Fugitives With Militia Ties Put the Law on the Defensive : Violence: A Montana man is seized after 3-year standoff. But officials hesitate to pursue other renegades.

Three years ago, Gordon Sellner ran like he was running for his life through the moonlit woods with a Missoula County sheriff’s deputy breathing hard in pursuit. Crashing through the trees, Sellner says he stumbled and fell. And in a panic of rage and fear, he thrust his gun up and shot the deputy.

After that, the sheriff wanted Sellner--wanted him bad. Although the deputy suffered only a flesh wound--he was wearing a bulletproof vest--a photo of the 56-year-old fugitive stood for three years on “wanted” posters all over the local post office, public library and telephone poles.

Sellner, who had been sought for questioning as a witness in an assault case, wasn’t hiding from anybody. Anybody who wanted to could drive out Montana 83 a few miles north of the mini-mart and turn right at his mailbox. Pull down the drive, around the sawmill he operated and park right on up next to the house. Anybody who dared.

Sellner had been waiting for the law since June of 1992. Sellner and his .41-caliber Smith & Wesson, AR-15 assault rifle, 28 other various guns, thousands of rounds of ammunition, a pipe bomb and a tube of gel dynamite. Sellner and his wife, Roberta, and 18-year-old daughter, Angie--whom he describes as sniper-quality markswomen. Sellner and his Rottweiler.

On Tuesday, the sheriff showed up. Ending a three-year standoff--one of many in rural Montana where anti-government renegades, armed to the teeth, have defied arrest--the Lake County Sheriff’s Department and state Justice Department agents swept into Sellner’s rural compound, shooting and wounding him when he opened fire.

Sellner’s capture--which illustrates the dilemma facing officials caught between the public condemnation of federal raids near Waco, Tex., and at Ruby Ridge, Ida., and the growing number of militia sympathizers flouting the law--leaves at least eight fugitives still defying arrest from their heavily fortified homes and ranches in Montana.

Small sheriff’s departments like Lake County, with only 10 deputies, have been helpless to move against them in the face of the threat of violence--and some suspects who appear almost eager to follow in the steps of Randy Weaver, whose wife and 14-year-old son were killed along with a federal agent in a 1992 shootout at his Ruby Ridge home.

‘I Will Not Surrender’

“I’ve told them don’t come down, I will not surrender. There will be bloodshed if you come,” Sellner said in an interview last week before his arrest, cuddling his 1-year-old grandson on the floor between his knees. “They know I have a lot of support, although they don’t know how much. It would be a battle. I’ve had people come to tell me from several states away, if something goes down and you can hang in just a little while, don’t worry, there will be help. . . . And when they come, they’ll come packing their hardware.”

In fact, officials allowed Sellner no time to summon help. Conducting a six-week undercover operation in which state agents purchased lumber from Sellner’s sawmill, the agents launched a surprise arrest on Tuesday, Sheriff Paul Geldrich said. “Gordon heard something out in the forest where our backup team was waiting, he started to fire at them, our deputy returned fire and shot him through the neck,” he said. “We had hoped nobody would get hurt.”

Also arrested was Sellner’s wife, who had been in Kalispell, Mont., and his two sons-in-law--all charged with obstruction of justice for harboring the lumberman who claimed he stopped paying federal taxes and began following “God’s law” after the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision that legalized abortion.

The Sellners had made a broad array of contacts with militias and their sympathizers all over the country, sharing a message that the government is corrupt, taxes should not be paid and neighbors should organize in groups of five or six to prepare for what they believe will be a move to disarm the citizenry.

“I’ve been fighting the government for 20 years,” Sellner said. “Most people know there’s something wrong out there with the system. It’s becoming more and more corrupt every month. They keep passing more and more laws choking you down, choking the lifeblood out of us. . . . People have basically come to the realization that our enemies are in our own country.”

Sellner’s arrest was the second recent coup for Montana law enforcement officials. Earlier this month, fugitive Calvin Greenup gave himself up to Ravalli County officials after holing up on his elk ranch for months--at one point threatening to shoot down a National Guard helicopter that flew over his property on a training mission.

Yet by and large, Montana authorities find themselves helpless to combat a growing number of anti-government sympathizers who refuse to recognize the jurisdiction of the police and the courts and threaten violence from their well-armed homesteads.

They say a case of “Weaver fever,” heightened by this week’s congressional hearings on the Waco raid that left more than 80 people dead, has discouraged federal authorities from enforcing arrest warrants against tax protesters and left local sheriff’s departments unable to carry out the law alone.

“I think a lot of police agencies feel like they’re in a lose-lose situation. That no matter what they do, they’re going to be criticized. A lot of us feel that way, but that is not an excuse not to go in and do your job,” said Ken Toole, director of the Montana Human Rights Network.

In Roundup, Mont., six men with ties to the militant Freemen militia movement are still holed up in a log house in the Bull Mountains, defying arrest warrants for concealed weapons charges and threatening public officials.

The Internal Revenue Service has taken title to leader Rodney Skurdal’s house for hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid taxes, but can’t get the men out.

“Personally, I think we will have a confrontation that ends in gunfire before the end of this year,” Musselshell County Atty. John Bohlman said in a March letter to President Clinton seeking help.

“I live and work in a community that is in continual danger because these . . . men whom I consider terrorists are sitting outside of town directing anti-government activities,” he wrote.

“The more the federal and local law enforcement agencies behave with a ‘hands-off’ attitude, the more bold and daring these groups become.”

Skurdal started his fight with local government in 1991, when he refused to get an electrical inspection on a new barn. Now, he’s the self-styled local leader of the Freemen, an anti-government group seen as extreme even by such groups as the Militia of Montana.

Taking their inspiration from the Magna Carta, the Bible, the old Montana constitution and certain readings of the U.S. Constitution, the Freemen don’t pay income taxes and don’t recognize most forms of county, state and federal government except for their own common-law government. They refuse to apply for driver’s licenses, business licenses, car registration or insurance.

Paper War

Skurdal and fellow organizer Leroy Schweitzer have retreated with four other Freemen fugitives onto Skurdal’s 20-acre property. They are engaging in a paper war with officials in Musselshell and nearby Garfield counties, filing makeshift court documents summoning them to the Freemen’s common-law courts, issuing their own money orders--and paying bills with the proceeds--and filing multimillion-dollar liens against the personal property of nearly every local official.

The Freemen last year briefly took over the Garfield County courthouse to establish their own government, and have posted $1-million bounties against the sheriff, county attorney and other officials.

Yet law enforcement officials have been largely helpless to move against them, unwilling to serve outstanding arrest warrants at Skurdal’s heavily fortified home.

“Their argument about taxes spreads because they say, ‘See, the government knows that tax is voluntary and that’s why they’re not prosecuting us,’ ” Bohlman said in an interview last week. “The fact is that Rodney has written documents that say if anybody comes on his land, he’ll kill them.”

The situation escalated in March, when Musselshell County deputies stopped two of Skurdal’s associates, Dale Jacobi and Frank Ellena, on a car registration violation and wound up arresting them on concealed weapons charges.

Plans for a Hanging

Police were preparing for a showdown after receiving a tip from the FBI that the Freemen were planning to kidnap a public official, probably a judge or county prosecutor, try him, hang him and videotape the procedure.

Ellena was found with a crudely drawn map of the town of Jordan, showing the location of the county prosecutor’s residence, in his pocket. Also found in their car were a large amount of ammunition, 30 plastic cuffs, some duct tape, $26,000 in cash, an estimated $60,000 in gold and silver coins, a video camera and sophisticated radio communications equipment.

A short time later, just before dusk, two carloads of men drove up to the jail and parked facing the front door. Men in both cars were speaking into hand-held radios. Three of them walked into the jail and demanded the evidence seized from Jacobi and Ellena. Deputies responded by arresting all six men on concealed weapons charges. Only later that night did police learn that one of the men was John Trochman, well-known leader of the Militia of Montana.

All hell broke out in Roundup that night and in the week that followed. Hundreds of phone calls flooded in from all over the country demanding the release of the men. Bohlman figures he got at least 40 calls that were “straight-out death threats,” menacing him and his secretary.

“One guy said he knew she had a daughter from Korea and he didn’t want any chinks in Montana,” Bohlman said. “One of our own employees in the courthouse, when she told the story said: ‘Well, I moved to Montana to be around white people.’ ” The secretary temporarily moved her daughter to Minnesota.

Criminal charges were dropped against the men after it proved impossible to substantiate the tip that an arrest and hanging of a public official had been planned. Now, Bohlman waits for the sheriff to serve existing warrants on the six Freemen holdouts, most of whom face felony charges of threatening public officials and lesser charges of impersonating public officials. Schweitzer has a federal warrant outstanding in connection with his previous aviation business.

For now Musselshell County Sheriff G. P. Smith is waiting, reluctant to risk bloodshed for what are relatively minor criminal charges. Calling in outside SWAT teams to help would cost as much as the county’s entire operating budget, officials noted.

“We have tried to negotiate with them to the point of convincing them that if they want to be heard, to surrender in a peaceful way and make their point in court. But they say they can’t get a fair trial,” Smith said. “Basically, they just refuse to acknowledge the judicial system as it is.”

Skurdal and his associates refused a face-to-face interview last week unless The Times would agree to a $100-million lien guaranteeing fair treatment. But Jacobi, in a telephone conversation, said the men don’t feel they should submit to public officials who have no legal jurisdiction.

“From the sheriff to the Legislature,” Jacobi said, “they’re all a fiction. They’re all liars.”

Jacobi denied that the men, who are believed to be surviving by conducting seminars on common-law courts for anti-government sympathizers, are part of any organization. “We’re just a bunch of people who’ve taken the law books and studied them and found out the truth,” he said.

There are widespread reports in Montana that the FBI has concluded a probe of the Roundup Freemen and is awaiting a decision from U.S. Atty. Sherry Scheel Matteucci on whether to pursue indictments. Matteucci said she could not comment on whether any investigation is under way. “All I can tell you is that it’s our intention to enforce the law, and I have absolute confidence that it will be done,” she said.

Sheriff Smith, meanwhile, says he and his five deputies are facing increasing political pressure from Roundup citizens to do something about the men in the mountains. “Before, the attitude was, ‘Aw, hell, leave ‘em alone, you’re just making a big deal out of nothing.’ Now, after the Oklahoma City bombing, some of these same people are coming forward saying, ‘When are you guys going to do something? They’re dangerous!’ ” the sheriff said.

“So I say, ‘What questions would you be asking me if I loaded up my deputies and went out there and got some people hurt, got some people killed?’ My first reaction was, ‘OK, boys, let’s load up and go out there, and if there’s a foundation left on the house, they’ll be lucky.’ But then I realized it wasn’t going to be that easy. I’m not ready at this point to go out there and make martyrs of those guys,” he said, shaking his head.

“Basically, I figure my job depends on this.”