ONE STEP AHEAD OF THE LAW

KEHOES WANTED FOR QUESTIONING

He had reason to be in a hurry.

Kehoe and his family were one step ahead of a massive law enforcement task force that was targeting him, his father, his brother and several known associates in a number of crimes, including a triple murder in Arkansas, the Olympic Park bombing in Atlanta and a string of bombings and bank robberies in Spokane.

`I know we discussed it (the Olympic Park bombing), and there was nothing hard to connect them,' said Seattle homicide Detective E.M. `Sonny' Davis. The task force, which included federal, county and local law officers from Washington, Idaho and Arkansas, also could not connect the Kehoes and their associates to the bombings and robberies in Spokane.

But Davis said Arkansas authorities identified Kirby Kehoe - Chevie's father - as a suspect in the 1996 murder of William Mueller, his wife and their 8-year-old daughter. Several guns, coins and other property were taken from Mueller's business, and at least two of the guns ended up in the hands of Chevie Kehoe or his father.

The key link between the Kehoes and the triple murder in Arkansas came by accident, Davis said. In February 1996, a man acting as though he was high on drugs walked into a Seattle antique store carrying a .45-caliber pistol.

`He was strung out on drugs,'said Davis, who along with his partner investigated the case. `The owner called police.'

The gun, it turned out, was one of those stolen from Mueller. The 26-year-old man, Travis Brake of Bellingham, Wash., said he purchased the weapon at a gun show from Kirby Kehoe, whom he identified from a photograph. The man also identified Chevie Kehoe as one of the people at the gun show.

The Mueller family vanished in January 1996, but it wasn't until June that their bodies were pulled from a river in Arkansas. A short time later, a computer check revealed that Brake's gun was one of those taken from Mueller.

The task force met Aug. 15, 1996, at the federal building in Spokane, Wash. Days later, FBI agents coaxed one of Chevie Kehoe's friends - now a confessed murderer and kidnapper - out of this mountain region on the Idaho-Washington border and jailed him in the murder of a white supremacist. The man, Feron Lovelace, once lived on Kehoe's property here, a neighbor said, and authorities say they now want to talk to Chevie Kehoe about that killing.

Kehoe, 24, and his younger brother, Cheyne, 20, remain at large. They were indicted on charges of attempted murder of a police officer in connection with the Feb. 15 shootout with authorities in Wilmington, and are wanted by the FBI on federal charges of fleeing to avoid prosecution. The 1977 Dodge Executive recreational vehicle they were believed to be traveling in when they left Ohio was found in central Wyoming on Friday, days after it had been abandoned.

Until around August, Chevie Kehoe, his father, two women and as many as three children lived in the Kaniksu National Forest here on a multi-acre tract of land, where a small but sturdy cabin and a mobile home are located. The property, now covered with a thick blanket of undisturbed snow that is waist-deep in places, is more than five miles from a highway intersection, and more than 20 miles through dense evergreen forests and mountains from the nearest town: Priest River, Idaho.

Many of the houses here have no electricity, telephone or address. When the courts serve papers on people in winter, the process servers drive snowmobiles and don snowshoes. The mail carrier who delivers here and several law officers still do not know where Kehoe's cabin is located.

`They used to shoot their weapons all night. Automatics,' recalled one neighbor. `It drove me nuts all night and stuff. Intimidation. ... I told them I'd shoot back. ... I do shoot back.'

A paper target full of bullet holes still sits on the edge of the area where Kehoe lived, and lying near his cabin is an empty wooden crate that once contained several hundred rounds of military ammunition.

Neighbors say the Kehoes pulled out late last summer, about the time Lovelace was apprehended in the murder of Jeremy C. Scott, a fellow white supremacist. One neighbor, who said she spoke to the family from time to time, recalled that she was surprised to see them one evening driving down the main road in a truck hastily packed with their belongings.

Soon after, the Kehoes took up residence in northwestern Montana, where they stayed until just prior to the Wilmington gunbattle.

In Montana, the Kehoe family - including Chevie, Cheyne, their parents and an unknown number of siblings - lived in a rented house in `the Yaak,' a river valley in a mountainous region of northern Montana.

`We never did have any problems with them,' said Lincoln County Sheriff Ray Nixon.

`It's fairly isolated,' Nixon said of the Yaak. `There's quite a few homes up there, there's a store and a couple of gin mills. The fishing's good.'

Lt. Detective Don Bernall of the sheriff's office said the Kehoes came to his attention a couple months before the Ohio incident, when other law enforcement agencies inquired about Chevie Kehoe in connection with an investigation. Chevie and Cheyne left the Yaak about two months before the shootout, Bernall said, while the others left about six weeks later.

By last summer, federal and local officers were searching campgrounds for the Kehoes in the Seattle area and in eastern Washington, said a law enforcement source who asked not to be identified.

`The rumor was he was driving around with a camper and pickup,' the source said.

Weeks after the Arkansas family disappeared, Davis said, a witness in Arkansas reported seeing a car carrying the Kehoes, the Muellers and a man believed to be Timothy Thomas Coombs, wanted by police in connection with the 1994 shooting of a Missouri State Highway Patrol trooper. Coombs remains at large.

After documents recovered by Arkansas authorities linked Brake's pistol to Mueller, Davis and his partner immediately went to Bellingham to interview Brake.

`We spent a great deal of time with him 'til we were satisfied he was telling the truth,' Davis said.

Brake, Davis said, told detectives he bought the pistol at a Seattle gun show just days before he walked into the antique store.

Arkansas authorities sent Davis a photograph of Kirby Kehoe, saying he was a suspect in the disappearance of Mueller.

`He (Brake) identified Kirby Kehoe as the man who sold him the gun and Chevie as one of the people with him,' Davis said. `He originally told us it was militia types that sold him the gun.'

Davis said he also contacted a California man who organized the gun show and confirmed some of Brake's story. Later, Davis said, Brake gave testimony before a federal grand jury in Seattle, and his testimony was sealed for later use in the Mueller murder case.

With this new information, Davis went to Spokane in August to meet with members of law enforcement agencies from Washington, Idaho and Arkansas.

Officers passed around photographs of the Kehoes, Lovelace and Coombs. Davis said Coombs was identified as a man possibly traveling with Kehoe.

`It turned out the Kehoes were in Arkansas at the time of the murders,' Davis said. `We were all convinced at that point that the Kehoes were somehow involved in the Muellers' murder.' However, he said, there wasn't enough evidence to charge them.

Davis said he also learned at the meeting that federal authorities were investigating a `gun-running' operation out of the Shadows Motel and RV Park, located on one of the main streets in Spokane. Authorities, Davis said, believed the Kehoes were selling guns out of the motel, and the area was under surveillance.

`They talked about the Shadows Motel being dirty, being a mail drop for Chevie,' Davis said.

The Kehoes, he said, apparently weren't questioned at the time because authorities were hoping the surveillance `would lead to bigger and better things.'

Sean M. Haines, a former associate of Chevie Kehoe, said he went to the Shadows Motel last summer and traded rifles with Chevie Kehoe, who gave him an AR-15 assault rifle that had been stolen from Mueller.

In December, Haines was arrested in South Dakota, and the gun was recovered by authorities, who traced it to Mueller. Haines said federal authorities showed him surveillance photographs showing him and Chevie Kehoe trading the weapons at the Shadows Motel.

`They just showed me pictures of the trade and said, `This is you, isn't it?'' Haines said.

One of the Kehoes' former neighbors in Idaho said the Kehoes or people living on their property introduced themselves as being from Arkansas.

`They said they were from Arkansas the first time I saw them,' he said.

Another neighbor said, `They kept to themselves. ... There was lots of traffic going in and out of the place.'

A number of the people who live here, like Kehoe, are linked to white-supremacist groups or to other anti-government groups, and neighbors can hear them complain about the government over the CB at night.

Several local stores give away a bimonthly newspaper - claiming to have 15,000 readers - filled with stories villifying federal law officers. One front-page headline refers to `Another Lawless FBI Raid.' A headline on page 3 says, `Speak Up for Sovereignty and Patriotism.' One story concludes that, `Sexual harassment laws are unnecessary and should be repealed.' Another story begins by quoting a professor who says the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday `has proven to be a mistake.'

Many others who live here, however, want nothing to do with hate groups. They've come here to find peace and solitude, and they're afraid of what might happen if the Kehoes return.

Even though the Kehoes know law officers are looking for them here, authorities said, the area still offers many hiding places. And the Kehoes still know several people who live here.

One of the Kehoes' former associates lives on a multi-acre tract that not even a four-wheel-drive vehicle can reach. The entrance to the land is walk of a mile or so down a snow-covered logging road, and high above the road half a log dangles from two door hinges. Across the log is written `Shotgun 20,' an apparent reference to 20-gauge shotguns - the weapon of choice of a previous owner of the land, neighbors said.

On a tree alongside the road is a sign that reads: `Trespassers will be eaten.' Accompanying that sign is a picture of a dog with his mouth open to display razor-like teeth.

A few hundred yards past that warning sign is an even more ominous sign. Visitors who have seen that sign said it reads: `If you enter, you shall not return.'

`Who knows if they'd come back or not,' said a neighbor, adding that she was concerned the Kehoes may read her name in the paper. `If these people would come back, I would be afraid. ... I don't want no connection with it whatsoever. I have reason to believe they can be quite ruthless if they got it in for you.

`We're pretty isolated out here,' she said. `It's a good place to hide out.'

(#2) It is believed Chevie and Cheyne Kehoe lived in this cabin on Cottonwood Creek Road until September 1996. The remote area is 25 miles northeast of Priest River, Idaho. (B&W)
CREDIT: JEFF T. GREEN/ASSOCIATED PRESS

(#3) One of several empty cases of small-arms ammo found on the property near Priest River, Idaho, where the Kehoe brothers were living until September 1996. (B&W)

CREDIT: JEFF T. GREEN/ASSOCIATED PRESS

(#4) William Mueller (B&W)
(#5) Feron Lovelace (B&W)
(#6) (Map) Kehoe's route from Idaho to Wyoming (B&W)

CREDIT: STEVE SPENCER/DAYTON DAILY NEWS

STAFF WRITER Tom Beyerlein contributed to this report.