Gordon Kahl's Escape
Was He Divinely Protected?

By Pat Shannan

A ten-minute confrontation and thirty seconds of shooting in rural North Dakota had sent Gordon Kahl on the run and would be the catalyst for his legalized murder in Arkansas. It had also left two U. S. Marshals dead and three other officers wounded. A fourth and the most seriously wounded was his 23-year-old son, Yorie. Had his attackers been highwaymen of the ordinary bad man ilk, Gordon would have been seen as a hero, the Wyatt Earp emerging victorious at a modern day Gunfight at the O.K. Corral and who a grand jury would never have indicted. But because his adversaries had worn badges, he knew his case for self-defense would be ridiculed by the press, disparaged and twisted by the prosecutors, and scoffed at by a deluded jury - all of which did come to pass for his son.

After delivering Yorie to Doc Martin's clinic, Gordon and Scott Faul took Medina Police Officer Steve Schnabel's car to the Kahl farm, picked up $5,000 in cash, and left in his '63 green Rambler. The two spent most of the night in a barn near Ashley, writing their recollections of the day on a torn shopping bag, before sleeping a few hours in the car. At daybreak Gordon dropped off Scott and began a thousand-mile trek south toward Fort Smith, Arkansas. His only challenge would be a police roadblock in South Dakota. It was February 14, 1983.

Gordon had felt providential protection the night before when a dense fog had settled on the Medina area. This had prevented the masses of law enforcement officers from converging on the area before he and Scott could disappear. It was not unlike the divine protection George Washington had experienced in New York in 1776 when his surrounded troops, outnumbered 4 to 1 by the 32,000 Redcoats, escaped across the East River in a similar situation - and Gordon Kahl knew his history.

As Gordon approached the roadblock the next day, he said a quick prayer for protection. Then, when the car ahead of him drove on and the officer turned away, Gordon drove on through. He was not pursued. It was beginning to seem that his fortuitous escape might be credited to more than just good luck.

He made his way east to U. S. 71 in Iowa and turned south toward Kansas City, avoiding the interstate highways. Some 36 hours later, he was at the home of John McBurney in Mena, Arkansas. The Kahls had spent a year in that area in 1981-82, having already been warned by former Chief Marshal Bud Warren of an impending attack on Gordon.

At the time it had been Gordon's plan to sell the farm in North Dakota and re-settle in Arkansas, but he was unsuccessful and returned home four months before the shootout.

(In a 1995 affidavit, McBurney, who is now deceased, tells of his knowledge, as a Civil Defense worker at the time, of the drugs being dropped from planes at the Mena airport and the not-so-divine protection being afforded by local and federal law enforcement. In the late 1980s, the truth began to emerge about the enormity of this operation and the closed eyes to it of both Gov. Bill Clinton and the DEA.)

The Previous Year

Joan tells us that Gordon and she made the final decision to get away from North Dakota after his attending physician at the Ferrenden hospital, when Gordon was recuperating from his 1981 plane crash injuries, warned him that he was about to arrested at the hospital. While having breakfast in the local café that morning, Dr. Voglewede had overheard a conversation among a group of federal officers at the next table. The good doctor showed the Kahls where to find the rear fire exit and alerted them to the right time to leave without being noticed.

Gordon and Joan (she, reluctantly) had lived in Mena and worked under the names of "Sam and Rachel Loudon" - Gordon doing mechanic work and odd jobs and Joan as a housekeeper at the Rich Mountain Nursing Home. They lived in the McBurney home while John and his wife were on sabbatical in Colorado. When their pictures were flashed on the nightly news following the Medina shooting, their Arkansas friends, who had known them only by their pseudonyms the previous year, instantly recognized them.

When he arrived back in Mena this time, Gordon knew that he had many like-minded friends there who were willing to help him but found, too, that there were a few that were not. McBurney tells of having successfully hidden Gordon in a "Safe House" with friends but then having to drive 200 miles in the middle of the night to retrieve him.

"The wife at the Safe House went hysterical when she found out who was there," said McBurney.

The Confederacy of Trust

McBurney then contacted his friend Bill Wade in rural Lawrence County. Bill knew the perfect spot to hide Gordon. He had recently sold a small farm with a concrete-block home to his former renters, Leonard and Norma Ginter, and knew that the Ginters would want to help. Wade instructed McBurney to deliver Kahl to him in Lawrence County. This was around February 20th, "The weekend after the shootout," Mr. Ginter remembers. "Bill brought him to me."

Bill Wade's farm home was only mile or two away, and he was then able to move Gordon to the Ginter home, deep in the woods. The Ginters kept him for a week and soon planted him with the Art Russell family in Mountain Home for awhile. Ed and Irene Udey lived in nearby Cotter, only ten miles from the Russells, and served cake and coffee to Art and Gordon when they stopped by one afternoon.

"I didn't even know who Gordon Kahl was - even when he told us that day - and I never saw him again," Irene says today. "As far as I know, Ed never saw him again, either."

(Ed later served two years of a five-year sentence before being paroled in 1986. For the rest of his life he maintained, "I went to prison for shaking hands with a federal fugitive." But that is the nature of the beast. Udey died in 1994 at the age of 82.)

Gordon moved back to the Ginter's for a short time in March before returning to the Russell family in Mountain Home for the next two months. The two homes were an hour's drive apart.

At great risk to his own well-being, John McBurney took several other steps to help his friend, whom he knew to be an honest and law-abiding Christian immersed in a "Catch-22" situation and not a criminal deserving to be hunted down like a rabid dog. Until the day he died, McBurney was well aware that he had been far more guilty of aiding and abetting the fugitive than those who were prosecuted. So did Leonard Ginter and Ed Udey, but they said nothing to implicate him, although it surely would have shortened their prison stays had they talked.

Bill Wade was never prosecuted for his part ". . . because there was no evidence and everybody kept their mouths shut," he told this writer in 1988. He died in the early 1990s.

After safely delivering Gordon to northeast Arkansas, McBurney returned to Mena and laid plans to dispose of the '63 Rambler. In his affidavit he states, "I cleaned all of Gordon's things out of the vehicle and paid a man to cut it up and destroy it and salvage what he could - such as the tires, motor, and individual parts, and bury or otherwise eliminate the rest. Unfortunately, the cut-up parts of the car - panels and hood, etc. - began to show up in salvage yards in the area thereafter, so I took the rest of the car and buried it in a private dump. I can take a federal official to this private dump, if necessary, to authenticate this portion of my information."

McBurney wrote his affidavit at age 81 in 1995, initiating with, "For twelve years, I and my wife have kept silent and concealed our information for fear we would end up in prison or, more likely, dead. Anyone associated with the Gordon Kahl case twelve years ago knows this is not an exaggeration."

(He went on to say that they were old enough now to not be afraid anymore and that he knew they had limited time left on this earth. McBurney experienced no harassment after issuing his statement and died at his retirement home in Garner, Iowa a few years later.)

In mid-May, Gordon was returned by Bill Wade to the Ginter home in Lawrence County, between Smithville and Imboden. It would be his last stop forever. By the end of the month, the federal officers were organizing for an attack at Leonard Ginter's farm. Art Russell's daughter later collected the $25,000 reward for alerting the FBI to Kahl's whereabouts shortly after he had left Mountain Home the last time.

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