Kehoe Tied To Bombing At City Hall In ‘Dateline’ Interview, Cheyne Claims Chevie Detonated Device To Further ‘White State’ Cause

One of the notorious Kehoe brothers is accusing another of setting off the bomb that rattled Spokane’s City Hall and its employees two years ago.

Cheyne Kehoe names his older brother - a militant white supremacist - as the person responsible for the pre-dawn blast in a jailhouse interview with “Dateline NBC.”

In the segment airing tonight, he says Chevie Kehoe detonated the bomb to further his plans to “make a white state and start a upheaval in the American society.”

“He wanted to test to see what the public’s reaction would be, what the city officials’ reaction would be,” Cheyne Kehoe said, according to a “Dateline” script provided to The Spokesman-Review.

According to Cheyne, Chevie also asked for his help in plotting to kill their parents for guns and ammunition.

Chevie Kehoe denied the allegations, calling his brother a liar and a traitor.

The brothers from Colville, Wash., are serving time in prison for a February 1997 shootout with Ohio state troopers. The gunbattle was caught on videotape by a camera mounted on a police cruiser.

Cheyne Kehoe turned himself in four months later, and his brother was captured the following day in Utah.

Now serving a 24-year sentence, Cheyne Kehoe was interviewed for “Dateline” at the Greene County Jail in Xenia, Ohio.

The Spokane bombing remains unsolved.

A pipe bomb packed with nails and screws exploded outside City Hall on April 29, 1996. There were no injuries, but the blast blew out a window in one of the doors at the Post Street entrance and sent shrapnel flying into Riverfront Park.

Authorities called the bomb fairly sophisticated, with a timer and electronic ignition.

City Manager Bill Pupo said Saturday that employees are still smarting emotionally from the blast. He hadn’t heard about the alleged Kehoe connection.

“That’s amazing to me,” Pupo said. “They’re really ratting each other out in that family, aren’t they? I’d hate to be one of them around Thanksgiving or Christmas.”

Spokane Police spokesman Dick Cottam said he was unaware whether Chevie Kehoe had been investigated in connection with the bombing.

Attempts to reach federal authorities investigating the case were unsuccessful.

This isn’t the first time Cheyne Kehoe, 21, has implicated his brother in a bombing.

At his January sentencing for the Ohio shootout, Cheyne claimed Chevie was responsible for “the bombing of a federal building.”

He didn’t provide details in hopes that the Justice Department would intervene and persuade a state judge to reduce his sentence in exchange for information.

Chevie Kehoe, 25, has denied that allegation.

“I love my brother greatly and I forgive him for all that he’s done,” he told reporters in February. “But it’s sad when a family has to be torn apart by lies.”

Cheyne Kehoe is expected to testify against his brother in Arkansas, where Chevie faces federal charges of racketeering, murder and conspiracy.

He has pleaded innocent.

The brothers’ father, Kirby Kehoe, 49, was recently arrested in Springdale, Wash., after federal agents seized an arsenal of weapons and ammunition, including machine guns, tear gas, grenades and an estimated 10,000 rounds of ammunition.

Chevie Kehoe has been associated with the Aryan Nations and Elohim City, a white separatist compound in Oklahoma.

Federal authorities believe he is the leader of a militant group of white supremacists who wanted to create an “Aryan Peoples Republic.”

He believes in the annihilation of Jewish people and wants all African-Americans to be shipped back to Africa, his brother told “Dateline.”

, DataTimes