Suspect had ties to fringe group

Suspect had ties to fringe group

By James Carlson

Created June 6, 2009 at 11:12pm

Updated June 7, 2009 at 12:12am

In the late 1980s, Scott Roeder held a job, loved his wife and paid his taxes — as normal a life as any other Topekan.

Then life pivoted with his entrance into a group of people who considered themselves sovereign. They believed they weren’t subject to American authority, didn’t have to obey laws enacted by, as they saw it, an unjust federal government. They were Freemen.

The group, which had a moderate following in the mid-1990s, held trials against public officials, registered notices of civilian death with the government and allegedly learned how to write bogus checks that earned them hundreds of thousands of dollars.

More than a decade before he was charged in the shooting death of abortion doctor George Tiller, Roeder’s association with the Freemen movement was hardening his view that the U.S. government was corrupt and held no say over his life.

Sovereignty

Behind the doors of Topeka motel rooms in the mid-1990s, members of the Freemen held court in trials against the American government.

An air of revolution hung heavy during these often-raucous gatherings. Holed up for weekends, the group — sometimes 15 or 20 people, sometimes as many as 150 — would draw up writs of habeas corpus for people they thought wrongly imprisoned and writs of mandamus condemning other courts’ decisions.

“They felt like they were doing something valuable,” said Morris Wilson, a former member who attended these meetings. “They were shaking things up.”

To the members, they were sovereign from a corrupt government. “The Freemen’s belief was that you could give away your federal citizenship and you’re only a state citizen,” Wilson said. “You become sovereign and get yourself out from under all the crap of the government.”

What brought many to these meetings varied. Everyone had an issue, Wilson said. Maybe they were jailed for not having a license plate or were manhandled by the police. It was a time just after the botched federal raid in Waco, Texas, which soured Wilson’s view of the government. And it was the time of President Bill Clinton, who members saw as the highest of criminals.

For Roeder, former wife Lindsey Roeder said, the issue was federal taxes. And abortion.

“I agreed with him on his abortion thing,” Wilson said. “Except I got over it, and he never did.”

Criminality

Doug Mauck saw the other side.

As the sergeant in charge of criminal intelligence for the Shawnee County Sheriff’s Office at the time, he knew the workings of the Freemen well.

The group first caught his eye when it published legal notices in the Topeka Metro News, trumpeting what members said were legal filings. “This common law affidavit, in law, is true, correct and certain, being made in good faith,” began one notice.

They termed themselves “the One Supreme Court,” which didn’t impress Mauck.

“I understood the words, but I couldn’t understand the message,” he said. “It was just crazy talk, one long schizophrenic diatribe.”

Mauck knew that Wilson and Topeka-area Freeman leader Ronald Griesacker attended the Montana ranch of Leroy Schweitzer, national leader of the Freemen. There, Wilson said, members ate breakfast, cleared the table and listened to Schweitzer talk of Christian philosophy and rail against the government for hours. Then lunch, clear the table and repeat.

What they were learning, however, was how to pass bogus checks, Mauck said. He said, for example, the group wrote $400,000 on what resembled a check and presented it to Caterpillar for a $150,000 bulldozer. Then the company sent them a corporate check for the difference.

Mauck, who retired in the late 1990s, said legal wrangling let the statute of limitations run out on most cases of bank fraud in the area.

No longer around

From all indications, the Freemen movement is no longer breathing.

“If they’re still around, they’re really, really underground,” Wilson said from a ranch in Keith County in western Nebraska, where he now lives.

Sgt. Phil McKay, who helps with criminal intelligence for the sheriff’s office, said he hasn’t heard anything about the Freemen in years. Detective Janine Falley, with the Topeka Police Department’s intelligence unit, said the group is never discussed in daily briefings.

The local and national movements broke down in 1996 when a monthlong standoff at Schweitzer’s Montana ranch ended in the leader’s arrest and conviction for numerous crimes. He is still in a Colorado prison.

Griesacker, the local leader, had fortuitously left the Montana compound the day of the raid and spent two years on the run before his arrest and conviction.

It was during the standoff, and one day before the one-year anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, that Roeder was arrested for possessing explosives. His subsequent conviction later was overturned for an improper search of his car.

Wilson said there was never any real threat from the Freemen, who he said spent a lot of time locally just playing war games in fields.

“It was mostly people getting together to shoot their guns and blow off steam,” he said. “They weren’t planning to blow up buildings or anything.”

James Carlson can be reached at (785) 295-1186 or james.carlson@cjonline.com.