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"Good to see The Republic of Texas guys back in the news", as per 8/25 NYT An Armed Texas Family Resists the Courts
By ROSS E. MILLOY
RINIDAD, Tex., Aug. 24 -- With a
revolver and a bowie knife strapped to
his hip and a semiautomatic rifle resting
next to him on a barbed wire fence, Jonathon
Gray pondered the question: Just what would
happen if law enforcement officers tried to
enter his father's 47-acre homestead?
"I can tell you one thing," he said. "They ain't
coming in."
The 28-year-old Mr. Gray stood guard today
with two of his brothers, who were also
armed, at the locked gate of their family's
property on the Trinity River just north of here,
some 60 miles southeast of Dallas. Seeking
shade from a grove of hickory trees in
blistering summer heat, they wondered just
which day the authorities would come to arrest
their father.
For more than 15 months, Mr. Gray and his
father, mother and five adult siblings have
defied a court order to turn over the 2- and
4-year-old sons of his sister Lisa, who lost
custody of them to her former husband by
default when she failed to appear at a hearing in
divorce court. Mr. Gray's father, John Joe
Gray, 51, is also wanted by local officials for
failing to show up in court to face charges that he assaulted a police officer in nearby
Anderson County last December.
The family, believed to be heavily armed, has resolved not to participate in court proceedings
or any other government activities, because, Mr. Gray said, its religious and political beliefs
do not permit doing so.
"The secular courts don't have any authority over us," he said. "We go by the Bible and the
Constitution, and I don't see anything in either one about child custody cases. We don't want
anyone to get hurt, but we're not giving up them kids."
The local authorities are proceeding with caution.
Ronnie Brownlow, chief deputy for the Henderson County Sheriff's Department, said:
"We're in no hurry to make a move. The last thing we want is for someone to get hurt."
Mr. Brownlow said that because of John Joe Gray's past associations with right-wing
groups, including the secessionist Republic of Texas, which engaged in a standoff with
law-enforcement officers three years ago, the authorities here had informed the Federal
Bureau of Investigation about the case.
Jonathon Gray said the family belonged to the Sabbatarian sect, a derivative of the
Seventh-day Adventists that strictly interprets the Bible.
The family patriarch refused to talk with reporters today, but last weekend he told The San
Antonio Express-News that he did not intend to surrender the children "as long as God
allows us to survive."
"I am more afraid of God than of them," he said of the authorities.
The elder Mr. Gray, who has lived on his spread for 16 years, is known to his neighbors as
a quiet man with a disquieting hobby: for years, he tried to recruit townspeople to become
members of a militia group.
"He used to come in here all dressed up in those military outfits and camouflage gear, trying
to get people to join up with him," said Susan Stansfield, a secretary at the city hall in
Trinidad.
The Gray family homestead is nestled in thickly forested hills, more than a mile from the
closest neighbors. Visitors have said it is fortified with sandbagged shooting positions,
trenches and an underground bunker built of concrete and wood. The Grays have been
without electricity for nearly six months because they did not pay the utility bills, said
Jonathon Gray, who, like his father, has been unable to work at his trade as a carpenter
because of the need he feels to remain holed up.
Fence lines and trees carry hand-lettered signs like "Disobedience to Tyranny Is Obedience to
God," "90% of Catholic Priests Are Child Molesters" and "We Are Militia and Will Live
Free or Die.
"
Asked today whether he or his father was a member of a militia group, Jonathon Gray only
smiled and said, "No comment."
But last weekend, by the account of both Mr. Gray and the local press, members of various
militia groups as well as religious fundamentalists -- more than two dozen people in all --
visited the family to offer support, many bringing food and other supplies.
Even today, as Mr. Gray and his brothers stood watch, a neighbor who would give her name
only as Punky stopped on the dirt road running alongside their property and told him: "You
keep them out of there. Don't let them in. If you need anything, give us a call."
"I wouldn't let them take my grandchildren either," she said.