Elohim City, Oklahoma
Elohim City is a private community in Adair County, Oklahoma. It was founded in 1973 by Robert G. Millar, a Canadian immigrant and charismatic religious leader. Its 400 acres (1.6 km2) are frequented by Christian Identity followers.[1] The community gained national attention for its alleged ties to members of the Silent Brotherhood in the 1980s and with convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh in the 1990s.[2][3] Elohim is a Hebrew word for God(s).
Background
Millar emigrated from Kitchener, Ontario in the 1950s to Oklahoma City, where he established a church.[2] In the mid-1960s, Millar moved to Maryland, where he ran an evangelical camp near Ellicott City.[4] Known simply as "The Camp", it was located in Howard County on Frederick Road about one mile (1.6 km) west of US Route 29, at the former location of St. Charles College, a minor Catholic seminary destroyed by fire in 1911.[5][Note 1]
In 1973, Millar returned to Oklahoma with around 18 followers, some of whom were related to him by birth or marriage, to found Elohim City.[4]
Notable events
In 1986 a Canadian woman and her children sought refuge in the city, contravening a court order awarding custody of the children to her husband. Officers attempting to arrest the woman were met by a show of arms.[4]
By the mid-1990s, four members of the Aryan Republican Army (Michael William Brescia, Kevin McCarthy, Scott Stedeford, and Mark Thomas) were residents of Elohim City. Brescia was engaged to Millar's step-granddaughter and stayed almost two years.[4] Between 1994 and 1995 these four, together with other members of the ARA (known in the media as the Midwest Bank Robbers), were responsible for a series of 22 bank robberies totaling over $250,000 in the American Midwest, which they used to finance white supremacist causes. Millar denied knowledge of the robberies.[4]
The remains of former Elohim City guest Richard Snell were released to Elohim City residents following his April 19, 1995, execution in Arkansas. Snell taunted jailers that something drastic would happen on the day of his execution. The Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building was destroyed by explosives in the hours before he died. Earlier criminal proceedings had produced evidence that Snell and other affiliates had visited the Murrah building to examine it as a possible bombing target in 1983.[6] However, when Snell watched televised reports of the Oklahoma City bombing prior to his execution, he was appalled by what he saw.[6]
Other notable residents
Other individuals who stayed at Elohim City and later appeared in national news include:
- Carol Howe, BATF informant who worked undercover in Elohim City[7][8]
- Chevie Kehoe, a self-proclaimed white supremacist and convicted murderer[4]
- Dennis Mahon, a former imperial dragon in the Oklahoma Ku Klux Klan and an organizer for White Aryan Resistance[4]
- Andreas Strassmeir, head of Elohim City security, phoned by Timothy McVeigh two weeks before the OKC bombing[4]
See also
Notes
- ^ The area, which was rural until the 1980s, has since been developed into a suburban housing community. The ruins of the seminary's recreation hall are now located in the middle of Terra Maria Way circle (). See [1] and [2].
References
- ^ Shook, Somer; Wesley Delano , Robert W. Balch (April 1999). "Elohim City: A Participant-Observer Study of a Christian Identity Community". Nova Religio 2 (2): 245–265. doi:10.1525/nr.1999.2.2.245. ISSN 1541-8480. http://www.jstor.org/pss/10.1525/nr.1999.2.2.245.
- ^ a b Hastings, Deborah (23 February 1997). "Elohim City on Extremists' Underground Railroad". Los Angeles Times. http://articles.latimes.com/1997-02-23/news/mn-31595_1_elohim-city. Retrieved 2009-05-13.
- ^ Clay, Nolan (10 July 2005). "Elohim City questions resurrected by Nichols". NewsOK. http://newsok.com/article/1548200/. Retrieved 2009-05-13.
- ^ a b c d e f g h "Elohim City -- Extremism in America". ADL.org. Anti-Defamation League. http://www.adl.org/learn/Ext_US/Elohim.asp?xpicked=3&item=13. Retrieved December 31, 2011.
- ^ Charles Belfoure, "Outside Baltimore, a Reach Back to the 19th Century", New York Times, December 12, 1999.
- ^ a b Thomas, Jo (20 May 1995). "Oklahoma City Building". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/1995/05/20/us/oklahoma-city-building-was-target-of-plot-as-early-as-83-official-says.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm.
- ^ Linder, Douglas O. (2006). "The Oklahoma City Bombing & The Trial of Timothy McVeigh". http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/mcveigh/mcveighaccount.html. Retrieved December 31, 2011.
- ^ "Q&A: What really happened: The official version, the conspiracy theories and the evidence surrounding the Oklahoma bombing". Conspiracy Files. BBC News. March 2, 2007. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/conspiracy_files/6264927.stm#2. Retrieved January 2, 2012.
Further reading
- Atkins, Stephen E. (2011). Encyclopedia of Right-Wing Extremism in Modern American History. ABC-CLIO. ISBN 9781598843507.
- Copeland, Thomas E. (2007). Fool Me Twice: Intelligence Failure and Mass Casualty Terrorism. Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. ISBN 9789004158450.
- Hamm, Mark S. (2002). In Bad Company: America's Terrorist Underground. University Press of New England. ISBN 9781555534929.
- Jones, Stephen; Israel, Peter (2001). Others Unknown: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing Conspiracy. PublicAffairs. ISBN 9781586480981.
- Malcomson, Scott L. (2001). One Drop of Blood: The American Misadventure of Race. Macmillan. ISBN 9780374527945.
- Quarles, Chester L. (2004). Christian Identity: The Aryan American Bloodline Religion. McFarland. ISBN 9780786418923.
- Simi, Pete; Futrell, Robert (2010). American Swastika: Inside the White Power Movement's Hidden Spaces of Hate. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 9781442202085.
- Wright, Stuart A. (2007). Patriots, Politics, and the Oklahoma City Bombing. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521872645.
- Zeskind, Leonard (2009). Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement from the Margins to the Mainstream. Macmillan. ISBN 9780374109035.
External links