Shootout in a Sleepy Hamlet

Wanted for murder, a militant tax evader is slain in Arkansas

Mayor Billy Davis of Smithville, Ark. (pop. 113), expected the worst when half a dozen police cars converged on his mountain hamlet 125 miles northeast of Little Rock late last Friday afternoon. "They weren't talking," said Davis, "so I knew something was about to happen." The officials, including four state troopers, a dozen federal marshals and FBI agents, the sheriff and three deputies, headed four miles north of town and set up roadblocks. Then they drove a mile down a dirt road to an isolated house that resembled a bunker. There, the nationwide search for Gordon W. Kahl, 63, a retired farmer and militant tax protester, came to a fiery and bloody end.

Kahl had been wanted on murder charges since a shootout last February at Medina, N. Dak., in which two federal marshals were killed. The marshals had been trying to serve a warrant on Kahl for violating his parole on a 1977 conviction for failure to file federal income tax returns. On May 28, Kahl's son Yorivon, 23, and Scott Paul, 29, were convicted of two counts of second-degree murder and six counts of assault in the episode. But the elder Kahl, a member of the ultraright-wing Posse Comitatus, a paramilitary organization that opposes income taxes and other forms of governmental authority, had managed to elude capture.

From the start, officials had kept a lookout on Arkansas; they knew that Kahl had spent much of last year living in the state under an assumed name. About a week ago, a man who looked like Kahl was spotted near Smithville riding in a car that belonged to the son of Leonard and Norma Ginter, who occupied the bunker-like house and were said to be sympathizers of the tax-protest movement. When Arkansas officials gathered enough evidence to obtain a search warrant, the raid was organized. As the heavily armed police officers positioned themelves around the house, Sheriff Gene Matthews and three other men went up to he front door. The Ginters were taken into custody. Then the sheriff stepped inside the house. He was immediately cut down by a bullet from Kahl's high-powered rifle.

The other officers managed to drag the gravely wounded Matthews out, then opened fire on the house. The house went up in flames after a smoke bomb was thrown down an air vent. Thousands of rounds of ammunition, apparently stored inside, exploded. Said State Trooper Charles Harper: "We just pulled back and waited three and a half hours until it cooled down. It was raining hard, and lightning was striking all around. We didn't know which would get us first, the lightning or the bullets."

Finally, a fire truck was brought in to hose down the smoldering building, and the officers removed a body found slumped over a rifle on the living-room floor. Although the Ginters had assured the police that Kahl was the only other person in the house, officials planned to examine the fugitive's dental records before ruling that it was Kahl. The state medical examiner performed an autopsy and issued a "presumptive identification" based on the fact that the body bore evidence of shrapnel wounds, which Kahl had suffered in World War II.

Kahl, sadly, was not the only casualty. Matthews, 38, died on the operating table about the time Kahl's body was being removed from the house. To Lynn Crooks, the Assistant U.S. Attorney in Fargo, N. Dak., who helped prosecute Kahl's son, it seemed a senseless tragedy. Said he: "What the hell was in a man's mind to wreak that kind of havoc because he didn't want to pay his taxes?" qed This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.