Ronald Griesacker
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Ronald Arthur Alexander Augustus Griesacker (born June 14, 1956) as Ronald Laycock, is a former resident of Saint Mary's, Kansas who was arrested March 20, 1998 in Shady Grove, Oregon on federal bank and mail fraud charges.
Griesacker is known for his role in promoting common law court activity in the Midwest, and for affiliations with Christian Patriot groups, the Republic of Texas separatist group, Freemen's advocates and the Washitaw Nation.
Griesacker is a former employee of the Kansas Department of Corrections. Griesacker was sentenced in February 1999 to 57 months in federal prison without parole on nine counts of bank fraud, one count of mail fraud and a conspiracy charge stemming from $2 million in worthless checks he'd passed off as government drafts.
He was released from a maximum-security prison in Florence, Colorado, eighteen months early on May 30, 2002, and concluded his parole on Sept. 27, 2002.
Some of the investigators, lawyers and militiamen who helped bring Griesacker to justice say he got out of prison so soon he must have cut a secret deal with the government, perhaps years earlier. During the trial of Republic of Texas leader Richard McLaren, Dallas attorney Thomas Mills called Griesacker "John Doe No. 3", referring to an unidentified suspect who might have participated in the Oklahoma City bombing.
After the Oklahoma City bombing, Griesacker traveled among anti-government compounds in Montana, Missouri, Kansas and Texas, encouraging them to pick fights with the government just before each compound fell to government investigations or sieges. Griesacker made sure each group left paper trails detailing their illegal activities, ensuring successful prosecutions of extremists, some skeptics assert.
He took the name Griesacker in the mid-1990s after he was adopted by retired NASA engineer Ignatius Griesacker of St. Mary's, Kansas. Both attended St. Mary's Society of Saint Pius X, a conservative Catholic group excommunicated from the Roman church for their refusal to embrace reforms of Vatican II.
Evidence presented at the trial of Timothy McVeigh indicated the convicted Oklahoma City Bomber made telephone calls to someone at the Society of Saint Pius X in the days before the bombing. Dallas attorney Thomas Mills has stated that private investigator John Culbertson has a photograph of a person who appears to be Griesacker near the scene of the Oklahoma City bombing.
