Damn! You Gotta Love This Guy! Texas Free Man in 12 Year Standoff With the State!

[Selene]

Authorities ignore fugitive holed up on Texas land for 11 years

Enemy at gate? Not in this case

In a one-sided standoff, a fugitive has holed up on his land for 11 years — but lawmen don't seem to care

STEVE CAMPBELL

, FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM

Published 05:30 a.m., Sunday, May 22, 2011

John Joe Gray's teen granddaughter, Jessica, a revolver on her hip, stands ready near the gate to his property. Photo: Joyce Marshall, McClatchy-Tribune News Service / HC

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John Joe Gray, a "free-standing man" and fugitive from the law, is locked and loaded for the coming apocalypse or authorities - whichever

shows up first.

"It's coming," he says. "It's time this country knows God is coming."

A rifle is slung across his back and a gun belt around his waist holds a revolver and extra cartridges. A knife is strapped to the other side of his lean torso. A battered felt hat frames a deeply lined face and bushy beard.

Dangling from a nearby tree, a hangman's noose strangles a weathered sign that sums up his stance: "Solution to tyranny."

Warily covering Gray's flanks are two of his six children, sons Jonathan, 39, and Timothy, 33. The dark-bearded, fit and tanned brothers are as well-armed as their 62-year-old father.

Ten feet behind her brothers and father, long-haired Ruth Gray, 31, stands solemn and silent. She, too, is armed to the teeth.

Next to her is teenager Jessica Gray, "who is old enough," according to her father, Jonathan. She has on a cowboy hat that the wind keeps blowing off, a long denim skirt, a sequined denim vest and cowboy boots. She's packing a pistol and binoculars.

Law is ignoring him

This is one stubborn side of what has been called America's longest-running standoff with law enforcement.

But it's been a single-sided siege. Henderson County authorities have pointedly ignored the would-be war.

For more than 11 years, John Joe Gray and his country clan have been holed up inside their own private prison, a 47-acre strip of Trinity River bottomland about 100 miles southeast of Fort Worth in Henderson County.

They've scraped out a harsh life here ever since Gray was bailed out of jail in January 2000 after he was charged with assaulting a state trooper on Christmas Eve 1999.

During a traffic stop, Gray and the driver of the car told two Department of Public Safety troopers that they were armed. When ordered to get out, the driver did but Gray wouldn't budge.

One trooper pushed Gray out, and he then lunged for the other officer's sidearm. Gray bit the trooper as they struggled for control of the weapon, according to investigators.

An Anderson County grand jury indicted him on two felony counts - assaulting a public servant and taking a peace officer's weapon.

"We're here because two highway patrolmen lied about what happened," Gray said last week. "Land of the free and home of the brave? That's a bunch of bull."

He has refused to be taken alive and in a long-ago letter to authorities, the family warned officials to "bring extra body bags," if they come for him. Authorities kept tabs on the compound for months but haven't maintained an active presence for years.

"We fear no man," John Joe Gray maintains. "We believe in an eye for an eye and a bullet for a bullet."

But nobody's storming the gate.

Henderson County Sheriff Ray Nutt, who is the fourth lawman in the post since 2000, says, like his predecessors, that he's not willing to risk a gun battle just to arrest Gray.

"John Joe Gray is not worth it. Ten of him is not worth going up there and getting one of my young deputies killed," he said.

Living off the land

The hardscrabble compound has no phone, no refrigeration, no power.

Contact with the outside world is through a handful of "supporters" and via shortwave radio, John Joe Gray said.

Drinking water comes from springs, and Gray and his sons say they subsist by growing beans, potatoes, corn, squash, tomatoes and peppers on fields they plow with donkeys. They can vegetables and dry meat to get through the year, they said.

They also raise goats and chickens and catch catfish, carp and drum from the Trinity and hunt deer on the wooded property. Friends bring them staples they can't produce themselves. Last year, they harvested their first crop of peaches.

One supporter, who frequently visits the farm, said eight children are inside the compound. The kids are armed at an early age, she said. They are equally adept at reciting the Constitution or Scripture.

"It's sort of Wild West. It's what a traditional American family looked like 100 years ago," said Dolores McCarter of Arlington, who says she once worked for Homeland Security and now operates a small nonprofit called Dee's House that helps battered women and children.

"John is standing as a free man. He loves his family. They are prepared to live out their lives there," McCarter said. "Some people pity them and they ... pity us."

[Brant Gaede]

He's lucky the Feds aren't after him.

--Brant

[Selene]

Brant:

Correct.

Randy Weaver found that out the hard way. A despicable massacre partially paid for by my tax money.

I was at a political dinner and I got in a really hot argument with a fellow across the table from me. He worked for the IRS and I explained that he was an accessory to the murder of Randy Weaver's wife and child and that he should be ashamed of being a good German working for the IRS.

It got real personal and we were in each others faces before cooler heads prevailed. He left with his mortified wife about five (5) minutes later. All of a sudden a note was passed to me by one of my father's long time friends. It simply said, "I like the way you think. Keep up the good work."

I still have that piece of paper. I was an admirer of my father's friend and what he had achieved in life and it had a lot of meaning to me that he respected what I stood for.

Adam

[caroljane]

Authorities ignore fugitive holed up on Texas land for 11 years

Enemy at gate? Not in this case

In a one-sided standoff, a fugitive has holed up on his land for 11 years — but lawmen don't seem to care

STEVE CAMPBELL

, FORT WORTH STAR-TELEGRAM

Published 05:30 a.m., Sunday, May 22, 2011

John Joe Gray's teen granddaughter, Jessica, a revolver on her hip, stands ready near the gate to his property. Photo: Joyce Marshall, McClatchy-Tribune News Service / HC

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"John Joe Gray is not worth it"

"It's sort of Wild West. It's what a traditional American family looked like 100 years ago," said Dolores McCarter of Arlington, .......

Hah. 100 years ago the hardscrabble farmers's families got to go to the occasional barn-raising or quilting bee, and if they wanted to sell up and light out for the territories, they could.

I only hope they get to take in a church social once in a while.

I, you will not be surprised to hear, don't see much I gotta love about John Joe. That sheriff however, has the right stuff.

[Selene]

Seems like there is a different approach to an anti-government sovereignist up North in North Dakota!! Use Federal drones!!

The tiny town of Lakota, N.D., is quickly becoming a key testing ground for the legality of the use of unmanned drones by law enforcement after one of its residents became the first American citizen to be arrested with the help of a Predator surveillance drone.

The bizarre case started when six cows wandered onto Rodney Brossart's 3,000 acre farm.

Brossart, an alleged anti-government "sovereignist,"

believed he should have been able to keep the cows, so he and two family members chased police off his land with high powered rifles.

http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2012/04/09/first-man-arrested-with-drone-evidence-vows-to-fight-case