Police, Texan in Tense Standoff

John Joe Gray’s land is 47 acres fenced with barbed wire off a dusty road in the East Texas woods. Posted by the padlocked gate is a hand-painted sign 8 feet wide: “We Are Militia and Will Live Free or Die.”

Beyond the gate, past the guards in camouflage, Gray’s acreage along the Trinity River is his self-declared sovereign oasis. Among the 16 people with him are seven children, a recent visitor said. In case of attack, there’s a subterranean bunker marked: “KIDS INSIDE.”

The adults vow to stay above ground and resist U.S. government tyranny unto death. Of course, they have lots of guns.

It’s a familiar phenomenon in America now, a band of ultra-religious, anti-government, paramilitary survivalists isolated in a rural compound. Ordinarily, Henderson County Sheriff Howard B. “Slick” Alfred would just leave them be. But since spring, his department and Gray’s group have been locked in a curious stalemate in this county of sun-parched cow pastures 50 miles southeast of Dallas. Theirs is a low-boil conflict that Alfred is determined not to let erupt into a shooting war.

The sheriff has an arrest warrant charging Gray, 51, with assaulting a state trooper. And Gray’s former son-in-law, Keith Tarkington, has a judge’s order for custody of his two small boys, whom he last saw on Gray’s property with their mother more than a year ago.

But Gray views the legal system as corrupt and ungodly. He’s not coming out, he warned a district attorney’s investigator, and anyone raiding his homestead should “bring body bags.”

“If the police move in there, people are going to die,” reported Austin-based talk-show host Alex Jones, who recently spent a night with Gray. Jones, whose radio and public-access cable programs are devoted to exposing government plots, warned that if deputies cross the property line, “it’s going to be a blood bath.”

Gray’s “body bags” threat came in March, after he was indicted for assault and failed to appear in court, hunkering down on his property instead.

Since then, in a strategy bitterly frustrating to Tarkington, Alfred’s department has been careful not to agitate Gray, making no attempt to serve the warrant or block access to his compound. The sheriff’s chief deputy, Ronny Brownlow, said authorities are biding their time, occasionally conducting surveillance of the property while trying to devise a plan to arrest Gray without a firefight.

“We’re going to try to resolve this peacefully because we’re peace officers and that’s what we’re supposed to do,” said Brownlow, a Texas Ranger for 19 years before he joined Alfred’s office here in Henderson County. He said he and Alfred, also a retired ranger, “don’t think executing a warrant is worth the risk of folks getting hurt.”

Tarkington, 34, divorced from Gray’s eldest daughter, wants deputies to arrest Gray now, and while they’re at it retrieve his 2- and 4-year-old sons, whom he last saw in April 1999. “I sleepwalk through the day, then I lay awake all night worrying about them,” Tarkington said. “Sometimes I just can’t function.”

He used to work in Dallas loading sausage trucks. Now he’s unemployed and lives alone in the trailer home he once shared with his family, before his wife fell sway to her father’s beliefs last year and moved to the compound, taking the boys.

Gray, a carpenter, had no arrest record before he allegedly tried to wrest a gun from a state trooper during a traffic stop last winter. Gray believes U.S. officials are plotting to enslave the nation, said Tarkington. He said his ex-father-in-law began calling himself “Colonel Gray” a few years ago and hosted the rag-tag maneuvers of the Texas Constitutional Militia on his property, where he keeps an arsenal of combat weapons.

He said Gray is a disciple of the Oregon-based Embassy of Heaven Church, a separatist group that rejects any form of government regulation, considering it an affront to God’s supreme authority.

The group’s Web site posts updates on the Trinidad resistance, featuring Gray’s stern, bearded visage above a quote ascribed to him: “I have come out of the system of the Corporate U.S. government. I use no Social Security number, do no banking, pay no income tax, do not carry license or insurance.” Since sending out a note with the “body bags” warning shortly after the indictment, he has not communicated directly with authorities.

Brownlow said he feels bad for Tarkington. But he is also mindful of the catastrophic 1993 raid on the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, 75 miles from here. He recalls the 1992 siege at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, where an FBI sniper killed the unarmed wife of fugitive separatist Randy Weaver. Brownlow said it’s his and Alfred’s job to prevent a similar tragedy.