Freeman Vowed ‘Blood Baptism’

Talk of a “blood baptism” and other violent rhetoric highlights FBI surveillance tapes played for the jury in the first trial of the Montana Freemen.

The 81-day siege in 1996 ended bloodlessly with the Freemen’s surrender. It started when the toughtalking No. 1 man, LeRoy Schweitzer, and another leader were captured without incident.

It was Schweitzer who boasted on one tape that law enforcement officers would face a ‘blood baptism” if they tried to arrest him.

Prosecutors played video, wiretap and hidden-microphone tapes for the jury Wednesday at the trial of six secondary defendants. They are charged primarily as accessories for helping Schweitzer and other fugitives avoid arrest. Major figures are to be tried in May.

Prosecutors showed long-range videotapes of the six defendants carrying weapons during the standoff, played audio tapes from wiretaps and hidden bugs in the Freemen stronghold, and showed aerial film of Freemen welcoming two men, Jon Barry Nelson and Stewart Waterhouse, who ran a roadblock to get in after the siege began.

Nelson, 42, of Marion, Kan., is one of the defendants in this trial. Waterhouse has pleaded guilty.

Prosecutors also introduced 23 rifles, shotguns and pistols seized in connection with the stand-off outside Jordan in 1996, some marked with the names of these defendants.