Two men were part of a conspiracy to kill federal law enforcement officials in Atlanta — especially judges and IRS and ATF agents — using the deadly poison ricin, bombs and guns with silencers, according to prosecutors and witnesses whose testimony in a federal trial began Tuesday.
Samuel Crump, 71, and Ray Adams, 57, are charged with plotting with two other men, sometimes at a Waffle House, to use homemade ricin and bombs to “save” Georgia and the United States from a government they said was oppressive and each day whittled away at the U.S. Constitution.
Defense attorney Barry Lombardo argued, “This case is the musings of old men,” and defense attorney Daniel Summer said those “musings of old men” are the only things captured on the recordings of the conversations that are at the heart of the case.
The defense attorneys told a jury in their opening statements it was “all talk” and Crump and Adams should not be prosecuted for exercising their free-speech right to complain about government and discuss who they want to stop it, as long as they took no action. They had castor beans, the main ingredient in ricin, because they are commonly used to kill moles, and Crump used castor bushes as ornaments to line his driveway and the beans to make castor oil, one defense attorney said.
Ricin has been used experimentally in medicine to kill cancer cells. If refined into a terrorist or warfare agent, it could be used to expose people through the air, food, or water.
The Militia of Georgia members met at a Toccoa Waffle House and Shoney’s and at some of their houses to plot and plan, the government said. It said they wanted to do more than just survive the downfall of the government.
They never made the ricin, Summer and Lombardo argued.
But one of the agents from the Joint Terrorism Task Force, Scott Matthewson, who was with the Federal Protective Services, said they were getting close, and that’s why Crump; Adams; Frederick Thomas, 75; and Emory Dan Roberts, 69, were arrested on Nov. 1, 2011, on conspiracy charges. Thomas and Roberts pleaded guilty last August and were sentenced to five years in prison.
The case has been unusual and not just because of the defendants’ ages.
One of them, Adams, uses a cane and was sometimes called Santa Claus because of his long white beard and hair.
The key witness against them is Joseph Sims, who reached out to federal agents while he was in an Anderson County, S.C., jail on charges — that have since been dropped — that he molested his two stepdaughters. Sims was convicted of having child pornography on his computer and sentenced to five months, serving only two weeks.
At the behest of his “handler,” Sims secretly recorded the four men and others when they met in 2011 to discuss their plans.
The voices were not identified at first when recordings were played in court from a meeting on March 17, 2011, at Thomas’ house. Sims was there to meet Thomas, who was also known as “Ahab.” Crump and Adams were not there, Sims said.
On the recording Thomas, Roberts and two other men talked openly about killing. “You need somebody out of your way, you take them out of your way. That means murder,” one of the men said.
Their plans were to “take out” the Department of Justice, which is now prosecuting them, and “various other attorneys that have committed great sins against America. All DOJ’s attorneys. Kill them all.”
The speaker, identified later as Thomas, told the gathering “there is no way that we, as militia men, (can) save this country, (can) save Georgia without doing something highly, highly illegal.”
A tiny bit of ricin on the tip of a ballpoint pen would be enough, Thomas said on the recording. Or putting some of the poison on a device with a timer and leaving it in a crowd and “taking out 150 people at a time.”
They also discussed using bombs and guns and at one point on the recording every person at the gathering pulled out his weapons to show the others. All six men, including Sims and his adult son, had guns and at least one of them also carried a dagger, Sims said.
One of the men at the meeting, Anthony Howard, said on the recording that militias working together could take over the government if “armed.”
Sims said Howard was saying there needed to be an “armed rebellion to take our government back from the politicians, the judges, ATF agents, FBI, IRS.”
Sims said the plans he heard at that first meeting did not mesh with why he joined the militia. Moments after leaving the meeting, he said he told his adult son who had driven him there to never see Thomas, Roberts or the others again. Sims said he joined to be with “like-minded” people taking first-aid courses and learning about storing food in preparation for the fall of the government.
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