Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, August 6, 1995 TAG: 9508070058
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAN VERTEFEUILLE AND KATHY LOAN STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
A third member of the Blue Ridge Hunt Club - a self-styled civilian militia formed to support gun rights and to oppose a possible government war on citizens - is scheduled to plead guilty Tuesday to federal firearms charges.
Dennis Frith, the club member, has been charged with conspiring to violate firearm laws, possessing an unregistered silencer with no serial number and making false statements on firearm records to obscure the identity of gun buyers.
Frith and Paul L. Greene, another defendant in the case, were scheduled to go to trial Wednesday. Their trial had been delayed three months because of concern that the Oklahoma City bombing could prejudice jurors against the defendants.
Greene was a Blacksburg gun dealer who, the government claims, sold a damaged gun to club members who turned it into an illegal machine gun. Greene is accused of reporting in federal records that the gun had been destroyed so there would be no ownership paper trail. Greene's trial is scheduled to last two days.
Five men were charged in connection with activities of the Pulaski-based hunt club. Federal agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms had an informant inside the club, which met just three times before the arrests.
The leader of the militia and another member have pleaded guilty to various firearm charges and are in federal prison. Another member is being tried separately because he is representing himself; his trial has been delayed until September because of a death in his family.
James Roy Mullins, the club's founder, has said the club's main purpose was to work against gun control through the political process. The government says the club was formed to provide cover ``for the illegal activities of an `inner core' group'' and was stockpiling weapons.
The arrest of two men who may have had ties to a militia group in Michigan and are suspected in the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, and the intense publicity surrounding the militia movement in general, could have affected a Roanoke jury, the judge and defense attorneys worried.
"The high profile of, quote, militia groups, unquote, certainly could make it difficult, if not impossible, to find a jury that did not have that on their mind," U.S. District Judge Jackson Kiser said in the ruling that delayed the trial.
by CNB