Saturday's broadcast of America's Most Wanted generated about 100 tips as to the whereabouts of the gunmen in last week's shootouts with police in Wilmington.
Desperate for leads in the nationwide manhunt for fugitives Chevie Kehoe, 24, and his brother Cheyne Kehoe, 20, authorities turned to the Fox TV call-in crime show for help.
Authorities are not saying
where they think the gunmen are, but ''We received some good leads,'' Ohio Highway Patrol spokesman Sgt. John Born said Monday. ''We do think they are receiving assistance.''
The brothers, raised in the mountains of Colville, Wash., are thought to be hiding out with their wives - Karena Gumm, married to Chevie Kehoe, and Tanna Kehoe, married to Cheyne Kehoe - and four children. They still may be traveling in a white 1977 Dodge Executive motor home with green trim and Montana license plates.
''We're looking inside and outside the state,'' said Ed Boldt, spokesman in the FBI's Cincinnati
office. ''We're certainly concerned about the location of the motor home.''
But local authorities are not the only ones who want to talk to the Kehoes. The brothers, the oldest of eight sons of Kirby Keith Kehoe, have ties to the Aryan Nations, a white-separatist group with headquarters about 70 miles from their hometown in Hayden Lake, Idaho.
The Aryan Nations - which also has a chapter 12 miles from the Wilmington shootouts in Clinton County's village of New Vienna - has as its most notorious members the Midwestern Bank Bandits, who committed 22 bank robberies in seven states between 1992 and 1995.
Other members have links to homicides - and that is where the Kehoes come in.
The first is a triple slaying in Pope County, Ark. No one has been charged in the murders of the family of three, but Chevie Kehoe is a suspect in a February 1995 theft of guns from William Mueller, a licensed gun dealer in Arkansas with suspected ties to militia groups.
Mr. Mueller, 53, his wife, Nancy, 28, and their daughter Sarah, 8, were found in an Arkansas bayou in June 1996. Their heads were covered in plastic, and the adults' hands and feet were handcuffed.
Sean Michael Haines, 19, an Aryan Nations youth leader in Spokane, Wash., was arrested two months ago in Sioux Falls, S.D., and charged with having a gun stolen from Mr. Mueller. Mr. Haines also has a connection to the Kehoes. The previous owner of his Chevy Suburban - a different Suburban from the one the Kehoes abandoned in Wilmington - was Karena Gumm, mother of Chevie Kehoe's three children.
Authorities said Monday that Chevie Kehoe may have a connection to another homicide just across the state line from his Washington home in Bonner County, Idaho.
His friend and one-time roommate, Feron ''Dan'' Lovelace, is awaiting a murder trial there for the 1995 slaying of former Aryan Nations member Jeremy Scott.
Authorities say Mr. Lovelace admitted to shooting the 23-year-old in the back of the head. Mr. Scott's father, Homer Scott, said the motive may have been that his son wanted to distance himself from the Aryan Nations and blamed Mr. Lovelace for robbing neighbors.
''We want to talk to Chevie Kehoe in connection with this murder,'' Bonner County Sheriff's Lt. John Valdez said. Chevie Kehoe lived in the county at the time of the murder and ran in the same circles as Jeremy Scott, he said.
Jeremy Scott once bought a school bus that was converted into a camper from one of the Kehoe brothers and lived near them about an hour from the Aryan Nations 20-acre compound, his father said.
''All of this stuff is related,'' Homer Scott said. ''It would make a great novel if so much of it weren't true.''
Previous stories
WILMINGTON SHOOTOUT NOW FBI CONCERN Feb. 22 1997
BROTHERS INDICTED, SOUGHT IN SHOOTOUTS Feb. 21 1997
TWO GUNMEN TRACKED TO CAMPGROUND Feb. 20 1997
INVESTIGATORS, SUPREMACISTS APPEAL TO PUBLIC Feb. 19, 1997
FBI JOINS HUNT FOR GUNMEN Feb. 18, 1997
SHOOTOUT MAY BE LINKED TO KILLINGS Feb. 17, 1997
