sirgonzo420
24th May 2011, 01:48 PM
from http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/05/21/3093802/east-texas-clan-still-ready-for.html#storylink=omni_popular#ixzz1NHWcIrT5
By Steve Campbell
sfcampbell@star-telegram.com
TRINIDAD -- On the other side of the barbed-wire fence, 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 tan 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 teenaged 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.
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.
'I did bite him'
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
"Somehow his hand did end up in my mouth and I did bite him," Gray told the Star-Telegram in September 2000.
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 gunbattle just to arrest Gray.
Nutt, a former Texas Ranger, said his policy is to no longer talk about Gray, because the fugitive-in-plain-sight only wants attention.
But then the sheriff speaks his mind.
"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.
"He assaulted a state trooper and it's an Anderson County warrant. They have caused us no problems. They are in their own self-imposed prison," he said. "Unless he does something to cause us to react, he can stay there."
What's sad, Nutt said, are the lives of the children behind the barbed wire.
"That's part of our judgment. If we confront them and get in a major shootout, we could injure those kids. It's scary to think about those children living like that."
Life on the frontier
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.
"We survive on faith. We've never gone a day without a meal," Gray said with pride.
And they never leave, he said.
He refuses to say how many people live there or to answer most questions about their life.
But he will say that when someone is injured from chopping wood or laboring over crops, his wife, Alicia, "sews them up."
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.
"They are obedient to God's Scripture. They just have a little disagreement with the politics of this nation," said McCarter, who wore a holstered pistol while she visited last week.
In a later phone interview, she gave more details about the clan and its frontier existence and Old Testament mindset.
"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."
John Joe Gray said he was a general contractor in nearby Seven Pines, and Jonathan worked with him as a carpenter.
The group has constructed five homes to house each of the families in the compound, McCarter said.
'Something crazy'
Over the years, the media attention has waned as law enforcement ignored the compound and John Joe Gray stayed out of sight, no longer spewing his dark rants about government tyranny or the pervasive influence of Masons.
But Gray, once linked to Texas militia groups, apparently yearns for another spin in the spotlight.
Through McCarter, he contacted the Star-Telegram with an invitation to "something crazy" -- he was going to burn the Quran.
And maybe, just maybe, he would allow a reporter and photographer to come inside his secret world.
After nearly two hours of strained conversation with a reporter and photographer, a clearly disappointed Gray finally gave up waiting for a TV satellite truck and sent his granddaughter to fetch a can of kerosene and the book.
Squatting on a dirt track of his driveway, he doused the paperback with fuel and struck a match. And the wind blew it out, again and again. After soaking it with more fuel and propping it open with sticks, the paperback finally ignited.
Why burn it? Why now?
"When a jihad takes place in this country, you'll know why," Gray said, turning to go.
But with burning pages blowing in the weeds, the family reversed field and snatched up the blackened scraps. "See, we pick up our trash," John Joe Gray said before marching away.
Jonathan Gray stayed behind, a solitary sentinel, watching and waiting and seemingly prepared to do so for the rest of his life.
This report includes material from the Star-Telegram archives.
http://media.star-telegram.com/smedia/2011/05/22/08/Standoff10.standalone.prod_affiliate.58.jpg
http://media.star-telegram.com/smedia/2011/05/22/08/Standoff17.standalone.prod_affiliate.58.jpg
By Steve Campbell
sfcampbell@star-telegram.com
TRINIDAD -- On the other side of the barbed-wire fence, 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 tan 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 teenaged 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.
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.
'I did bite him'
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
"Somehow his hand did end up in my mouth and I did bite him," Gray told the Star-Telegram in September 2000.
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 gunbattle just to arrest Gray.
Nutt, a former Texas Ranger, said his policy is to no longer talk about Gray, because the fugitive-in-plain-sight only wants attention.
But then the sheriff speaks his mind.
"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.
"He assaulted a state trooper and it's an Anderson County warrant. They have caused us no problems. They are in their own self-imposed prison," he said. "Unless he does something to cause us to react, he can stay there."
What's sad, Nutt said, are the lives of the children behind the barbed wire.
"That's part of our judgment. If we confront them and get in a major shootout, we could injure those kids. It's scary to think about those children living like that."
Life on the frontier
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.
"We survive on faith. We've never gone a day without a meal," Gray said with pride.
And they never leave, he said.
He refuses to say how many people live there or to answer most questions about their life.
But he will say that when someone is injured from chopping wood or laboring over crops, his wife, Alicia, "sews them up."
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.
"They are obedient to God's Scripture. They just have a little disagreement with the politics of this nation," said McCarter, who wore a holstered pistol while she visited last week.
In a later phone interview, she gave more details about the clan and its frontier existence and Old Testament mindset.
"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."
John Joe Gray said he was a general contractor in nearby Seven Pines, and Jonathan worked with him as a carpenter.
The group has constructed five homes to house each of the families in the compound, McCarter said.
'Something crazy'
Over the years, the media attention has waned as law enforcement ignored the compound and John Joe Gray stayed out of sight, no longer spewing his dark rants about government tyranny or the pervasive influence of Masons.
But Gray, once linked to Texas militia groups, apparently yearns for another spin in the spotlight.
Through McCarter, he contacted the Star-Telegram with an invitation to "something crazy" -- he was going to burn the Quran.
And maybe, just maybe, he would allow a reporter and photographer to come inside his secret world.
After nearly two hours of strained conversation with a reporter and photographer, a clearly disappointed Gray finally gave up waiting for a TV satellite truck and sent his granddaughter to fetch a can of kerosene and the book.
Squatting on a dirt track of his driveway, he doused the paperback with fuel and struck a match. And the wind blew it out, again and again. After soaking it with more fuel and propping it open with sticks, the paperback finally ignited.
Why burn it? Why now?
"When a jihad takes place in this country, you'll know why," Gray said, turning to go.
But with burning pages blowing in the weeds, the family reversed field and snatched up the blackened scraps. "See, we pick up our trash," John Joe Gray said before marching away.
Jonathan Gray stayed behind, a solitary sentinel, watching and waiting and seemingly prepared to do so for the rest of his life.
This report includes material from the Star-Telegram archives.
http://media.star-telegram.com/smedia/2011/05/22/08/Standoff10.standalone.prod_affiliate.58.jpg
http://media.star-telegram.com/smedia/2011/05/22/08/Standoff17.standalone.prod_affiliate.58.jpg