Tuesday, April 13, 1999
Cheyne Kehoe tells Ark. court his brother bragged of killings
BY DAVID A. LIEB
The Associated Press
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — A man convicted in a 1997 shootout with police in Wilmington, Ohio, turned against his older brother Monday, testifying that his sibling bragged of killing an Arkansas family and committing other crimes.
Cheyne Kehoe avoided direct eye contact with Chevie Kehoe, glancing sideways at him and gulping as he implicated his older brother.
Chevie Kehoe, 26, of Colville, Wash., and Danny Lee, 26, of Yukon, Okla., are charged with racketeering, conspiracy and murder as part of a plot to set up a whites-only nation in the Pacific Northwest.
Cheyne Kehoe, 22, said he and his brother were touring the South with their families, working on weapons in preparation for a gun show, when Chevie Kehoe told him about killing gun dealer William Mueller, his wife, Nancy, and her 8-year-old daughter, Sarah Powell.
“He said that Danny and him had decided to do a hit on the Muellers due to the fact that, for one thing, he thought that they were government informants and he knew that they had a large amount of gold and silver stored at their house,” Cheyne told jurors while his brother scribbled notes and conferred with defense attorneys.
Asked by prosecutors about Chevie Kehoe's attitude about the kill ings, his younger brother replied, “It was a braggart-type attitude — a macho attitude.”
Cheyne Kehoe said he continued traveling with his brother out of fear that he would be killed if he left. They eventually camped in Ohio and were returning from a gun show in Cincinnati when their vehicle was pulled over by police on Feb. 15, 1997.
The Kehoes on that date engaged in two shootouts with a state trooper, a Clinton County sheriff's deputy and two Wilmington police officers, one of which was taped by video camera mounted to an Ohio State Highway Patrol cruiser. The shootout was televised nationally. Both Kehoes were convicted in connection with the shootout.
Cheyne Kehoe, who is listed as an unindicted co-conspirator in the federal case, testified against his brother and Mr. Lee under a grant of immunity. The younger Kehoe said he has been moved from one facility to another under the federal witness-protection program.
Larry McPheron, a former cellmate of Chevie Kehoe, testified earlier that Chevie tried to arrange for his younger brother to be killed in prison because he feared Cheyne Kehoe would implicate him.
Cheyne Kehoe said he was unaware of the Muellers' deaths when he left on a trip with his brother shortly after Thanksgiving 1996. The brothers and their families went to Arizona, where Chevie Kehoe sold a gun that he said had belonged to the Muellers, Cheyne Kehoe testified.
A short while later, while preparing for another gun show in Galveston, Texas, Chevie Kehoe told his brother how he and Mr. Lee had dressed in police gear, broken into the Muellers' home and ambushed the family, Cheyne Kehoe said.
Cheyne Kehoe said that while the brothers were in Ohio shortly before the shootout, his older brother gave a detailed description of how he made a bomb and exploded it near City Hall in Spokane, Wash., in April 1996.
“He said he was doing it as a test run to see what the reaction was from the public and law enforcement ... what type of positive reaction he could get from it,” Cheyne said.
After the Ohio shootout, the Kehoes fled separately and met up in Utah, where Cheyne turned himself in to authorities and revealed where his brother could be found.
Perry Brothers contributed to this report.
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