Robert Jay Mathews
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Robert Jay Mathews (January 16 1953 – December 8 1984) was the leader of an American white nationalist group The Order.
Mathews was burned to death during an intense gunfight with approximately seventy-five federal law enforcement agents who surrounded his house on Whidbey Island, south of Coupeville, Washington, on December 8, 1984.[1] Mathews life was fictionalized in the movie Brotherhood of Murder.[2]
Early years
Robert Mathews was born in Marfa, Texas, January 16, 1953, the last of three boys born to Johnny and Una Mathews. His father, of Scottish descent, was mayor of the town, and president of the Chamber of Commerce, as well as a businessman and leader in the local Methodist church. His mother was the town's den mother.
His family moved to Phoenix, Arizona when he was five years old. An average student in grade school, he was interested in history and politics. At age eleven, he joined the John Birch Society. While still in high school, he was baptized into the Mormon faith.
He formed the Sons of Liberty, an anti-communist militia whose members were primarily Mormon survivalists. At its peak, it had approximately thirty members. After filling out his employer's W-4 Form claiming ten dependents (reportedly as an act of tax resistance), he was arrested for tax fraud, tried, and placed on probation for six months. After a falling out between the Mormon and non-Mormon members, the Sons of Liberty became moribund, and Mathews withdrew.
After probation ended in 1974, he decided to relocate to Metaline Falls, Washington. Mathews and his father purchased sixty wooded acres, which became their new home.
Two years later, Mathews married Debbie McGarrity. He began to raise Scottish Galloway cattle. The couple adopted a son in 1981. Mathews later had a daughter with a woman named Zillah Craig.
The Order
Mathews began to read history and politics. One book in particular, Which Way Western Man?, by William Gayley Simpson, profoundly affected him. Mathews agreed with its claims of danger facing the White race, and in 1982 he began an effort to attract White families to the Pacific Northwest, which he called the "White American Bastion." He visited Richard Butler's Aryan Nations community several times, and began to draw a circle of friends and followers.
In 1983, Mathews gave a short speech at a National Alliance convention, which was a report on his efforts to recruit on behalf of the National Alliance, especially among "the yeoman farmers and independent truckers," around the "White American Bastion," and a call to action.[3] It received the only standing ovation of the convention.
In late September of that year, at a barracks he constructed on his property in Metaline, Mathews founded (with eight other men) the group that would come to be known as The Order, which he called the Silent Brotherhood." They included his friend and neighbor, Ken Loff, and a group from Aryan Nations: Dan Bauer, Randy Duey, Denver Parmenter, and Bruce Pierce. David Lane, Richie Kemp, and Bill Soderquist, recent recruits, rounded out the group. None had ever committed a violent crime, or had served prison time.
The first order of business, according to Mathews' plan, was to obtain money to support white separatism, and they robbed an adult bookstore in Spokane which netted them $369.10. They agreed that it was not worth the risks they had taken, and so turned their attention to robbing armored cars and counterfeiting. They printed up some phony $50 notes and 28-year-old Pierce was quickly arrested after passing a few.
In order to raise Pierce's bail, Mathews, acting alone, robbed a bank just north of Seattle. He stole almost $26,000. Some of The Order's members, along with a new recruit, Gary Yarborough, carried out more robberies and burglaries, which netted them over $43,000. A subsequent robbery yielded several hundred thousand dollars. Another recruit, Tom Martinez, was caught and charged for passing more counterfeit currency. Then in July, 1984, they deployed approximately a dozen men in a successful effort to rob a Brink's truck of $3,600,000.[4]
The robbers distributed some of the stolen money to various other terrorist and otherwise White racialist organizations, including the North Carolina-based White Patriot Party.[5]
Final days
Last letter
Prior to his death, Matthews wrote a long letter explaining his life, and justifying his actions.[6]
Last days
Mathews and the other members of the Order were eventually given up by Martinez, who had come under pressure after his counterfeiting arrest. After he revealed information regarding Mathews' activities to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, agents moved to capture Mathews and his associates. By the time they could set up the operation, all of Mathews' accomplices and friends had decided to move again to other safe houses. Mathews was surrounded in a house south of Coupeville, Washington on Whidbey Island by government agents on December 8, 1984. Mathews refused to come out after an intense exchange of gunfire. The FBI then fired dozens of smoke grenades into the house in an attempt to force Mathews out, but were thwarted by his use of a gas mask. They then fired several M-79 Starburst flares inside the house, setting off a box of hand grenades and a stockpile of ammunition. Mathews continued to fire at agents as the house burned, but then suddenly stopped. After the wreckage had cooled enough to be searched, agents found the burned remains of 31 year old Mathews' body next to a charred bathtub, with the gold symbol of his Order melted into his chest.
Eventually over 75 people were convicted of crimes connected to The Order in eight trials. Charges included racketeering, conspiracy, counterfeiting, transporting stolen money, and armored car robbery. Ten people connected to the case, including Butler, Lane, and Pierce, were tried for sedition, but were acquitted by the jury.[7]
Mathews in Popular Culture
In 1995, the neo-Nazi band RaHoWa released their album "Cult of the Holy War," on the Resistance Records label. The second track was a song entitled "Man Against Time," the lyrics of which praised Robert Mathews and his deeds in the strongest terms.[8]
References
- ^ http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&File_Id=7921 HistoryLink.org: The Free Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History. "Robert Jay Mathews, founder of the white-supremacist group The Order, is killed during an FBI siege on Whidbey Island on December 8, 1984," by Daryl C. McClary (December 6th, 2006).
- ^ http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/182446/Brotherhood-of-Murder/overview The New York Times. "Brotherhood of Murder (1999)," (retrieved on January 13th, 2009).
- ^ http://www.wntube.net/play.php?vid=175 WNTube. "A Call to Arms, Part One of Two," (retrieved on January 13th, 2009).
- ^ http://books.google.com/books?id=i0lCG8f_6T8C&pg=PA4&lpg=PA4&dq=%22bruce+pierce%22+%2B+%22counterfeiting%22&source=bl&ots=63i8ghs03Z&sig=ODfOmxvDanctAAT_2MtDswAITXc&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result#PPA5,M1 Emergency Response to Chemical and Biological Agents, page five. By John R. Cashman, published by the CRC Press (2000). ISBN 1566703557.
- ^ http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?pid=840 Southern Poverty Law Center. "They're Back: A fresh batch of extremist ex-cons hits the streets," (Intelligence Report, Winter 2004).
- ^ http://www.supreme-white-alliance.net/rememberourheroes.htm Supreme White Alliance. "Robert Jay Mathews' Last Letter," (retrieved on January 13th, 2009).
- ^ http://www.revilo-oliver.com/rpo/No_Escape.html Revilo-Oliver.com "No Escape from Terrorism," by Dr. Revilo Pendleton Oliver (Liberty Bell, November 1988).
- ^ http://www.lyricstime.com/rahowa-man-against-time-lyrics.html LyricsTime.com. "Man Against Time lyrics" (retrieved on January 13th, 2009).
External links
- Robert Mathews at the NNDB
- Brotherhood of Murder - a Hollywood film about The Order, as told from Tom Martinez's view.