Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 16, 1995 TAG: 9505160071
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAN VERTEFEUILLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The government, however, already knew.
As members talked about buying a "bugsweeper" to check for government listening devices, the vice president of the new club was wearing one, and state police and ATF agents hiding nearby heard every word.
On Monday, the club's founder, James Roy Mullins, 41, was sentenced to five years in prison for what he still believes was simply exercising his constitutional right to bear arms.
No one was charged for his rhetoric or his membership in the hunt club, but five were charged with firearms violations for alleged activities during and outside meetings.
Three members of the group will stand trial on those charges. Mullins and another man, Paul David Peterson, pleaded guilty in February. Mullins' attorney, Jack Gregory, said he thinks agreeing to a plea bargain was a good idea for Mullins since the Oklahoma City bombing has spotlighted militias nationwide.
"I think it would have hurt him, certainly," if he had stood trial, Gregory said. "He would have been sentenced in the post-Oklahoma City era, and that could have tainted the court."
Peterson, 26, also was to have been sentenced Monday, but his sentencing was delayed until after the other members' trials this summer because he has agreed to testify against them.
When members of the Blue Ridge Hunt Club were arrested last summer, militias were hardly the household word they are now. Citizen militias were being formed around the country, but they were mostly underground and barely noticed. Most were formed in response to the raid on the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas, and the shooting of Vicki Weaver and her teen-age son in Idaho by federal agents seeking her husband on weapon charges.
From the transcript the government made from the recording of that first meeting, which was obtained by the Roanoke Times & World-News, it's apparent the members earnestly believed they had to organize a militia to protect their constitutional rights.
"In the history of, say, revolutionary ideas ... the ones that get caught are the idiots who have one big national committee and everybody's tied in," Peterson said at the meeting. "But the ones who survive are the ones who have small groups, people like us scattered all over the place. ... And I think, later on, once we get the organization set up, we're going to have to be doing some training, some studying, maybe study some videos and become familiar with equipment that the average man doesn't own and isn't allowed to, but if things get bad we may lay our hands on it."
Nelson Thompson, 57, a diesel mechanic on disability who was the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms' informant, said the members believed the government already was infringing on Americans' rights after seeing the Waco and Weaver deaths.
"They started thinking this already was an attack on citizens and a violation of constitutional rights," Thompson said in a telephone interview. "[Mullins] became more vocal about what they were doing to citizens of the United States."
Gregory, Mullins' lawyer, said Thompson was responsible for helping form the club and with planting some of the inflammatory ideas about guerrilla warfare and fighting the government with other members.
"We're saying the informant planted this talk," Gregory said. "Mr. Mullins [and fellow member Bill] Stump never had any intentions of harming our government."
As part of the plea agreement, Mullins, who was charged with 16 counts of firearm violations, pleaded guilty in February to seven, including: making and possessing a machine gun, possessing unregistered silencers, conspiracy to commit firearm violations, and making a "straw purchase'' of a gun for someone else. He was sentenced to five years on each count, to be served concurrently.
Last June, Mullins bought a 9 mm semiautomatic pistol for Thompson from Peterson, a Blacksburg firearms dealer. The ATF gave Thompson $425 for the purchase, and Peterson used Mullins' name in the required background check.
by CNB