![]() That compound was instantly abandoned after the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided the Freeman compound in Montana. For a brief time, they had a compound north of town, with a ''Keep Out'' sign warning that the property was not part of the United States. ![]() Ramon Angles, denounced paramilitary groups in his sermons.īut several members of his congregation joined the Freemen, who refuse to acknowledge the authority of the Federal Government and the banking system. After the bombing, the academy's headmaster, the Rev. The Pottawatomie County sheriff, Anthony Metcalf, said with some exasperation that he had ''walked every inch of the campus'' without finding anything. ![]() Marys area, and rumors flew that weapons were hidden on the academy grounds and that paramilitary groups trained there. ![]() In the months before the Oklahoma City bombing, Michigan and the Kansas paramilitary groups were recruiting in the St. ''You get a disproportionate number of right-wingers, a disproportionate number of John Birchers, pro-gun and anti-government.'' ''You've got regular Catholics in this town, and you have this other outfit on the very conservative side,'' said James L. The splits and silences between the groups are often acute. Marys itself, many of whom belong to another large Catholic church. Pius members in and around the town have come to outnumber the people in St. Pius X, a schismatic Roman Catholic group, bought the Jesuit seminary and founded St. But the main attraction is a religious community established 20 years ago when the Society of St. Some newcomers are government employees and factory workers who commute to Topeka. While the farm population has been shrinking for decades, that of St. Teske has designed more than 100 new houses, many large enough to accommodate families with 9 or 10 children. Marys builder, ''it hasn't been a covered wagon, it's a station wagon or a van,'' and the families in them have come to stay. Then, in the Gold Rush, 300,000 adventurers passed through. The town began in 1848 as a Jesuit mission for the Potawatomi, a tribe driven out of Indiana in a 600-mile march known as the Trail of Death. Once known as the last civilized stop on the Oregon Trail, from the very first, it was a place where dreams were made and broken. On the banks of the Kansas River amid miles of corn and pasture land, this is a peaceful mix of passionately held, often conflicting visions of American life. Marys was never quite the way it was often portrayed, a closer look at the town, with some of the glare of the bombing faded, reveals something about the environment that helped create the right-wing paramilitary movement. Talk of paramilitary groups has gone underground and camouflage fatigues are generally out of fashion. Three years later, the business that the two Oklahoma City bombers had here is still unknown. The town of 2,000 people quickly became stereotyped as a hotbed of heartland discontent. Nichols, who had traveled in the area just before the Oklahoma City bombing. Marys and its surroundings for links to Timothy J. Crime is so rare that the police statistics include ''cat bite.''īut in 1995, amid rumors of anti-government paramilitary groups and hidden caches of guns, Federal and state agents combed St. Many of the women and little girls wear long skirts, even for riding bicycles. Its wide main street is packed with pickup trucks by day, empty and serene at night. To a passer-by, this small town has an idyllic air.
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