federal jury of racketeering. The allegation behind the charges was that he was making a living through dishonest or illegal activities. 

Almost immediately after being jailed, Ellison began working with the authorities to provide information on other paramilitary and white supremacy groups in order to cut a deal to get out of prison sooner. 

His wives visited him in prison and helped spread his word to the members who remained, as well as his other associates. Media reports of the Aryan World Congress in 1986 said that Ollie attended the gathering, reading aloud to more than 200 people in attendance letters that were written from prison by Ellison and Richard Scutari, the security chief of the white supremacist group The Order, who was also jailed. At that same congress, she was honored with a medallion, inscribed with the words, “believe, obey, fight,” given to wives of members who were sent to prison for actions on behalf of “the cause.”

However, in 1987, when the government finally destroyed all of the CSA weapons, Ollie was featured in a TV interview in which she revealed that she was in the process of divorcing Ellison. She told those watching the program that the immense arsenal of weapons the CSA had accumulated represented things that the women of the group had to do without - washers, dryers, refrigerators, better school books. 

Although she didn’t take as bold of an exit, Annie also moved away from the CSA and left Ellison.

In February 1988, Ellison testified for the state against 14 white supremacists of other extremist right-wing groups in what became known as the Fort Smith Sedition Trial. In exchange for that testimony, he was released from prison in 1991, after serving just six years of his 20 year sentence. 

Ellison returns to trusted advisor

Once Ellison was freed, he moved to Elohim City, where he began a new chapter of life with the group’s leader Robert Millar, who had become a very strong influence in Ellison’s life. 

The two met for the first time in 1982, three years before Ellison was arrested. It was at a National Convocation held at the CSA camp, south of Pontiac, where more than 300 people gathered. Among those in attendance were leaders and members of the Aryan Nations, the Ku Klux Klan, Christian-Patriots Defense League, Posse Comitatus and other groups with a similar mindset as the CSA. 

At that meeting, Ellison first met Millar. During a gathering in the sanctuary of the church that weekend, Millar stood up, extended his fore-finger toward Ellison and gave a cryptic prophecy of a betrayal Ellison would endure. Ellison, who had asked his followers to start calling him James instead of Jim to sound more dignified, became obsessed with Millar’s words, trying to decipher and analyze them continually. After mulling it over for days, he came to believe the prophecy Millar gave revealed his true identity, one that he hadn’t known until that day. 

Noble said, “He awaited the time that he would be betrayed. By this time, James Ellison was solidly convinced that, not only did he have the anointing of King David of the Old Testament upon him, but that he was indeed King David reincarnated genetically and spiritually. 

“As far as Ellison was concerned, he was David. His word was God’s word; his law, God’s law. No harm could come to him, nor could any stand before him. No one else, nothing else, meant anything to him, but the purpose of God that he perceived for his life. The land was his to rule, and rule it he would. God was with him, in him, for him. What else mattered?

“Ellison believed that Millar would be his ‘Nathan,’ his servant-prophet, a counselor for him for times of guidance. Even though Millar had more learning, more wisdom and more years of experience than Ellison did, Ellison was convinced of his superiority and standing with God over Millar.”

At the second National Convocation, Millar and members of his church came to the CSA to visit again. One of the “recognized prophetesses” of the church said to Ellison, “yea, thus says the Lord unto you, when you were young, you girded yourself and did what you willed. But now that you have gained wisdom, I the Lord, gird you, and cause you to do what I will. I anoint you a King in Israel.”

She placed a belt around Ellison’s waist, and said, “and all the seed that does come forth from you is blessed for me among my people. And the revelation and wisdom that I have given you is true, says the Lord.”

She poured an entire bottle of anointing oil over Ellison’s head, signifying that, like King David, his cup was run over, and God’s Spirit was upon Ellison without measure. 

Millar continued his prophecy ramblings about Ellison, and by the end of the night, all of the men at the event bowed at Ellison’s feet, while all of the women bowed at Ollie’s. 

Millar addressed the residents of the CSA, “As Robert of Oklahoma, I speak before the heavens and before men, that I shall not hinder neither shall I prevent, not betray this one that is appointed...”

He then announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, I present him perfect before God through Jesus Christ.”

Ellison and Millar’s relationship only strengthened after that encounter, and both took on a much more violent path, leading their flocks toward murder, bombings and other vicious acts in the name of their shared “destiny.” 

When Ellison moved to Millar’s community at Elohim City after being released from prison, it was a joining of forces between the two men. By that time, Millar’s following had strengthened tremendously, as he offered a prison ministry to many of the white supremacists who were incarcerated. Noble said that Elohim City, which was peaceful and had no guns prior to coming to the CSA for the first convocation, changed into a ruthless community that became known as the “Holiday Inn of Hate.”

Ellison’s parole was revoked in 1993, because he left the area without permission and was caught stalking his second wife, Annie. He served an additional eight months in prison for the violation. 

On May 19, 1985, Ellison married one of Millar’s granddaughters, 26-year-old Angie, who was already carrying his child. He was 44. Noble said the union was one born from political and spiritual intention.

“The fusion of Ellison’s blood and seed into Millar’s is similar to the old medieval times when kings’ families intermarried. Now ‘King James of the Ozarks’ had covenanted with ‘Robert of Oklahoma.’ Elohim City, it is reported, presented Ellison with a sword embedded in a rock. The rock and the sword sit on display in Elohim City’s sanctuary building. The only one allowed to remove the sword is Ellison,” Noble said in his book. 

Oklahoma City bombing

On April 19, 1985, Timothy McVeigh, with the help of Terry Nichols, successfully bombed the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people. It remains as the most destructive act of homegrown terrorism in the history of the United States. 

By May of that year, reports were already connecting the Oklahoma City bombing to Elohim City, where authorities said McVeigh had called two weeks prior to the act. Millar adamantly denied the connection, saying that he did not know McVeigh. But, many wondered if he was telling the truth. 

“It has been reported that McVeigh may have visited Elohim City on numerous occasions. One such visit is believed to have occurred when McVeigh and Nichols traveled to Arkansas in October 1993, when McVeigh was ticketed. On September 1994, he checked into a motel in Vian, Oklahoma. He is believed to have gone to Elohim City the next day to take part in military maneuvers that Andi Strasmeir had organized for some 70 participants,” Noble said in his book. “It was at this time that the initial conspiracy to bomb the federal building was reportedly hatched.”

Millar was also a spiritual leader to Richard “Wayne” Snell, a former CSA member who had murdered two people and was sentenced to death on April 19, 1995. In 1983, when he was at the CSA, he, Ellison and others had scouted the Murrah building and developed a plan to bomb it. They never carried out their plan because the rocket launcher they were going to use exploded during its development, an event they took as a sign from God not to carry on. 

“Millar, who testified as a character witness for Snell during his trial, was Wayne Snell’s spiritual counselor during the years on death row, and Millar was going to take Snell’s body to Elohim City for burial,” Noble says in his book. 

Retired FBI agent Jack Knox told The Denver Post in May of 1996 that Wayne Snell had the ability to engineer the Oklahoma City bombing from his death row cell. Snell reportedly predicted to a high-ranking prison official that there would be a bombing or an explosion the day of his death. 

Ellison was released from prison three days after the bombing, relocating to Elohim City, continuing his story as a part of what seemed to be a continuation of the hate-fueled events he began at the CSA. 

One last reunion

Noble said that former members of the CSA group planned a reunion with the CSA group to help everyone have final closure from the time they spent at the compound. The reunion was held Oct. 3, 1996, and Ellison attended with his wife Angie, who was pregnant with their second child (Ellison’s 14th child between all the wives he took over the years). After chatting and catching up, Ellison asked the group to gather in a circle to sing one of the old praise songs they used to sing in the CSA sanctuary. The group indulged him and gathered for the song. After it ended, Ellison smiled at the group and offered to lead a praise meeting. But the group dispersed instead, unwilling to be pulled back in.

Noble said he later heard that Ellison cried after the group left. While some believe the tears were released in guilt for what he and others had done, Noble said he believed Ellison cried because he still saw all of the members as sheep, who were lost without him as their shepherd. Noble said he knew it deeply hurt Ellison that his former flock was unwilling to bow down to King James of the Ozarks anymore.

After the reunion, Ellison returned to Elohim City, where its said he lived out the remainder of his days. 

Robert Millar, died on May 28, 2001, and Millar’s second-oldest son John Millar, became the group’s leader. John died Feb. 28, 2019. The group still exists, but newspaper articles say that locals regard it as a small religious group now, which mostly consists of Millars’ descendants - not the major force it had become when Robert was alive and leading the group. 

A 2015 article about Elohim City in Flatland, said that Ellison, who was in his mid-70s at the time, was still living there, where he had been a resident for two decades. The article said that not much had changed, and the group still believed in the Christian Identity movement. 

Noble shared on his Facebook page “Noble Perspective,” that on March 27, 2021, Ellison died of heart failure. He was 80 years old.

Kerry Noble took a different path

In a path that is almost the direct opposite of Ellison’s, Kerry Noble left his prison cell set on turning his life around. He had been sentenced to five years in prison but was released after serving just over two. He also agreed to testify for the state in the same trial as Ellison for leniency. He said when he was approached by the prosecution, he asked what would happen if he refused to testify, and he was told that he may be charged with harsher crimes based on the criminal plots they had made at the CSA. He felt he owed it to his family to testify.

After serving the prison term, on July 31, 1987, Noble said goodbye to the few men he had befriended in prison and walked through the security gate and was driven to a bus station. “No one waited to arrest me on new charges. I was dressed in my new set of clothes, carrying my small box of personal belongings and the $100 that the government gives each inmate upon release. I was on my way home. No handcuffs, no guards, no U.S. Marshals. The bus would take me to the airport, where I would fly to DFW International Airport in Dallas Texas, arriving about 8:00 that night, where Kay would pick me up for that long anticipated reunion,” Noble said. 

Noble’s grandparents had purchased a four-bedroom 28- by 76-foot double-wide trailer for him while he was in prison. Kay and the kids had been living there for about 21 months when Noble joined them. He said the living room was equivalent to 11 of the jail cells he had spent the prior two years in. 

Noble had been released on parole, meaning he had 34 months left on his prison sentence; therefore, he had to check in with his parole officer monthly, and his travel was restricted by the parole requirements. 

“I had to get a job to support my family again. It had been 10 years since I had been in normal society, and a lot had changed - in me and in society. 

“I found out quickly that convicted felons, especially those who had gone to prison for machine guns and hand grenades, don’t get hired. But on every job application that asked about my felony convictions, I told them the truth about my past. No more skeletons in my closet. I didn’t care what the cost.”

Noble said he found the easiest profession to enter with his criminal record was commission-based sales. He began selling vacuums. It was very long hours, but the pay was good, and it was a way to provide for his family again. 

Although his new profession gave him confidence, Noble said he still struggled emotionally. He said he was proactive in trying to reverse the years of racial and religious hate he’d learned at the compound. 

“I still had a lot of questions and confusion in regard to the propaganda I had learned and taught at the CSA. Before moving to Arkansas, I had ministered to Blacks at work. Yet, previous to prison, I had never known a Jew. So while in prison, I attended Hebrew classes and, twice, went on supervised trips to a local synagogue for services. The exposure taught me the obvious fact that Jews were like anyone else and not children of Satan waiting to devour Christians. Although prison is extremely segregated, I was able to get to know men from other races and cultures,” Noble said. 

After he was released, he struggled without the camaraderie and support system the CSA had provided for so many years. “Guilt was a major part of my psyche now. Having been the main Bible teacher and an elder at CSA, I had long taken personal responsibility for having led astray the good people of our church,” he said. “To this day, guilt still haunts me occasionally.”

Separating himself from a man he once loved

In October 1989, Noble said he officially separated himself from Ellison. “We had been writing occasionally and keeping in touch by telephone. Ellison still held to the ideals of CSA and the future downfall of the government, as well as his position as ‘King James of the Ozarks.’”

Ellison wrote Noble a 7,300-word letter in May 1989. He said he believed the people of the CSA were scattered and without direction because he was no longer there as their shepherd to guide them. He said, in time, he knew he would again become their leader. He mentioned their commitments to one another, especially the vows Noble made to him. 

Noble sent a return letter reminding Ellison that he had long ago broken his commitments to the group. Noble told Ellison that even his own trust in the CSA had waivered years before the siege and arrest. He explained his desire to leave the compound came two years before that, after he decided the group would not turn back to its early simplicity. “After I finished explaining my differences, I saw no need in communicating with him any further.”

Ellison sent Noble a copy of his 76-page “Blood Covenant” manuscript, in which he detailed his scriptural basis for how important he knows blood is to God. In the piece, which is included at the back of Noble’s book, Ellison talks of the importance he saw in the covenant’s representatives, animal sacrifice, exchange of garments, weapons and pledges, reciting covenant oats, mingling of blood, seal of the scar and joining of names and meal ceremony. “This rambling jargon contained a frightening note by Ellison - that if a person breaks the covenant he has made with another, then ‘the faithful covenant partner has sworn duty to kill the covenant breaker.’”

The book says, “Later on Ellison states, ‘First blood has an unforgettable effect. I will never forget the first time I had the blood of one of my friends on my hands. Human blood is special, the blood of our own people is an awesome and powerful thing indeed. It cries out from the earth to Almighty God that it may be avenged.”

Noble said he had no idea whose “blood of a friend” Ellison was referring to. “To my knowledge, no friend of Ellison ever spilled blood or died.”

 Noble never answered Ellison’s letter or questioned the blood reference. “I did not want to know his answer. Ellison’s ‘Blood Covenant’ reminded me too much of the Order’s Oath of Allegiance,” Noble said. 

Finding his stride in sharing his story

Noble’s employment was a roller coaster ride. From August 1987 to the fall of 1996, he was employed in sales of vacuums, telemarketing, advertisements, water filters, pre-need funeral services, long-distance phone carrier service, photography and more, as well as serving as a taxi cab driver, delivery courier, fast food manager, warehouse worker and circulation coordinator at a small newspaper.

In early 1989, Noble branched off into his own business with a $10,000 bank loan, a $3,000 loan from a finance company and a new vehicle loan. The business failed three months later, and he was left deeply in debt and unemployed. 

“Within a period of less than four months, I had added over $23,000 to my personal debt, increased my monthly bills by over $1,000... and the only job I was able to get (as a fast food manager) lowered my take-home pay from about $1,200 to $325 a week,” he said. “By years’s end, both of my vehicles were about to be repossessed, the IRS was about to put a lien on my home (for back taxes in Arkansas) and creditors were hounding me constantly. I was never able to recover financially and was forced to file Chapter 13 reorganization bankruptcy. I felt like a failure again.” 

Keeping his nose to the grindstone, he and Kay completed the bankruptcy plan in May of 1993, and Noble renewed a sideline-hobby of photography, public speaking and writing. In 1994, he finished his first book, “The Tabernacle of Hate,” which he had started three years prior. The side hustles became lucrative, especially his photography. 

On Feb. 28, 1993, Noble was listening to the radio when he heard about the ATF’s clash with David Koresh’s Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas, about 70 miles from his home. While attempting to serve an arrest warrant on Koresh, four agents were killed and several others wounded - including Bill Buford, the agent who helped successfully negotiate Ellison’s arrest all those years ago at the CSA. Noble picked up the phone and dialed the ATF. 

That phone call spurred a new chapter in his life where he helped law enforcement officers understand the mind-set of the extremist organizations they were up against - trying to help atone for his past sins.

Over the next couple decades, Kerry Noble became an outspoken advocate against extremism and hate-based ideologies. He began speaking publicly about his past involvement in the CSA, using his experiences to warn others about the dangers of radicalization. Noble participated in forums, wrote articles and collaborated with law enforcement and advocacy groups to help identify and understand the pathways that lead individuals into extremist groups.

Noble’s wife Kay stood by him throughout his transformation. Their shared journey from the depths of extremism to rebuilding a peaceful family life was a testament to resilience and redemption. The family eventually settled into a quiet life, with Noble remaining committed to his mission of peace and reconciliation.

In interviews later in life, Noble often expressed remorse for his actions and the harm caused by the CSA. He stressed the importance of empathy, education and community engagement as tools to prevent others from falling into similar ideological traps. His story, unlike Ellison’s, ended not in the continued pursuit of radical ideology, but in a lifetime effort to make amends and advocate for change.

Noble died Jan. 9, 2023, from an unexpected heart attack he sustained while he was hospitalized for pneumonia. His oldest daughter Tara shared the news on Noble’s Facebook page, where many shared their condolences and stories of how he impacted their lives. 

Even in death, his impact remains. The Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord led Noble to a legacy of pain, disillusionment and caution—but also to radical redemption, exemplified by those who choose to turn away from hate and work toward healing - making the world a better place as they do.