Fbi Hoping Family Members Can End Standoff Letting Relatives Talk Freemen Out Already Has Had Some Success
The cool voice of reason from family members - not guns and tear gas - is the FBI’s current weapon of choice as it tries to end the standoff with freemen, the Garfield County attorney said Saturday.
The anti-government group’s besieged compound about 25 miles northeast of here was quiet Saturday. A man carrying a rifle left the house where about 18 people are holed up to take a long walk through the fields in a bitter wind.
“I think what the FBI is content to do right now is family intervention. Let the families of some of these people inside talk them into surrendering,” County Attorney Nick Murnion said in an interview.
Murnion said the tactic has yielded some success. More than a week ago, Val Stanton and her 5-year-old daughter left the compound voluntarily after conversations with family members and were whisked away by the FBI.
She has not been charged, unlike about a dozen of the estimated 22 freemen who holed up in the compound March 25 when two of their leaders were arrested.
Val Stanton’s husband, Ebert Stanton, and her mother-in-law, Agnes Stanton, have been charged with federal offenses. Yet they agreed to come out Thursday and were arraigned Friday before a U.S. magistrate in Billings.
“The key was getting Val out,” Murnion said. She and other family members persuaded her husband and mother-in-law to leave as well, he said. Ebert Stanton is jailed in Billings, while Agnes Stanton has been allowed to live with a son in Billings under house arrest.
Murnion said the FBI hopes for the same success with a half-dozen other people from the Jordan area in the compound. They are members of the huge Clark clan, who have ranched here for decades. They include Ralph and Kay Clark, their son Edwin; Edwin’s son, Casey; Ralph’s brother, Emmett and his wife, Rosie.
Ralph and Emmett Clark face federal charges including mail and bank fraud in connection with writing bogus checks.
If all the locals give up, “who knows what the FBI will do,” he said. “As near as I can tell, most of the freemen are already out of there. What we have are a lot of fugitives from other areas who are not really freemen at all,” he said.
The standoff, in its 20th day Saturday, began after FBI agents arrested two of its top leaders, LeRoy Schweitzer and Daniel Petersen Jr. They were tricked into leaving the compound. The arrests, on federal charges of fraud and other crimes, provoked the standoff with other freemen. Another freeman, Richard Clark turned himself in only days later and was jailed on similar charges.
Two freemen leaders still in the compound are Rodney Skurdal and Dale Jacobi, who also are charged with a variety of federal and state crimes.
The FBI has declined all comment on the standoff.