Anti-Government Zealot and Mortgage Cheat Icon Jerry Kane Jr., Teenage Son Reportedly Killed Police In Deadly Shootout
LITTLE ROCK, Ark. AP — An Ohio man’s resentment of authority and run-ins with the law was enough for a local sheriff to warn that he could be dangerous if confronted by law enforcement. Years later, the sheriff appears right: The man and his teenage son are suspected of fatally shooting two Arkansas police officers during a traffic stop before they died in a shootout.
Jerry Kane Jr., 45, of Forest, Ohio, and his son Joseph Kane, believed to be 16, were killed during an exchange of gunfire with officers in a Walmart parking lot, Arkansas State Police said Friday.
The shootings came about 90 minutes after West Memphis police Sgt. Brandon Paudert, 39, and Officer Bill Evans, 38, were attacked with AK-47 assault rifles after they stopped a minivan on Interstate 40 in West Memphis on Thursday, authorities said.
Jerry Kane, who had a long history with police, used the Internet to question federal and local governments’ authority over him and held debt-elimination seminars around the country. He recently complained about being busted at a “Nazi checkpoint” near Carrizozo, N.M., where court records show he spent three days in jail before posting a $1,500 bond on charges of driving without a license and concealing his identity.
Sheriff Gene Kelly in Clark County, Ohio, said he issued a warning to law enforcement about Kane in July 2004, after Kane said a judge tried to “enslave” him when he was sentenced to six days of community service for driving with an expired license plate and no seat belt. Kane claimed he was a “free man” and asked for $100,000 per day in gold or silver, Kelly said.
“After listening to this man for almost 30 minutes, I feel that he is expecting and prepared for confrontations with any law enforcement officer that may come in contact with him,” Kelly wrote in his warning to officers.
Kelly told The Associated Press on Friday that he had been “very concerned about a potential confrontation and about his resentment of authority.”
On an Internet radio show, hosted on a website that lets amateurs create their own shows and live discussions, Kane expressed outrage about his New Mexico arrest.
“I ran into a Nazi checkpoint in the middle of New Mexico where they were demanding papers or jail,” he said. “That was the option. Either produce your papers or go to jail. So I entered into commerce with them under threat, duress and coercion, and spent 47 hours in there.”
Kane said he planned to file a counterclaim alleging kidnapping and extortion against those involved in his arrest and detention. Kane also said he had an officer sign a document that said the officer must pay for using Kane’s name.
“I am now putting together an invoice for him for approximately $80,000 in gold for the eight times he used my name,” Kane said on the radio show. “I already have done a background check on him. I found out where he lives, his address, his wife’s name.”
Mark Potok, who directs hate-group research at the Southern Poverty Law Center, said Kane had not been in the group’s database before Thursday. But he said that was not surprising, given the “explosive growth” in the anti-government movement in recent years. With 363 new groups in 2009, there are now 512, Potok said.
Members of so-called patriot groups don’t recognize the authority of the U.S. government and consider themselves sovereign citizens.
What is: The Patriot Movement?
JJ MacNab, a Maryland-based insurance analyst who has testified before Congress on tax and financial scams, said she had been tracking Kane for about two years and that his business centered on debt-avoidance scams.
Potok said such scams are common in the sovereign citizen movement.
“He basically promised them they would never have to repay their mortgage or credit card debt,” MacNab said.
Kane’s website showed he held one of his seminars in Las Vegas 15-16 and that he was due to appear in Safety Harbor, Fla., May 28-29. His website Friday asked that donations be sent to an address in Clearwater, Fla., to help his family.
At that Florida address, a woman, speaking through the front door, told an AP reporter to leave the property when he knocked and identified himself. Two bicycles were in front of the unkempt, single-story home and exercise equipment was on the porch. A sign on the front door read: “No visitors. This means you. Thank you for understanding.”
A woman who answered the door at the home of Kane’s mother, Patricia Holt of Marysville, Ohio, also told an AP reporter to leave and said she had no comment. She did not identify herself.
related stories:
Arkansas Cop Killer Linked to ‘Patriot’ Movement
Lies,’ baby’s death pushed Kane
from: WDTN-TV:
Video: Jerry Kane Jr. “Debt Avoidance” Seminar (NSFW)
May 22, 2010
Arkansas Cop Killer Linked to ‘Patriot’ Movement
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How is this article different from if I wrote an article making a claim that all law enforcement officers are related to a shakedown operation performed by the mafia or the Nazi SS? I am apart of the patriot movement. I am saddened by this story and its consequences of innocents being killed and a child being corrupted, just like most people who hear this. I ask anyone to recognize that the way this article reads is that anyone involved in the patriot movement is a threat to national security. People who resort to violence to solve differences is what sane people stand against in harmony, right? Politics is the art of manipulating perceived differences so that the outcome serves the manipulators interest, correct? We are all on the same team. There is no alternative. Since the dawn of history, an elite powerful few believe they should decide the fate of the rest of us according to their whim and that no respect should be given to nature or a creator. You and I are outside this elite group and thus should seek to respect each other in order to allow freedom of choice and moral law to flourish. Patriots are those who know that we must seek to ensure that government is operated by us, the governed, and that there is always criminals who seek to lie us into agreeing to exist in their manufactured imprisonment and they infiltrate our government. I’m not against the government but the criminals who run it.
Comment by Chad Warren — July 8, 2010 @ 10:23 AM |
“Since the dawn of history, an elite powerful few believe they should decide the fate of the rest of us according to their whim”
this is like the elusive “them” that supposedly control everything. Be specific, who are these “elite few”? gives names and examples. Otherwise you’re just making stuff up.
Comment by GeoT — July 8, 2010 @ 12:02 PM |
and p.s. the Patriot Movement better do a better job of policing itself, because here: (http://geott.wordpress.com/2010/05/23/cop-killer-jerry-kane-jr-s-friends-it-will-happen-again/) they say that “this will happen again” followed by violent anti-cop rhetoric. Perception is everything and the “Patriot Movement” is seen as an extremist militia allied group.
Comment by GeoT — July 8, 2010 @ 12:17 PM |
I’m surprised that no media outlets have mentioned this guy had strong links to the Scientologists.
He lived in Clearwater with his “wife” who was an active member of the cult.
Comment by Rex Fowler — August 2, 2010 @ 3:04 AM |