A Sordid Right Wing Tale with a Very Unhappy Ending

If you remember back a few months ago to the jerk who tried to light his underwear on fire on an airplane, or the moron recently who tried to blow Times Square up with store-bought fireworks and a couple of propane tanks, you will recall about fifty thousand stories in the mainstream media about these guys, accompanied by about a million and a half belligerent racist screeds from the wingnuts. Funny, isn't it, that yesterday's story about a couple of maniacs who actually murdered two policemen in Arkansas- more non-military casualties in our country than Al Qaida has managed in nine years- is receiving practically no attention at all. The New York Times, for example, managed to cover it on page 8. The L.A. Times didn't think the story was worth any space at all. And as for the wingnuts, I checked all my usual sources, and the only coverage of this shooting was from Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit, who made the mistake of hopping on this story before the facts came out, when he felt confident in asserting that these criminals were illegal alien drug dealers.

Not Green Eagle. I intend to explain exactly who these guys are, so you can consider why the press doesn't think them worth any attention. This will be a long post, so please bear with me.

The lead murderer, Jerry Kane Jr. was not a totally unknown character. The press describes him as travelling around the country delivering lectures on how to avoid foreclosure. In fact, he is part of a decades-old "sovereign citizen" movement, which advances various patently lunatic reasons why people don't have to pay their taxes or debts, based on the notion that the federal government is somehow illegitimate (the details of the explanations vary somewhat) and therefore it has no right to collect taxes, or that perhaps, in the case of people like Kane, it does not even have the authority to issue currency, so all dollar-denominated debts are fictitious. This sort of thing flourished in the eighties and nineties and was closely associated with the militia movement. It formed a staple at that time of what we would today call "wingnut" thinking, and is an obvious predecessor of the tea party movement.

Now, the vehicle that the Kanes were driving has an interesting history. It is registered to a church in New Vienna, Ohio called the "House of God's Prayer." This church claims to have been defunct for several years, and claims that the van was stolen, although it never reported it missing. Interestingly, the "church" was located in a storefront that was also the headquarters of the local Ku Klux Klan.

This church was headed until his death by a man by the name of Harold "Ray" Redfeairn, who himself has a somewhat interesting history. Let me quote from a research paper from the Southern Poverty Law Center:

"In 1979, after holding up a car dealership and a motel, Redfeairn shot 22-year-old Dayton, Ohio, police officer Dave Koenig (see At Death's Door) three times after Koenig stopped him.

According to Koenig, Redfeairn then kneeled over Koenig and held the gun to his head, saying at one point, "You fucking pig, you think you're so bad now, eh?" Koenig was hit in the neck, shoulder and liver, surviving thanks to the bulletproof vest he was wearing.

Redfeairn became the Ohio state leader for the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations in 1992, serving until 1998...Redfeairn told the court he had quit the group because Butler advocated non-violence — testimony that was undermined when the plaintiffs played a video showing Redfeairn in (Aryan leader Richard) Butler's pulpit, with Butler standing nearby, saying that "to grab an AK-47 or an m16 and run and plug some nigger in the head" was an act of "conscience" that he "won't condemn."

In late 2001, Butler named Redfeairn as his successor."

Richard Butler, of course, being the head of the Aryan Nations, at their compound in Hayden Lake Idaho, before his death in 2004.

This is not the only connection between this "church" and Butler, or its only brush with shooting at police. To continue our tale, we have to turn to the story of one of my all time favorite right wing maniacs, Chevie Kehoe.

From the Dayton Crime Examiner:

"A strange twist to this story may remind residents in southwest Ohio of a similar incident that occurred in 1997. In that incident, an Ohio State Highway Patrol Trooper stopped an SUV on the west side of Wilmington, Ohio. During a struggle, the trooper and a sheriff's deputy exchanged gunfire with the two occupants of the vehicle. The occupants were later identified as Chevie and Cheyne Kehoe. The Kehoe's had connections to white-supremacy and the Aryan Peoples Republic militia. During that time, the national chapter of the Aryan Nation was located in New Vienna, Ohio, just south-east of Wilmington. The Aryan Nation was lead by Harold "Ray" Redfeairn...The group operated in New Vienna under the name of the Church of Jesus Christ Christian....Although rumors abounded about the possible connection between the church in New Vienna and the Kehoe brothers, that connection was never proven."

The Kehoes listed their residence at the time as being in (surprise) Hayden Lake, Idaho. I guess it was just mere coincidence that found them in close proximity to Redfeairn's church. Kehoe ended up serving life in prison for another right wing-related murder. To continue with the article:

"How does today's shooting compare to the shooting in 1997 in Wilmington, Ohio? The van driven by the suspects in the West Memphis shooting had Ohio license plates that were registered to the church in New Vienna. The white-supremacy group has not officially operated in New Vienna for several years, but still has vehicles registered with that address."

For those who may not be aware, the Church of Jesus Christ Christian is actually a national movement which promotes a doctrine known as "dual seed Christianity," which claims that only white people are real human beings, the result of mating between Adam and Eve, and that Jews, Blacks, etc. are actually subhumans that were produced by Eve and Satan, after Eve ate the forbidden fruit. It is a common doctrine among the very far right in this country, particularly among white supremacists. I have been compiling information about this movement for some months now, and will have an amusing post concerning them soon.

In fact this man shares a great deal of right wing, secessionist, militia, teabag thinking, and the Republican party is seeing to it that there are as many more just like him as they can create.

Well, there you have it. A story that is becoming all too familiar, and people like Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin or Rush Limbaugh have absolutely no responsibility for it- none at all. A mere isolated incident, with no political ramifications at all, and certainly not worth our notice.

Comments

Leslie Parsley said…
Scary as hell but a fascinating article - all these connections. And well researched. Sometimes you read about something so horrid that you are genuinely speechless.

The only thing I might say is somethings that most people already realize: the MSM sucks.
Anonymous said…
Finally! Some "rightwingchristian" murderers!

I'm surprised MSNBC isn't on blue light alert over this...

I hope they fry.
Kevin Robbins said…
Thanks for this info, Green Eagle. Nice job of putting that together.
Tomtech said…
I just picked up a tidbit but I don't have the link available.

When Kane was arrested in New Mexico last week he listed his occupation as Pastor of the Ohio church.

I hope the justice department follows that trail and unravels the entire network of tax cheats using defunct churches and non profits to hide their income and avoid taxes.
Green Eagle said…
Tomtech,

I couldn't agree with you more about the use of religion for tax evasion; and I hope they start with a small cult group/sexual predator organization called the Catholic church.

However, let's not forget that this particular "church" was actually a neo-Nazi racist cell; its only claim to be a church coming from its hateful Christian Identity beliefs.
Green Eagle said…
Silverfiddle says:

"Finally! Some "rightwingchristian" murderers!

I'm surprised MSNBC isn't on blue light alert over this..."

You know. Silverfiddle, I am very left wing, but I agree with you in a way here. In fact, I'm really puzzled why the whole mainstream media seems to be virtually ignoring this story. That was a major point of this post- just from the bizarre nature of this incident, you would think they would be milking it for all it's worth.

Anyone out there who is a fan of the true crime genre of TV shows which makes up so much of our cable diet will perhaps seen one of the couple of shows devoted to Chevie and Cheyne Kehoe, who I mentioned in this article. These shows were more interested in the crime aspect of the Kehoes than the political one, and I'm puzzled by the lack of interest in this story, even on that level, in the press.
americafarm said…
We now know the Kanes seem to have been pot-smoking Multi-culturalists. These people kill cops, too, probably more often than racialist Aryan Christians do.

"In fact this man shares a great deal of right wing, secessionist, militia, teabag thinking, and the Republican party is seeing to it that there are as many more just like him as they can create.

Well, there you have it. A story that is becoming all too familiar, and people like Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin or Rush Limbaugh have absolutely no responsibility for it- none at all. A mere isolated incident, with no political ramifications at all, and certainly not worth our notice"

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