Ex-Aide Kept Shooting Quiet Testifies He Didn’T Tell About Aryan Guards’ Involvement

Former Aryan Nations staff director Michael Teague testified Wednesday that he didn’t tell authorities when he found out three of his guards were involved in an unsolved shooting.

Teague told a jury that he didn’t kick Aryan guards John Yeager and Jesse Warfield out of the white supremacy compound for firing an assault rifle at Victoria and Jason Keenan’s car near the compound.

The Keenans are suing the Aryan Nations, its founder Richard Butler, and Teague for compensatory and punitive damages for the July 1, 1998, shooting.

Southern Poverty Law Center attorney Morris Dees, representing the Keenans, grilled Teague about what he did after the shooting and after the civil suit was filed in 1999.

The plaintiffs’ attorneys contend Teague and Butler concocted a cover-up, drafting and back-dating security rules and getting rid of an SKS assault rifle used in the assault.

Teague testified that he did draft the security rules, but said they were written before the Keenans’ suit was filed in January 1999.

The rules only authorize self-defense work and say guards are on their own if they leave the compound.

Under questioning from Dees, Teague admitted that he chased Aryan member Lotah Tanaach off the church grounds in 1998 after he was seen spitting in his shirt pocket during a Butler white supremacy sermon.

But when he learned Warfield and Yeager were involved in the shooting, Teague said he didn’t disclose the matter to Kootenai County sheriff’s detectives.

After the Keenan shooting, Warfield was promoted from sergeant to lieutenant and made security chief for the Aryan Nations Congress and its 1998 parade in downtown Coeur d’Alene, Teague testified.

“So, you said you kicked a man off (the Aryan compound) for spitting in his pocket but not for shooting at a car down on the road?” Dees asked.

Teague acknowledged that had occurred.

Yeager was the day’s last witness for the plaintiffs, who hope the suit will bankrupt the Aryan Nations. He is scheduled to return when the trial resumes today.

After the jury was sent home, 1st District Judge Charles Hosack admonished the attorneys about the pace of the trial.

“We’re going more slowly than we should,” Hosack told Dees and Butler’s attorney, Edgar Steele. Yeager and Warfield are acting as their own attorneys. Shane Wright, the third guard allegedly involved in the shooting, is a fugitive.

The judge said he hoped the plaintiffs would end their case by Friday.

Yeager, a former skinhead who lived in Spokane, fled the Aryan compound after the 1998 parade, and eventually was arrested in California.

He confessed to the crime and is serving prison time. Now he says he was so drunk that he can’t recall his involvement in the shooting, but remembers bragging about it later to other skinheads and Aryans.

Dees asked Yeager if he was making up the drunkenness excuse to protect Butler and the Aryan Nations in the civil suit. Yeager said no.

Dees then asked Yeager if he’s still a follower and admirer of Butler’s.

“No, naw, not anymore,” Yeager responded.

“If Mr. Butler told you to jump, would you do that?” Dees asked.

Then Dees produced a six-page letter Yeager wrote to Butler shortly after Yeager’s arrest in California last September.

Dees told Yeager to read a few sentences.

“I love you,” Yeager said, reading from his letter to Butler. “You have all my respect. If you say `Frog,’ I’ll jump.

“Next to Christ, you are the greatest man to ever walk the face of the Earth,” Yeager read to the jury. “I will do whatever you ask.”

Yeager signed the letter with SS lightning bolts, signifying Hitler’s SS troops of World War II.

Dees earlier called two witnesses in an attempt to show that there have been other instances in which Aryan guards have committed crimes off the compound.

Anthony Caldero, a rural newspaper carrier for The SpokesmanReview, told the jury that a window on his car was smashed out as he delivered a newspaper at the Aryan headquarters on April 30, 1998.

Caldero, a contract employee driving his own car, was driving down Rimrock Road about 2:30 a.m., shoving newspapers into paper boxes along the road.

“I heard `Stop,’ then a loud bang,” Caldero said in describing the experience.

Caldero said he saw no one and wasn’t sure whether it was a rock or a bullet that broke the car window.

“Did you ever present a bill to the Aryan Nations?” defense attorney Steele asked Caldero.

The witness said he didn’t. “I had not seen anybody, so I didn’t have a case for that reason.”

But, following Caldero to the stand, witness Chenoa Trout told the jury she was with a group of skinheads including Yeager who were hiding at the Aryan Nations entrance that night.

When a car approached, swerving, they thought it was acting suspiciously and didn’t know it was the newspaper carrier, Trout told the jury.

“John called out, `Halt,’ or `Stop,’ then he threw a rock at the window and it smashed out,” Trout testified.

Teague told the jury that he was a Hammerskin - a type of neo-Nazi skinhead - in Arizona before moving to the Aryan Nations in October 1996.

By early 1997, Teague testified, he was promoted to staff leader by Butler and took charge of day-to-day operations.

He rewrote the Aryan Nations handbook, Teague told the jury.

The handbook, introduced as evidence, describes the Aryan Nations as a “disciplined, coordinated, monolithic hierarchy with all authority emanating from leader-pastor Richard Butler.”

One issue of the Aryan newsletter, Calling Our Nation, referred to Butler as “der Fuhrer.” Dees asked Teague about that.

Teague said that title was used by C.W. Nelson, who edited one edition of the newsletter before leaving. Butler then asked that he no longer be called “der Fuhrer.”