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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Suspects May Be Tied To Home Invasions White Supremacists Wanted In Shootout With Ohio Police May Be Linked To Robberies

Two Spokane-area white supremacists wanted in connection with last weekend’s gunbattles with Ohio police may have ties to a series of home-invasion robberies, including two in northeastern Washington.

Those unsolved crimes are now catching the attention of authorities investigating the 1995 triple murder of an Arkansas gun dealer and his family.

Guns stolen from the slain dealer in a home invasion ended up in the possession of skinheads and white supremacists living in Spokane and North Idaho, authorities said.

At least one of those weapons also was found in a Chevrolet Suburban abandoned after Saturday’s shootouts with police in Wilmington, Ohio, sources say.

Authorities still haven’t positively identified the two men, or issued arrest warrants.

A nationwide hunt is under way for a motor home that may have been used by the men after they traded the 1977 Suburban for a 1985 Oldsmobile Cutlass. The stolen Cutlass was found Tuesday near an Ohio campground, authorities said Wednesday.

They are looking for Chevie O’Brien Kehoe, 24, formerly of Colville, and Jacob M. “Jake” Settle, 39, of Priest River, Idaho.

The first gunbattle Saturday began shortly after an Ohio State Patrol trooper stopped the Suburban with expired Washington state license tabs.

A passer-by was wounded slightly in the second exchange, which occurred when the gunmen’s car was located at a shopping mall. No officers were hit.

The Suburban is registered to Settle, an ex-cop and former Marine.

The motor home being sought is believed to be registered to one of Kehoe’s wives, sources say. He practices polygamy as part of his white-supremacist beliefs.

The men involved in the Wilmington shootings, a woman and at least two small children are believed to be traveling in the motor home, said Sheriff Ron Nichols of Ross County, Ohio.

“Men matching the descriptions of those involved in the shootings were seen in the area of the campground and getting into that motor home,” Nichols said.

The motor home was parked at Lake Hill Campground, about two miles from Frankfort, Ohio, where the Cutlass was found. The car was stolen from a barn near Wilmington not long after the shootouts, the sheriff said.

Settle works as an itinerant laborer and frequently travels and lives with his wife and five children in a motor home, authorities say.

The names of Settle and Kehoe were given to police by Dick Morton, a jewelry wholesaler who lives near Kettle Falls, Wash.

Morton was robbed of his gun collection on Sept. 20, 1995, by an armed intruder wearing camouflage clothing.

Morton was forced to drive the robber to Spokane, where he was ordered to withdraw $480 from a bank machine, police reports say. The robber fled, possibly in a car parked nearby, and Morton called police.

That crime closely resembled the June 12, 1995, burglary, robbery and kidnapping of Colville business owners Malcolm and Jill Friedman.

An armed, masked robber, wearing camouflage and spouting “militia gibberish,” broke into the Friedman’s Colville home and stole $16,000.

The robber told the Friedmans they were picked because of their Jewish-sounding surname. The Friedmans are Episcopalian.

Malcolm Friedman later was forced to drive the robber to a restaurant in north Spokane, near where Morton’s robber fled.

Last September, authorities said self-proclaimed racist Faron Lovelace was being investigated for the Morton and Friedman robberies.

Lovelace has not been charged with those crimes, and authorities are now looking into the possibility that whoever committed the Stevens County home invasions is responsible for similar crimes around the country.

Lovelace says he wants to be executed for murdering fellow racist Jeremy C. Scott in July 1995.

Lovelace was the 15th-most wanted criminal in America prior to his arrest last summer at his makeshift survivalist camp near Priest Lake, Idaho. Charged with first-degree murder, Lovelace is being held in the Bonner County Jail in Sandpoint.

He refused to comment Wednesday when asked if he knows Settle and Kehoe.

, DataTimes