How the government pulled off
THE LEGALIZED MURDER OF GORDON KAHLBy Pat Shannan
After being ambushed and fired upon in an unprovoked attack in North Dakota, in what seemed to be a clear-cut case of self-defense, Gordon Kahl escaped to Arkansas. There he was protected by a group of confederates, settling the final time at the small, country home of Leonard and Norma Ginter. By the time he was murdered there, the propaganda machine had been running at "full court press" for nearly four months. The controlled news media were portraying him as a murderer, even saying that Gordon had ambushed the marshals and shot them in cold blood. The reports from his death scene in Arkansas would be even more twisted, and the official cover-up continues twenty years later.
Late in the afternoon of June 3, 1983, a group of 30 to 40 law enforcement officers from various city, county, state, and federal agencies surrounded the Ginter residence in Lawrence County, Arkansas. They had been organized by SAC Jim Blasingame of the Little Rock FBI office, following a tip from a disgruntled daughter of one of Gordon's harboring friends in Mountain Home. If Kahl had had divine protection during his escape from North Dakota, his prayers were about to run out.
Despite the "official" story of a "shootout," a private investigation showed that Deputy U. S. Marshal Jim Hall, without an attempt to make an arrest, shot Gordon Kahl in the back of the head as he sat at the dinner table. The U. S. Marshal's Service got the revenge it sought for the North Dakota fiasco, and no serious investigation was ever conducted by the federal or Arkansas authorities.
Leonard Ginter felt uneasy as they watched the evening news. A couple of hours earlier on this Friday afternoon, he had seen what he suspected to be a surveillance plane over his property and had shown Gordon an escape route down the creek where the hounds couldn't trace the scent. But Gordon wasn't interested in running anymore. His son Yorie and friend Scott had been convicted a few days earlier of murders they hadn't committed and Gordon talked of turning himself in that he might be of legal help to them back in North Dakota.
"No, If they come for me here, I'll surrender peacefully," he told Leonard.
At 5:30 p.m., the three of them, Norma, Leonard, and Gordon finished watching the local news. Gordon sat down to eat the hot dog Norma had fixed for him but Leonard decided he had to get away from there. He picked up his fishing pole and .22 rifle and headed for the river. He was intercepted in route by a car full of FBI agents. Handcuffed, he was led back to the house and ordered to get his wife outside.
As Leonard stood near the door at the corner of the garage he yelled, "Norma, come on out. The FBI is here."
It was a not-so-subtle warning to Gordon, the agents immediately realized and thought their cover had been blown. However, they did not know that Gordon had a hearing problem at sixty-three and had turned up the TV volume a few decibels higher than the norm. He heard none of the conversation or other noise from the outside and continued to sit at the table with his back to the door, eating and watching the national news.
When Norma came out the door, Lawrence County Sheriff Gene Mathews grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her around the corner to the waiting agents. Then Matthews, Deputy U.S. Marshal Jim Hall, and Ed Fitzpatrick of the Arkansas State Police, prepared to go inside. Hall and Mathews entered first, with Fitzpatrick trailing close behind.
Leonard Ginter said a single shot rang out, then after several seconds passed, five or six others in rapid succession. The evidence revealed that this first shot was fired by Marshal Jim Hall, from his .38 revolver, at a downward angle into the back of Gordon Kahl's head. There had been no attempt to arrest Kahl, and he was sitting unarmed at the dinner table. He never knew what hit him.
In a bizarre twist of an already strange case, Sheriff Matthews made a fatal error. When he looked at the dead body on the floor, the face appeared to that of a well-known farmer from the area and one who had owned the property where the Ginter home sat.
"Holy @&*#$!!" yelled the sheriff to Marshal Hall. "You've killed Bill Wade!" It was an honest mistake, but one that may have led to the sheriff's own death. A report soon went out on the police radio that Bill Wade had been killed. The tapes of the radio transmission were seized by the FBI and have not been seen since, but for a few hours, the agent's thought they had killed the wrong man and began to take steps to cover-up what they thought to be a dreadful error.
(This writer interviewed Bill Wade and his son Ray in 1988, and they confirmed that Bill received a phone call before sundown from an unnamed friend who had just heard the report over his police scanner and was checking on the validity of the story and the well being of Wade. Bill, of course, informed his friend that the rumors of his demise were premature. He died about four years after our interview.)
At this time state cop Fitzpatrick ran outside to the kitchen window and began to fire blindly inside with five or six rapid shots from his semi-automatic shotgun. Sheriff Mathews was felled but not killed by at least one of these shotgun blasts to the back. Saved by his bulletproof vest, the sheriff lay immobile on the floor for nearly half an hour.
According to Fitzpatrick, Hall had already vacated the house and was made physically ill by what he had just done. "He went outside behind a tree and just started throwing up," said Fitzpatrick. "And then he was lying on the ground and just shakin' all over."
FBI agent Jim King, presumably with instructions from SAC Jim Blasingame, ordered Ravenden Town Marshal Tom Lee to round up some gasoline, and Lee returned with two filled five-gallon cans, which were emptied in the house and ignited. The FBI ordered 8,000 rounds of ammunition, which were systematically fired into the building for many hours. Nearby neighbor Ed Simons said in 1988 that the shooting lasted "way yonder past midnight." Gordon Kahl's body was burned far beyond recognition, however the fire could not disintegrate the sturdy stone structure and Blasingame attempted a further destruction of the crime scene.
(It was bad enough that they would have to cover up this "legalized murder," but the killing of the wrong man by mistake could cost several of these men their jobs, if not some jail time.)
SAC Blasingame called Gov. Bill Clinton requesting a tank with a ramming rod be sent to the rural location. Clinton checked with Commander Tommy Goodwin of the State Police to see if he should authorize the equipment. Goodwin informed Clinton that he should not, and Clinton refused the request. Consequently, the crime scene - although gutted by an intense fire and gnawed by thousands of rifle rounds - was not totally destroyed.
After the fire 3 or 4 officers, including Tom Lee, witnessed the removal of a mushroomed bullet from near the front of Gordon's badly burned head, and each wrote of it in his report. However, State Medical Examiner Fanny Malak, claims to have found a .41 magnum slug barely penetrating the back of Kahl's head. It was in pristine condition.
Malak will long be remembered in Arkansas as the one who helped Bill Clinton pass off so many "accidental deaths" and "suicides," that the term "Arkancide" was coined to commemorate his dubious performances at the examination table.
Ed Fitzpatrick said that 1] Gordon's body was moved before the crime scene photos were taken and 2] but the pictures "didn't come out anyway."
SAC Jim Blasingame told the TV cameras that ". . . as we approached the house, Kahl started shooting." This was a blatant and calculated lie, and the foregoing evidence proved it.
The ever-feisty Leonard Ginter passed away in a Missouri nursing home on March 15, 2003. He was eighty years old.
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