Heck, I live about 30-45 minutes from all the action and wasn't even aware of an active militia in my area...
Associated Press (August 13, 2001)
SPENCER — Two members of an Indiana militia group were being held without bail Sunday in the Owen County Jail, facing charges they plotted to assassinate another member of their group.
The bizarre case also includes allegations of drug dealing and that the militia sent more than a dozen members armed with [b]assault-style weapons[/b] to protest the controversial play Corpus Christi.
Fred Keuthan, 62, and Dallas Fultz, 66, both of Owen County, were arrested on charges of conspiracy to commit murder, as well as a number of weapons violations. Police found a cache of weapons, including [b]assault rifles[/b], in their homes and cars.
The two men, leaders of the 14th Regiment of the Indiana State Militia, were arrested Friday, hours before the Fort Wayne premiere of a student production of the play Corpus Christi, featuring a gay, Christ-like character.
The play is being presented on the campus of Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, but Keuthan and Fultz mistakenly believed the play was being produced at Indiana University's main campus in Bloomington, 15 miles southeast of Spencer, police said.
While they attended the protest, Keuthan and Fultz allegedly had hired a hit man to execute another militia member, whom they believed had betrayed them in a drug-dealing case.
But their plan was filled with missteps.
Getting the wrong location for the play wasn't their only mistake.
The man Keuthan and Fultz hired for the execution was no hit man — he was an undercover Indiana State Police officer.
It wasn't clear whether the militia group sent to protest the play was bent on violence. But police were concerned enough that, at noon Friday, agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and Indiana State Police troopers swarmed Fultz in a fast-food restaurant parking lot near Cloverdale. Keuthan was arrested about an hour later on Ind. 243 north of Cunot.
(continued on next post)