Speaker 1: Col Zone Media. On April twenty first, nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 1: The phone rang at the Portland, Oregon field office of
Speaker 1: the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. The caller wouldn't
Speaker 1: give his name, but he had something he had to
Speaker 1: get off his chest. He said he was a private
Speaker 1: investigator working for a man named Bob. He said Bob
Speaker 1: was the owner of a gun shop in Salem, Oregon,
Speaker 1: and Bob had recently obtained a photograph of an ATF
Speaker 1: agent named John Comery. The caller said he wanted to
Speaker 1: tell agent Comery to be careful, and then he hung up.
Speaker 1: It might not sound like much, but it set off
Speaker 1: alarm bells for agent John Comery. He'd been investigating Robert Maler,
Speaker 1: a gun dealer in Salem, for over a year, and
Speaker 1: they were just about to take the case to a
Speaker 1: grand jury. It wasn't really anything too serious, just some
Speaker 1: fraudulent paperwork for a gun purchase, pretty typical fare for
Speaker 1: an ATF agent. But now, just three weeks before that
Speaker 1: court date, here was this troubling development. Sure, there's no
Speaker 1: way to know if the anonymous caller was telling the truth,
Speaker 1: if Robert Maler really was talking about taking out the
Speaker 1: agent who'd been investigating him.
Speaker 2: But how had the.
Speaker 1: Caller even known, And if the caller knew that Agent
Speaker 1: Komery was about to arrest Robert Maler, Robert Maler probably
Speaker 1: knew too. So Agent Komery called the US Attorney's office
Speaker 1: and he asked if they could speed up that timeline.
Speaker 1: They could present the case to the grand jury later,
Speaker 1: but they needed to arrest Maller now. The prosecutor if
Speaker 1: he could write the criminal complaint and get that in
Speaker 1: front of the judge and make the arrest immediately. The
Speaker 1: prosecutor said no, the case was already scheduled for the
Speaker 1: grand jury and changing the calendar now would just put
Speaker 1: the judge in a bad mood. So they waited, and
Speaker 1: a grand jury did indict Robert Moller three weeks later,
Speaker 1: but when the ATF went to pick him up, he
Speaker 1: was gone.
Speaker 2: By the time.
Speaker 1: ATF agents saw Robert Maler again two years later, he'd
Speaker 1: already smuggled hundreds of guns halfway across the world to
Speaker 1: arm a group that hoped to start a civil war.
Speaker 1: I'm Molly Conger, and this is we're little guys. This
Speaker 1: is a silly one to the extent that anything on
Speaker 1: this show can really be said to be lighthearted. I
Speaker 1: needed something that wasn't too complicated to get me back
Speaker 1: into the swing of things after two weeks off. It
Speaker 1: wasn't sure I even remembered how to do this at
Speaker 1: all after such a relaxing vacation. As much as I
Speaker 1: love my work, it was good to get away from
Speaker 1: the weird little guys for a minute, if I'm being honest.
Speaker 1: And in the time since my last episode, I got married.
Speaker 1: It was beautiful and fun and the cake was really good,
Speaker 1: and I went on my honeymoon. I was really worried
Speaker 1: that I wouldn't be able to properly enjoy doing nothing.
Speaker 1: That's not really my thing, But it turns out that
Speaker 1: lying on a white sandy beach listening to the gentle
Speaker 1: waves of the Caribbean sea.
Speaker 2: Also be my thing. I loved it.
Speaker 1: I do think I'll probably go back to keeping my
Speaker 1: private life private for the most part. That's been my
Speaker 1: preference for a few years, and for good reason. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of weirdos out there, you know. But
Speaker 1: I couldn't just disappear for a few weeks without any explanation,
Speaker 1: and I did put a lot of thought into the
Speaker 1: decision to share a bit of myself with the wider world.
Speaker 1: Getting married was a joyful thing for me and for
Speaker 1: my partner, and it felt very grim to even consider
Speaker 1: keeping that to myself just because some weird little guy
Speaker 1: out there might try to make me regret sharing my
Speaker 1: happy news. So no regrets. And it is very funny
Speaker 1: to me that the only weird little guy I've seen
Speaker 1: weighing in on the subject so far really does not
Speaker 1: have any business opining on other people's relationship. I mean, look,
Speaker 1: I know we've all got our baggage, but if your
Speaker 1: last marriage ended because you caught your son in law
Speaker 1: in bed with your wife, you should mind your business.
Speaker 2: But that's a story for another day.
Speaker 1: Today we're talking about guns. A lot of guns, guns
Speaker 1: where they shouldn't have been, guns bought and sold by
Speaker 1: men who shouldn't have had them, Guns that showed up
Speaker 1: in places they weren't allowed to go, and guns that
Speaker 1: were found in unexpected places, like under a pillow an
Speaker 1: empty hotel room in Los Angeles. We're in a mysterious
Speaker 1: shipping container on a farm in violation of international sanctions.
Speaker 1: I know, I said I was done with South Africa
Speaker 1: and I am. I am for now, at least I
Speaker 1: swear this episode is perfectly listenable as a stack and
Speaker 1: alone bit of entertainment. But it is something I came
Speaker 1: across while I was researching those episodes. When I started
Speaker 1: researching the story that turned into that monstrous, nearly three
Speaker 1: month long eight episode arc about Monica Huggetts Stone, one
Speaker 1: of the first side characters I made a note of
Speaker 1: was a man I never actually even mentioned in those episodes,
Speaker 1: an arms dealer in Oregon named Robert Maller. In the
Speaker 1: section of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Report where
Speaker 1: I first found Monica, the section about connections between right
Speaker 1: wing terrorist groups in South Africa and extremist groups abroad,
Speaker 1: there's a passing mention of mister Maller. Like Monica, his
Speaker 1: name is only in the report the one time, and
Speaker 1: it's in the paragraph immediately.
Speaker 2: After the one about her.
Speaker 1: The report reads, mister Robert Maler, an American city, claims
Speaker 1: in his application to have been recruited by the former
Speaker 1: South African police to act as a firearms instructor. Maller
Speaker 1: was caught in the United States after he illegally imported
Speaker 1: a large cache of weapons to South Africa using fraudulent
Speaker 1: names and passports. He claims allegiance to the Conservative Party
Speaker 1: and said he had contact with other groups like the
Speaker 1: Africaner Folks Front and the AWB. He also said that
Speaker 1: he was the USA fundraising representative of the AWB. I know,
Speaker 1: I just said, you don't need to have listened to
Speaker 1: those eight episodes about white supremacist terrorism in South Africa
Speaker 1: during the fall upartheid to understand this episode. And you don't,
Speaker 1: It's okay if you didn't join me on that saga.
Speaker 1: All you really need to know right now is that
Speaker 1: the AWB, the group referred to in that paragraph was
Speaker 1: the Africaner Resistance Movement, an explicitly neo Nazi group founded
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies in South Africa. They kind of
Speaker 1: still exist, I guess, but in the eighties and early
Speaker 1: nineties they did quite a bit of terrorism, bombings, murders, shootings.
Speaker 1: They tried to participate in a minor coup, but they
Speaker 1: fucked it all up and some of them died, et cetera.
Speaker 1: And to do all of that, obviously they needed guns.
Speaker 1: And if you did listen to those other episodes about
Speaker 1: all that violence in South Africa. You know that they
Speaker 1: had guns, They smuggled guns in from outside of the country,
Speaker 1: and they stole guns from military bases. But what I
Speaker 1: didn't really get into in those episodes is why every
Speaker 1: single gun the AWB had seemed to be stolen or smuggled.
Speaker 1: See by the nineteen nineties, it was getting pretty hard
Speaker 1: to find a brand new gun in South Africa. In
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty three, the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution
Speaker 1: one eighty one calling for all countries to voluntarily stop
Speaker 1: selling or allowing export of guns, ammunition, and military equipment
Speaker 1: to South Africa. In nineteen seventy seven, Resolution four eighteen
Speaker 1: made that embargo mandatory. A subsequent UN resolution in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty six tightened those restrictions and clarified that, yes, allowing
Speaker 1: sales to pass through a third country is still a
Speaker 1: violation of the embargo. On paper, no one was supposed
Speaker 1: to be selling military equipment to South Africa, and yet
Speaker 1: South African soldiers, police, paramilitaries, civilians, and terrorist groups all
Speaker 1: seemed to have plenty of foreign hardware. After that initial
Speaker 1: voluntary embargo was passed in nineteen sixty three, the United
Speaker 1: States announced it intention to comply fully, but Henry Kissinger's
Speaker 1: interpretation of the resolution allowed the US government to continue
Speaker 1: selling things like military aircraft as long as everyone pretended
Speaker 1: that they believed that those things would be used for
Speaker 1: civilian purposes. In nineteen seventy eight, fully half of the
Speaker 1: planes in use by the South African Air Force were
Speaker 1: made by US companies. The same loophole was used to
Speaker 1: supply the South African military with US made communications equipment
Speaker 1: and computers. Even after Jimmy Carter stopped these gray area
Speaker 1: sales to the South African government, private companies in South
Speaker 1: Africa were still free to make the exact same purchases,
Speaker 1: and they often did so on behalf of the government,
Speaker 1: and some countries just kept openly selling weapons to South
Speaker 1: Africa no matter how many resolutions were passed. The Chilean
Speaker 1: government under Pinochet had no issue violating the resolution, and
Speaker 1: Paraguay was known to turn a blind eye when other
Speaker 1: countries laundered those transactions through them. But nobody, and I
Speaker 1: mean nobody, sold South Africa more guns, planes, bombs, and
Speaker 1: drones than Israel. In one of several reports submitted to
Speaker 1: the United Nations in nineteen eighty five by the UN
Speaker 1: Committee Against Apartheid. The committee's chairman notes that they had
Speaker 1: been aware of Israel's ongoing assistance on South Africa's nuclear
Speaker 1: weapons program since nineteen seventy seven. The report quote condemns
Speaker 1: this diabolical alliance and calls for concerted international action against it.
Speaker 1: With substantial assistance from Israel, South Africa was able to
Speaker 1: eventually scale up domestic production for most of their military needs.
Speaker 1: South African soldiers carried domestically produced copies of the Israeli UZI,
Speaker 1: but small arms were a different story. There was a
Speaker 1: growing demand for guns among white South African civilians, so
Speaker 1: corporations did what they always do, and they found a
Speaker 1: way to make money meeting that need. There were a
Speaker 1: handful of high profile incidents in the late seventies. Employees
Speaker 1: of American gun manufacturers Colt Industries and Winchester Arms were
Speaker 1: caught selling massive quantities of firearms to dummy corporations operating
Speaker 1: in third party countries, and then those arms were trafficked
Speaker 1: into South Africa and sold at a premium to eager buyers.
Speaker 1: When Walter Plowman pled guilty to trafficking firearms manufactured by
Speaker 1: Colt through a company in West Germany. He pleaded for leniency,
Speaker 1: telling the court that it wouldn't be fair to punish
Speaker 1: him harshly because it was an open secret that the
Speaker 1: State Department knew this was happening and routinely looked the
Speaker 1: other way. That's not a great argument for the court,
Speaker 1: but I do think it's true. Winchester Arms was caught
Speaker 1: selling thousands of rifles and shotguns and millions upon millions
Speaker 1: of rounds of ammunitions to a shell company in the
Speaker 1: Canary Islands. The Canary Islands is a tiny island territory
Speaker 1: with a population of barely a million people. They didn't
Speaker 1: need fifty million bullets. That should have been a red
Speaker 1: flag on the export declaration, but it went on for years.
Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy nine, an arms dealer in Detroit was
Speaker 1: sentenced to just two years in prison after pleading guilty
Speaker 1: to shipping nearly half a million dollars worth of guns
Speaker 1: and ammunition to South Africa in at least twenty one
Speaker 1: separate shipments. The Washington Post article that year about his
Speaker 1: conviction notes that it wasn't police work or strict export
Speaker 1: control that caught him. It was a FOURKL life operator
Speaker 1: in the freight hangar at Chicago's O'Hare Airport. The employee
Speaker 1: was stacking boxes in the hangar when he noticed that
Speaker 1: one box was torn open a bit, exposing its contents.
Speaker 1: Packages containing bullets are required to be labeled as such,
Speaker 1: and he reported to his superior that this box was not.
Speaker 1: It was easy money. Apparently South Africa was desperate for guns,
Speaker 1: so they were willing to pay a significant premium to
Speaker 1: a discrete arms dealer. And despite the illegality of these sales,
Speaker 1: everyone seemed to be turning a blind eye. I couldn't
Speaker 1: tell you now, based on the records available to me,
Speaker 1: how widespread this understanding was in the arm stealing community.
Speaker 1: I don't know what the numbers would have been like
Speaker 1: if you'd pulled American gun shop owners in nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: about their willingness to try this, But I am well
Speaker 1: to bet that for every high profile prosecution of a
Speaker 1: guy who got greedy or sloppy and got caught, there
Speaker 1: were probably dozens of guys who dabbled making small shipments
Speaker 1: that never got flagged. Because in the cases we do
Speaker 1: have where guys got caught, every single one of them
Speaker 1: is pretty upfront about how easy it was, and the
Speaker 1: punishments were light enough that it wouldn't necessarily be a
Speaker 1: deal breaker for someone who wanted to make hundreds of
Speaker 1: thousands of dollars for mailing a package. And in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety two, Robert Maler was running out of options. He
Speaker 1: had a lot of guns and no way to sell them.
Speaker 1: I guess we should back up for a second. In
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty eight, Robert Maler and his wife Nancy bought
Speaker 1: a commercial property in say at an auction. They got
Speaker 1: a great deal on the place. They paid about sixty
Speaker 1: percent of the assessed value for the storefront, and within
Speaker 1: a few months he'd gotten his federal firearms license and
Speaker 1: opened a gun store, calling it Name Guns. That's all
Speaker 1: caps with periods name. I assume business was decent. They
Speaker 1: ran ads in the local paper for holiday specials, scratch
Speaker 1: and dent sales, and special events. In nineteen ninety there
Speaker 1: was this enigmatic series of ads in the classified section
Speaker 1: of the Statesman Journal that read miss Elliefonte, pro gun activist,
Speaker 1: invites you to stop by and visit her Tuesday through
Speaker 1: Sunday at Name Guns. I could find no explanation for
Speaker 1: that could possibly mean. I looked everywhere I could think
Speaker 1: to look, but I can't find a pro gun activist
Speaker 1: using the pseudonym miss Ellie Fante. That's sort of like
Speaker 1: a stylized elephant. I don't know what that means. It
Speaker 1: is hard to say how the ATF found out about
Speaker 1: the machine guns. Unfortunately, the federal courts in Oregon have
Speaker 1: not digitized their collection of records from the early nineties,
Speaker 1: so there's definitely information in that record that I just
Speaker 1: don't have. But based on the records I do have
Speaker 1: access to without flying to Portland to plead with a
Speaker 1: court clerk, I have a pretty good guess. I think
Speaker 1: it was Gary. You see, in nineteen ninety, the tiny
Speaker 1: town of Falls City, Oregon, had a population of about
Speaker 1: eight hundred people, and two of those people were Robert
Speaker 1: and Nancy Maller. They commuted about half an hour into
Speaker 1: Salem to run their gun store, and in nineteen ninety,
Speaker 1: Falls City was looking to replace their entire police force.
Speaker 1: That sounds dramatic, but they were looking for a new
Speaker 1: police chief. The town relied on the county sheriff for
Speaker 1: anything major, but in town for day to day things,
Speaker 1: they did have their own police department, and it was
Speaker 1: staffed with just a single officer, the chief, and in
Speaker 1: April of nineteen ninety, Fall City, Oregon, made the baffling
Speaker 1: decision to hire a thirty one year old man with
Speaker 1: no police experience. He wasn't even certified to be a
Speaker 1: police officer. He was not qualified for the job. For
Speaker 1: the first few months after he was hired, he wasn't
Speaker 1: even in town. He was at the Oregon Police Academy
Speaker 1: getting certified. Gary Allen himself had previously worked as a
Speaker 1: security guard at a casino in Nevada, and before he
Speaker 1: moved to Falls City, he'd been a private investigator in Portland,
Speaker 1: but he'd never been a real cop before, and it
Speaker 1: turns out he wasn't really that good at it. Gary
Speaker 1: self graduated from the police Academy at the end of July,
Speaker 1: so he officially started work as the police chief in
Speaker 1: Falls City in August of nineteen ninety. By December thirty
Speaker 1: first of that same year, he'd been placed on unpaid
Speaker 1: leave pending an investigation into allegations that he had simply
Speaker 1: stopped showing up for work entirely. Later that same night,
Speaker 1: New Year's Eve nineteen ninety, witnesses saw Gary get into
Speaker 1: an argument with his girlfriend at the bar. The articles
Speaker 1: I could find don't name the girlfriend or weigh in
Speaker 1: on whether Gary's wife knew that he had a girlfriend.
Speaker 1: So after getting into an argument at the bar with
Speaker 1: his girlfriend, he leaves, and he's seen leaving the bar
Speaker 1: a little after one am, and then witnesses see him
Speaker 1: start kicking in the doors of several homes. None of
Speaker 1: the reporting explains this. He was convicted of burglary, but
Speaker 1: that just means he entered at least one of those homes.
Speaker 1: It doesn't sound like he stole anything. One newspaper article
Speaker 1: offered the vague explanation that he'd been drinking heavily and
Speaker 1: he was at this point looking for either his girlfriend
Speaker 1: or an unnamed male acquaintance, presumably because he wasn't done
Speaker 1: with the argument that started in the bar, and so
Speaker 1: somewhere in between breaking into the first house and the
Speaker 1: third or fourth one, he encountered some random passers by
Speaker 1: on the sidewalk and he stabbed one of them in
Speaker 1: the neck. That sixteen year old boy did need a
Speaker 1: few stitches, but he was not critically injured. Gary self
Speaker 1: was fired, obviously in exchange for pleading guilty. Most of
Speaker 1: the charges were dropped. He was convicted of one count
Speaker 1: of burglary and one count of assault and sentenced to
Speaker 1: just ten days in jail, which he was allowed to
Speaker 1: serve on weekends, but the conviction made him a felon.
Speaker 1: After his sentencing, the prosecutor told reporters, quote, we wanted
Speaker 1: to get this guy out of firearms and out of
Speaker 1: law enforcement. And the prosecutor specifically mentioned that Gary self
Speaker 1: had a significant collection of firearms, one that included several
Speaker 1: machine guns. So I think it's safe to say the
Speaker 1: investigation into the machine guns really got going after Gary
Speaker 1: Self's arrest for that strange drunken rampage a little after
Speaker 1: midnight on New Year's Day nineteen ninety one. The lone
Speaker 1: ATF report that I could actually get my hands on
Speaker 1: indicates that they did open this investigation into Gary shortly
Speaker 1: after his arrest on those assault charges. Agent John Comery
Speaker 1: received approval for the investigation on January twenty second, nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety one. It wasn't a complicated case. The ATF solved
Speaker 1: it pretty quickly. During Gary Self's short stint as the
Speaker 1: police chief of False City, he had befriended Robert Maller.
Speaker 1: The pair used official police department letterhead and lied when
Speaker 1: they filled out the ATF Form five, the Application for
Speaker 1: tax Exempt Transfer and Registration of Firearms. And so they
Speaker 1: filled out this paperwork as though Robert Maler the gun dealer,
Speaker 1: were facilitating a legitimate purchase of machine guns for a
Speaker 1: government agency, in this case, the Fall City Police Department.
Speaker 1: In fact, the two men just wanted the machine guns
Speaker 1: for their person collections. Gary self was federally charged with
Speaker 1: possessing an unregistered firearm later that same year, and he
Speaker 1: pretty quickly entered a guilty plea. And so in this case,
Speaker 1: I have the docket sheet for Gary's federal case. The
Speaker 1: actual documents aren't digitized, but I have the Dockett sheet
Speaker 1: and it's not sealed. And I have a lot of
Speaker 1: news stories from nineteen ninety one about Gary's drunken rampage,
Speaker 1: about Gary getting fired, about Gary bleeding guilty to stabbing
Speaker 1: a teenager. But what I don't have are any news
Speaker 1: stories about the former police chief fraudulently obtaining a machine
Speaker 1: gun for personal use. I know the digital record isn't perfect.
Speaker 1: There are plenty of things that existed in nineteen ninety
Speaker 1: one that I'll never see.
Speaker 2: But it does seem.
Speaker 1: Odd that those same local newspapers that reported Gary self's
Speaker 1: assault charges don't seem to have run stories about Gary
Speaker 1: getting arrested again a few months later on a federal
Speaker 1: firearms charge. I can't explain it. So looking at our
Speaker 1: timeline here, Gary gets arrested for assault in January. He
Speaker 1: pleads guilty in February, but at this point he doesn't
Speaker 1: know yet that the ATF is looking into him. In
Speaker 1: October of nineteen ninety one, Robert Mahler's federal firearms license
Speaker 1: expired and he doesn't bother renewing it. Yes, I should explain,
Speaker 1: just in case you're not familiar. So this is a
Speaker 1: license that you have to apply for with the Bureau
Speaker 1: of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to be allowed to deal guns.
Speaker 1: But you can't be running a gun store without an
Speaker 1: FFL and you have to renew it every three years.
Speaker 1: So at this point he's been running the gun store
Speaker 1: for three years, the license is going to expire. Normally
Speaker 1: you would just renew it, but he doesn't. I think
Speaker 1: at this point he knows the ATF probably won't reissue it.
Speaker 1: So I mean, no one's been charged yet, but he
Speaker 1: had to have known something was coming. So, despite no
Speaker 1: longer having a license to legally sell guns, his gun
Speaker 1: store is still open five days a week. And it's
Speaker 1: around this time in October of nineteen ninety one that
Speaker 1: Robert Maller starts taking trips to South Africa. In November,
Speaker 1: Gary Self is indicted on that machine gun charge, and
Speaker 1: so now Robert Maller absolutely knows that his days are numbered.
Speaker 1: His name is on that paperwork. If Gary is guilty,
Speaker 1: then so is he. In March of nineteen ninety two,
Speaker 1: just a few weeks after Gary Self blood guilty to
Speaker 1: possessing that machine gun, Robert Maller went to the county
Speaker 1: clerk's office and he put the deed of his house
Speaker 1: in his wife's name, and he filed paperwork to give
Speaker 1: his wife Nancy power of attorney, so if he were
Speaker 1: for some reason absent, she would be legally empowered to
Speaker 1: make decisions regarding their property. He's preparing to be unavailable.
Speaker 1: But is that because he knows he's going to prison,
Speaker 1: or because he's preparing to do whatever it takes to
Speaker 1: not go to prison. In early April of nineteen ninety two,
Speaker 1: Gary Self is sentenced on that gun charge. He doesn't
Speaker 1: get any jail time. He has to do home detention
Speaker 1: for a few months, and he'll have a few years
Speaker 1: of probation, but no jail time. And in that lone
Speaker 1: ATF report that I do have Agent COOMERI wrote that
Speaker 1: both the Portland Police and an informant would later report
Speaker 1: to the ATF that Robert Maler had expressed interest in
Speaker 1: having both the agent and his co defendant quote knocked off.
Speaker 1: So now I'm wondering maybe in April of nineteen ninety two,
Speaker 1: maybe Gary self was scared. He was stuck in his
Speaker 1: house on home detention, he couldn't leave, and he thought
Speaker 1: Robert Maler wanted to kill him. Maybe the anonymous caller
Speaker 1: who warned the ATF that Moller was going to try
Speaker 1: to kill Agent Coomery had his own reasons to want
Speaker 1: Moller in custody, But we'll never know. The report says
Speaker 1: that they never identified the caller. When agents did finally
Speaker 1: get the go ahead in May of nineteen ninety two
Speaker 1: to arrest Robert Maller for purchasing those machine guns, he
Speaker 1: was gone. He was already in South Africa. Robert Maller
Speaker 1: was in South Africa for most of nineteen ninety two
Speaker 1: and nineteen ninety three. He didn't come home for good
Speaker 1: until March of nineteen ninety four, and in the two
Speaker 1: years he spent abiding arrest on federal gun charges, he
Speaker 1: did come home a few times. News reports say he
Speaker 1: entered the country at least twice using a false passport.
Speaker 1: I know one of them was when he came home
Speaker 1: for the last time, and it's hard to say when
Speaker 1: the other one was. But in January of nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 1: the Clerk of Court in Moltnomah County recorded a transaction
Speaker 1: and listed the payer as Bob Mahler, and the transaction
Speaker 1: was a filing fee for a divorce petition between a
Speaker 1: Bob Maler and a Nancy Maller. This petition did end
Speaker 1: up getting dismissed. They never followed up on it, so
Speaker 1: they didn't get divorced in nineteen ninety three. Listeners in
Speaker 1: Oregon may have noticed that the Moltnoma County courthouse is
Speaker 1: notably in Portland, and that's an hour and a half
Speaker 1: away from where they live in Falls City. I guess
Speaker 1: maybe he thought no one would recognize him there. When
Speaker 1: Robert Maller's US passport expired in nineteen ninety three. He
Speaker 1: couldn't renew it. He was a fugitive, but he didn't
Speaker 1: let that slow him down. Now again, Unfortunately, the Oregon
Speaker 1: federal courts have not digitized their early nineties transcripts, so
Speaker 1: I don't have access to the trial transcript from his
Speaker 1: earlier criminal cases. But what I do have is an
Speaker 1: unpublished opinion from the Bankruptcy Appellate Panel in the Ninth
Speaker 1: Circuit Court of Appeals. Because Robert and Nancy Maller did
Speaker 1: eventually get divorced in nineteen ninety five, and after that divorce,
Speaker 1: Nancy filed for bankruptcy. During her bankruptcy case, Robert Maler
Speaker 1: filed a complaint with the bankruptcy court that Nancy had
Speaker 1: sold assets that belonged to him. The court didn't agree,
Speaker 1: but that's not what matters here. I don't care about
Speaker 1: their assets. Normally, when you swear before a judge that
Speaker 1: you're going to tell the whole truth and nothing but
Speaker 1: the truth to help you God, the assumption is that
Speaker 1: you mean it. But if you have a history of
Speaker 1: being a liar, like the kind of lies that end
Speaker 1: up in a court record, real serious lies, the kind
Speaker 1: that are crimes. That's fair game. Opposing parties can bring
Speaker 1: that up to impeach your credibility. So it's in an
Speaker 1: excerpted transcript of this hearing in his ex wife's bankruptcy
Speaker 1: case that we find this fascinating admission. So Robert Maler
Speaker 1: is on the stand under oath, and Nancy's attorney holds
Speaker 1: up an exhibit and asks him do you recognize this?
Speaker 2: And he does.
Speaker 1: It's a South African passport and inside the passport the
Speaker 1: picture is of Robert Maler, but the name isn't his.
Speaker 1: It was issued to a man named Jan van der
Speaker 1: meervh attorney asks him, how did you get this? Did
Speaker 1: you steal this man's passport and just switch out the picture?
Speaker 2: How did you.
Speaker 1: Manage to get what appears to be a very real
Speaker 1: fake passport? And Maller answers quote, he went down with
Speaker 1: me and helped me fill out the forms and walked
Speaker 1: me through the procedure to get a passport, and we
Speaker 1: used his ID to get a passport for me. And
Speaker 1: that's so interesting to me. I'd been wondering for a
Speaker 1: while now how this network was able to get so
Speaker 1: many people so many fake passports. Again, we don't have
Speaker 1: to backtrack into those South Africa episodes, but a foreign
Speaker 1: mercenary or a gun smuggler with a fake passport was
Speaker 1: a recurring theme. It was never explained in any of
Speaker 1: the sources I used how this kept happening because their
Speaker 1: fake passport seemed to be pretty he could, I mean
Speaker 1: people were crossing borders with them to evade international arrest warrants.
Speaker 1: Leonard Wienendahl was able to enter the UK while he
Speaker 1: was on Interpol's most wanted list using one of these
Speaker 1: fake passports. So maybe this is how they were getting them.
Speaker 1: Someone in the passport office just looked the other way
Speaker 1: while two men filled out the paperwork together and in
Speaker 1: they stamped paperwork they knew to be fraudulent. These fake
Speaker 1: passports worked perfectly because they weren't fake passports. They were
Speaker 1: real passports with fake names. Well that's not quite right either,
Speaker 1: is it. Because the name on the passport isn't fake.
Speaker 1: It's not a randomly chosen pseudonym, it's not a made
Speaker 1: up person. It is someone's real name. It just wasn't
Speaker 1: Robert Maller's real name. I wish I could tell you
Speaker 1: that I know who yan Vandrmreva was the problem with
Speaker 1: these Afrikaans' names is that there's not very many of them,
Speaker 1: so a lot of people have the same or very
Speaker 1: similar names, and so I know there were more than
Speaker 1: a few yon Vandrmrevas out there. So I can't promise
Speaker 1: you that it means anything at all that there was
Speaker 1: a yan Vandrmreva who would have been the right age
Speaker 1: and who was a South African policeman in the early nineties.
Speaker 1: That yon Vandrmreva, the one I'm thinking of, worked in
Speaker 1: military intelligence and was later charged in connection with the
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty seven massacre in Durban that killed thirteen people,
Speaker 1: most of whom were children. Yan Vandrmreva was not convicted
Speaker 1: the court failed to present sufficient evidence that he'd been
Speaker 1: the one who threw the murder weapons into a smelting
Speaker 1: furnace to destroy the evidence.
Speaker 2: In fact, all twenty.
Speaker 1: Of those charged with carrying out that massacre were acquitted.
Speaker 2: But we know what happened.
Speaker 1: Someone shot those children, but it could just have easily
Speaker 1: been some other man named yan who helped this arms
Speaker 1: dealer get that fake passport. I really couldn't tell you,
Speaker 1: and regardless of whose friend Yon might have been. It
Speaker 1: was this passport that Robert Moller used to travel back
Speaker 1: to the United States undetected while he was evading arrest.
Speaker 1: So in nineteen ninety two, Nancy Moller is at home
Speaker 1: in Oregon. They've had to close the gun store. Her
Speaker 1: husband is missing, and the store doesn't have a valid
Speaker 1: license to sell guns. But they still have a lot
Speaker 1: of guns. And I'm sure there's some procedure for people
Speaker 1: who find themselves in this situation. I bet it's not
Speaker 1: even really all that rare. I didn't bother looking up
Speaker 1: exactly what you're supposed to do with excess inventory if
Speaker 1: you're no longer allowed to sell it. But I do
Speaker 1: know what you're not supposed to do, and that's sell
Speaker 1: it anyway. And you're really not supposed to sell those
Speaker 1: guns anyway by exporting them overseas without an export license.
Speaker 1: And you're really really not supposed to sell those guns
Speaker 1: anyway by exporting them to a country subject to a
Speaker 1: worldwide arms embargo. But in August of nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 1: Nancy Maller did just that.
Speaker 2: She shipped a forty foot.
Speaker 1: Cargo container to South Africa and in it there were
Speaker 1: some of her husband's things, some personal belongings that he
Speaker 1: might like to have now that he's living abroad. One
Speaker 1: news article lists quote a vehicle as being among those possessions,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't say what sort of vehicle it was.
Speaker 1: Robert Moller did have a habit of collecting military surplus gear,
Speaker 1: including military cargo trucks, and so she was shipping him
Speaker 1: something like, for example, an M thirty five cargo truck,
Speaker 1: a twenty three foot long vehicle that weighs fifteen thousand pounds.
Speaker 2: That would explain the need for.
Speaker 1: Forty foot container, but it doesn't say. I don't know
Speaker 1: if he owned an M thirty five truck in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety three, but I do know that he owned four
Speaker 1: of them in twenty sixteen, so he did like them.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of vagueness about the general contents of
Speaker 1: the container. I couldn't tell you how many radios or
Speaker 1: sleeping bags or camouflage uniforms were in there, but I
Speaker 1: do know that there were two hundred and twenty seven
Speaker 1: guns and nearly fifty thousand rounds of ammunition. The container
Speaker 1: arrived in South Africa in October of nineteen ninety three,
Speaker 1: and so if you did listen to those South Africa episodes,
Speaker 1: you might recall this point in the timeline. This is
Speaker 1: right around the time that the Africaner Resistance movement is
Speaker 1: ramping up international efforts to recruit foreign mercenaries, many of
Speaker 1: whom brought stolen firearms with them. But Robert Moller's cargo
Speaker 1: container held a lot more guns than any of those
Speaker 1: German mercenaries could have ever smuggled out of Bosnia. Every
Speaker 1: gun counted, and Maller had really delivered. In February of
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety four, Robert Maller, using his fake passport, applied
Speaker 1: for a visa to visit the United States. His fake
Speaker 1: passport was stamped on entry in New York later that month.
Speaker 1: It's not clear why he flew home just then, right
Speaker 1: as things were heating up in South Africa. The Africaner
Speaker 1: Resistance movement believed they were poised to start a civil war.
Speaker 2: Right this is February.
Speaker 1: Nineteen ninety four, and in April of nineteen ninety four,
Speaker 1: they hoped to set off enough bombs and cause enough
Speaker 1: chaos that there couldn't be an election. Maybe he hoped
Speaker 1: to return quickly with more weapons.
Speaker 2: He did tell the.
Speaker 1: Court later that he was the American fundraising representative for
Speaker 1: the group, so maybe this was the last minute effort
Speaker 1: to raise more money for the race war. Either way,
Speaker 1: he never made it Back at home in Oregon, he
Speaker 1: was spotted by someone who called in a tip and
Speaker 1: he was arrested on March seventh, nineteen ninety four, on
Speaker 1: those old charges from nineteen ninety two. At that point,
Speaker 1: that's all he's charged with, and he wasn't charged with
Speaker 1: evading arrest for two years. They didn't charge him for
Speaker 1: entering the country with a forged passport or fraudulently obtaining
Speaker 1: a visa. They even released him on a ten thousand
Speaker 1: dollars bond, despite the fact that he had just spent
Speaker 1: two years hiding out on a foreign country and he
Speaker 1: clearly had the ability to obtain fake passports. I've seen
Speaker 1: a lot of bond hearings, and I can't think of
Speaker 1: a single judge I've ever seen in my life who
Speaker 1: would grant pre trial release to someone who was arrested
Speaker 1: with a fake passport. But nevertheless, he entered a guilty
Speaker 1: plea for making a false statement on a firearm application,
Speaker 1: and in June of nineteen ninety four. He was sentenced
Speaker 1: to six months of home confinement, and that could have
Speaker 1: been the end of it. After all, the race War
Speaker 1: didn't even happen in South Africa. While Robert Maller was
Speaker 1: stuck in court in Oregon, the election was held, Apartheid ended.
Speaker 2: It was over.
Speaker 1: Until the rest of the guns turned up. In October
Speaker 1: of nineteen ninety four, the South African police found the
Speaker 1: shipping container. It still had most of the guns and
Speaker 1: ammunition inside, inexplicably, along with a large amount of survival gear, camouflage, uniforms,
Speaker 1: radio equipment, sleeping bags, things like that. A press release
Speaker 1: from the police in Pretoria said they knew that the
Speaker 1: container belonged to an American and that that American was
Speaker 1: no longer in South Africa, and this time things moved quickly.
Speaker 1: South African police contacted federal authorities in the United States,
Speaker 1: and in November of nineteen ninety four, a swat team
Speaker 1: surrounded Robert and Nancy Maller's apartment. They surrendered peacefully, and
Speaker 1: they were both arrested. Robert Maller agreed to plead guilty
Speaker 1: to exporting firearms without a license in exchange the charges
Speaker 1: against his wife were dropped.
Speaker 2: He served a little over a year.
Speaker 1: Of his eighteen month sentence, and he was released from
Speaker 1: prison in October of nineteen ninety six. By then, he
Speaker 1: and Nancy were divorced and Nancy had remarried a prison guard,
Speaker 1: Robert Maller, remarried in two thousand and five. And you
Speaker 1: might think, well, he's learned his lesson. He's been convicted
Speaker 1: twice for federal crimes involving guns, not crimes of violence exactly.
Speaker 1: They were paperwork crimes. The things he was actually convicted
Speaker 1: of were just paperwork, lying on a form, not having
Speaker 1: an export license. But he was a twice convicted felon,
Speaker 1: and he'd gotten off pretty light all things considered. He
Speaker 1: did not learn his lesson. He was convicted for violating
Speaker 1: federal firearms laws for the third time after pleading guilty
Speaker 1: in twenty eighteen to being a felon in possession of
Speaker 1: a firearm. After sitting through two days of the state's
Speaker 1: case at trial, he changed his mind and entered a
Speaker 1: guilty plea. But he only admitted to one of the guns,
Speaker 1: but there were more than forty of them and forty
Speaker 1: thousand rounds of ammunition.
Speaker 2: As a felon.
Speaker 1: He wasn't supposed to have any guns or any bullets.
Speaker 1: But I think a lot of us could shrug it
Speaker 1: off and say it's nobody's business if a seventy year
Speaker 1: old man in rural Oregon kept a rifle on hand
Speaker 1: for putting down sick animals or shooting a predator that
Speaker 1: came too close to his cows, or something like that.
Speaker 1: But that's not what this was. He was hoarding bullets,
Speaker 1: and according to testimony at trial, he was conning friends
Speaker 1: who didn't know he wasn't allowed to have these things
Speaker 1: into making straw purchases for him. So not only was
Speaker 1: he breaking the law, he was making other people participate
Speaker 1: without their knowledge.
Speaker 2: His defense was confusing.
Speaker 1: The whole situation started in twenty twelve when he bought
Speaker 1: a couple of military cargo trucks at an auction in
Speaker 1: Washington State. But these giant trucks are so big that
Speaker 1: in order to drive them on the highway you need
Speaker 1: a commercial driver's license, and Robert Moller didn't have one,
Speaker 1: but his friend Bill did, and Bill agreed to go
Speaker 1: up to Washington with him and drive the trucks home.
Speaker 1: When they got back to Oregon, Moller had another favor
Speaker 1: to ask. He didn't want his wife to know that
Speaker 1: he'd spend a bunch of money on four military surplus trucks,
Speaker 1: so would Bill mind storing them at his house? He
Speaker 1: had plenty of land, so he agreed. But then the
Speaker 1: favors just kept coming. Moller kept buying things and asking,
Speaker 1: can I just keep this at your house? Can I
Speaker 1: put this in your garage? Can I put this in
Speaker 1: your shed? Can I put this on your land? He
Speaker 1: just kept asking, and Bill kept saying yes. Moller purchased
Speaker 1: a storage trailer that he wanted to fill with disaster supplies,
Speaker 1: doomsday prepper stuff.
Speaker 2: He didn't have room for.
Speaker 1: It, and again, he didn't want his wife to know
Speaker 1: he'd spent money on it, so could he keep it
Speaker 1: at Bill's house? And then it was a gun safe,
Speaker 1: and then another gun safe, and then several car loads
Speaker 1: of guns. Suddenly Bill's garage is completely taken over by
Speaker 1: three massive gun safes filled with dozens of guns. And
Speaker 1: Bill doesn't dislike guns. He has a gun safe. He
Speaker 1: keeps it in his bedroom. But Bill's wife, Connie is
Speaker 1: losing her patience. Maller has stored so many boxes of
Speaker 1: emergency supplies and cases of AMMO in her garage that
Speaker 1: she can no longer access the workspace where she cans
Speaker 1: her vegetables the guns needed to go. Exactly when Connie
Speaker 1: learned about Maller's past is murky. There are a few
Speaker 1: versions of this timeline, but she wasn't the only one
Speaker 1: asking questions. Here's where it gets a little confusing, and
Speaker 1: I wish I could draw you a diagram. Connie, Bill's wife,
Speaker 1: has a brother named Adam, and Adam is married to
Speaker 1: a woman named Kara, who happens to be Moller's stepdaughter.
Speaker 1: I think this really is mostly coincidental. They live in
Speaker 1: a very small town. Bill and Connie were friends with Moller,
Speaker 1: but they didn't really think of themselves as being family.
Speaker 1: Although technically Connie's sister in law was his stepdaughter, so
Speaker 1: the fact that they're related is largely coincidental. But Connie's
Speaker 1: brother is part of this story too. Connie would later
Speaker 1: tell an ATF agent that she'd googled Maller sometime in
Speaker 1: late twenty fifteen, so that's a few months before she
Speaker 1: called the ATF to report him. Maller's attorneys argued that
Speaker 1: Connie only called the ATF because she was mad at
Speaker 1: him over some kind of personal dispute.
Speaker 2: But Connie says she had to do it.
Speaker 1: You see, her brother, Adam was a federal agent with
Speaker 1: the Bureau of Land Management, so he's not like a
Speaker 1: regular cop.
Speaker 2: He's not in the.
Speaker 1: FBI, but he's a federal law enforcement officer, and he
Speaker 1: told her that no matter how bad she wanted her
Speaker 1: garage back, she could not give Moller hid guns back.
Speaker 1: Now that she knows that he's a convicted felon, it
Speaker 1: would be a felony for her to knowingly facilitate the
Speaker 1: transfer of a firearm back into his possession.
Speaker 2: So she's kind of stuck.
Speaker 1: Connie did testify at the trial, so I have her
Speaker 1: own sworn statements to go on. Her brother, Adam wasn't
Speaker 1: called as a witness, so I just have the secondhand
Speaker 1: report from the ATF here. But apparently he'd gotten a
Speaker 1: bad vibe off his wife's new stepdad years earlier in
Speaker 1: their relationship. Again, Adam and Kara are adults, married adults.
Speaker 1: When Kara's mother marries Robert Maller, and so here's this man.
Speaker 1: You know, his wife's mom has a new boyfriend. This
Speaker 1: isn't a guy, you know, This isn't a guy you
Speaker 1: hang out with a lot. But he's getting a weird
Speaker 1: vibe off of him, and Moller keeps asking Adam, do
Speaker 1: you want to go shooting together? Do you want to
Speaker 1: go shooting together? And Adam did not want to, and
Speaker 1: he wanted to even less after he looked this man
Speaker 1: up and found out that he was a convicted felon.
Speaker 1: And so at this point all he knows is that
Speaker 1: Moller has asked him to go shooting. He has not
Speaker 1: personally witnessed his wife's new stepdad in possession of a firearm,
Speaker 1: so the tip he submitted to the ATF didn't really
Speaker 1: go anywhere. Adam also wrote an anonymous letter to the
Speaker 1: National Rifle Association just letting them know that one of
Speaker 1: their certified firearms instructors was a convicted felon, But it
Speaker 1: doesn't seem like anything came of that either.
Speaker 2: So regardless of who knew what.
Speaker 1: And when, in January of twenty sixteen, Connie called the ATF.
Speaker 1: That much we know for sure. She called, and she
Speaker 1: reported it, and they sent an agent out to talk
Speaker 1: to her. And when the ATF eventually searched Robert Maller's home.
Speaker 1: He wasn't there, but his wife was. She told the
Speaker 1: agents that she didn't think her husband owned any guns,
Speaker 1: but she did think that he had a concealed carry permit.
Speaker 1: She also seemed surprised to learn that her husband had
Speaker 1: been convicted of several felonies. He had told her a
Speaker 1: version of the story where it was his ex wife, Nancy,
Speaker 1: who had gotten into trouble for shipping those guns overseas.
Speaker 1: So as they're searching the house, an agent is talking
Speaker 1: to Moller's wife outside, and the agents inside the house
Speaker 1: encountered two locked doors, and Maller's wife says she doesn't
Speaker 1: have the keys to those, And what a red flag
Speaker 1: that is. I can't imagine living with someone who distrusts
Speaker 1: me so profoundly that they keep their private, separate bedroom
Speaker 1: locked with a key that I don't have. When agents
Speaker 1: did get the door to Maller's bedroom open, they found
Speaker 1: six guns in there. Under his pillow, there was a
Speaker 1: forty five caliber pistol. It was not only loaded, but
Speaker 1: there was a round in the chamber. I'm not a
Speaker 1: huge gun guy, but if you're not a gun guy either,
Speaker 1: that means the gun was very ready to fire. That
Speaker 1: means you could just pull the trigger in a bullets
Speaker 1: coming out. I just can't imagine laying my head on
Speaker 1: a pillow and there is a chambered round an inch
Speaker 1: from my brain. They found a few more guns in
Speaker 1: various hiding spots around the room. There were rifles, shotguns, pistols,
Speaker 1: a little bit of everything, and they were all loaded.
Speaker 1: They also found two thousand bullets in his bedroom. In
Speaker 1: addition to the gun under the pillow, they found another
Speaker 1: forty five caliber pistol under his bed. And this gun
Speaker 1: maybe the greatest mystery of this story. Those guns he
Speaker 1: sent to South Africa weren't supposed to be there, but
Speaker 1: I know how they got there. It wasn't legal, but
Speaker 1: it's not a mystery. Nancy shipped from there a forty
Speaker 1: foot cargo container. But this gun, this gun shouldn't have
Speaker 1: been under Robert Maler's bed. And I don't mean just
Speaker 1: because he couldn't legally own a gun. This gun couldn't
Speaker 1: be under there. There's no explanation for how it could
Speaker 1: be there legally speaking. The last known location of that
Speaker 1: gun before ATF agents founded under Robert Maller's bed in
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen was in the custody of the Silverton, Oregon
Speaker 1: Police Department in May of two thousand and nine. In
Speaker 1: May of two thousand and nine, the cleaning staff at
Speaker 1: a hotel in Los Angeles were stripping the sheets in
Speaker 1: an empty hotel room. The room's occupant checked out, but
Speaker 1: he forgot something. He left his gun under the pillow.
Speaker 1: The hotel staff called the Los Angeles Police Department to
Speaker 1: come pick up the gun. Because Maller had booked the
Speaker 1: room using his credit card, they were able to determine
Speaker 1: that he owned it, and rather than have him travel
Speaker 1: all the way back to LA they transferred custody of
Speaker 1: the firearm to the police department in Silverton, Oregon, where
Speaker 1: he was living at the time. Court records contain only
Speaker 1: a brief footnote that the Silverton Police Department had been
Speaker 1: unable to locate any record that they'd ever received that
Speaker 1: gun from the LAPD or released it back to Robert Maller,
Speaker 1: but obviously they did. The LAPD had records showing that
Speaker 1: they released the gun to the Silverton, Oregon Police Department.
Speaker 1: They sent Robert Moller a letter telling him that's what
Speaker 1: they'd done, and the letter was in his house. There
Speaker 1: are records that this happened, but neither one of those
Speaker 1: police departments had that gun, because that gun was under
Speaker 1: Robert Maler's bed. So one of these police departments isn't
Speaker 1: telling the truth. One of them gave a convicted felon
Speaker 1: his gun back willfully were because they cut corners and
Speaker 1: they didn't do the required paperwork and they didn't notice
Speaker 1: he wasn't supposed to have it in the first place.
Speaker 1: The man who originally sold Robert Maller that gun, a
Speaker 1: man named Curtis, testified at Maller's trial he still had
Speaker 1: the bill of sale from the transaction and he held
Speaker 1: onto it for nearly a decade. And on that bill
Speaker 1: of sale, Robert Maler had written down not his own name,
Speaker 1: but he wrote Alex Maler, his brother's name. And Curtis
Speaker 1: was very cooperative throughout the investigation. He told agents that
Speaker 1: he'd gone shooting with Maller several times. He was a
Speaker 1: childhood friend of Moller's new adult step sons, so the
Speaker 1: four of them hung out from time to time over
Speaker 1: games of table tennis. Smaller would often brag about how
Speaker 1: skilled he was with firearms.
Speaker 2: One excerpt from an ATF report reads. He stated that
Speaker 2: he shot the cult.
Speaker 1: Better than Maler did, and added that Moller was a
Speaker 1: bad shot. Shots fired literally, and Curtis also told the
Speaker 1: agents that in addition to selling Maler that pistol, he'd
Speaker 1: also purchased a rifle from Maller some years back. The
Speaker 1: two had had a falling out years before the arrest.
Speaker 1: Curtis recounted that after some disagreement, Maller had showed up
Speaker 1: at his workplace and told him, quote, I'd hate for
Speaker 1: something to happen to you where you wouldn't be able
Speaker 1: to take care of your family. On the second day
Speaker 1: of his trial, the prosecution rested their case before his
Speaker 1: defense attorney had a chance to present his case. Moller
Speaker 1: called it off. He didn't want to finish the trial.
Speaker 1: He wanted to plead guilty, and the state originally recommended
Speaker 1: a sentence of more than six years, which is, honestly,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of reasonable given the guidelines, his prior history, etc.
Speaker 1: But then Mahler petitioned to withdraw his plea, explaining that
Speaker 1: when he pled guilty, he only meant he was guilty
Speaker 1: of possessing one gun. He hadn't understood that he was
Speaker 1: pleading guilty to possessing all of the guns in the indictment,
Speaker 1: and this apparently worked. In the end, everyone agreed that
Speaker 1: he shouldn't spend a day in jail. He was convicted
Speaker 1: of possessing one firearm and he was given three years
Speaker 1: of probation.
Speaker 2: I really can't explain it.
Speaker 1: Not that I think jail would have benefited Robert Maler
Speaker 1: or even society, but it is puzzling these days. Robert
Speaker 1: Maler is just an old man. He loves table tennis,
Speaker 1: but his favorite hobby seems to be filing nuisance lawsuits
Speaker 1: against people who say.
Speaker 2: No to him.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty, he filed a lawsuit against a hospital
Speaker 1: he was asking for over a million dollars in damages
Speaker 1: to compensate him for the immense emotional anguish caused by
Speaker 1: their refusal to place him under general anesthesia immediately upon
Speaker 1: his arrival for a scheduled elective surgery. He claims that
Speaker 1: the doctor agreed to this request ahead of time because
Speaker 1: if he had to remain conscious, he would have an
Speaker 1: episode of vasovagel syncope. That sounds very serious, doesn't it,
Speaker 1: But it's just a fancy way of saying that he
Speaker 1: would get stressed out and faint. Now I'm not a doctor,
Speaker 1: but I don't think that's a thing. I don't think
Speaker 1: you can have them put you under general anesthesia immediately
Speaker 1: upon being admitted. You really want to minimize the amount
Speaker 1: of time that a person is under general anesthesia, right,
Speaker 1: it's just for the surgery part. You don't get that
Speaker 1: going until they're about to operate. And there are a
Speaker 1: lot of important reasons why you don't just use general
Speaker 1: anesthesia to help someone calm down. But one reason why
Speaker 1: you wouldn't want to preemptively administer general anesthesia is surgeries
Speaker 1: don't always happen on time, which is exactly what happened here.
Speaker 1: Mahler was booked for an elective surgery, but those often
Speaker 1: get pushed back when the OAR is needed for emergencies,
Speaker 1: so he's forced to remain conscious for hours while inside
Speaker 1: of the hospital. He refused several offers of sedatives or
Speaker 1: tranquilizers to alleviate his anxiety. He insisted that the only
Speaker 1: acceptable solution was full general anesthesia from start to finish. Additionally,
Speaker 1: he named as a defendant in his lawsuit the nursing
Speaker 1: assistant who caused him to become too warm by placing
Speaker 1: a blanket on his bed.
Speaker 2: The suit was dismissed.
Speaker 1: In twenty nineteen, he filed a lawsuit against the state
Speaker 1: of Oregon asking for one hundred and fifty five thousand
Speaker 1: dollars in damages because he felt he was not afforded
Speaker 1: adequate due process in fighting a traffic citation. That one
Speaker 1: was also dismissed. There are a lot of these, truly,
Speaker 1: it's kind of impressive. There are a lot of these.
Speaker 1: There was a year's long ongoing feud between rival table
Speaker 1: tennis clubs that got incredibly out of hand. His lawsuit
Speaker 1: was eventually dismissed after he refused a very generous settlement
Speaker 1: offer because it would have required him to stay away
Speaker 1: from any future table tennis tournament organized by the rival club.
Speaker 1: They were willing to write him a three thousand dollars
Speaker 1: check if it meant they could get his signature on
Speaker 1: a legal document promising not to come to their pingpong events,
Speaker 1: but he wouldn't back down, so he got nothing. There
Speaker 1: is one lawsuit still pending right now, and this is
Speaker 1: the first thing I ever read about Robert Maller after
Speaker 1: I discovered his name in connection with the arms trafficking
Speaker 1: for Nazi terrorists in South Africa. So imagine that's all
Speaker 1: you know about a man that he smuggled hundreds of
Speaker 1: guns into South Africa in nineteen ninety four were used
Speaker 1: by people who wanted to start a race war, and
Speaker 1: the next fact you learn about him is this. He's
Speaker 1: currently locked in a vicious legal battle with the owner
Speaker 1: of an all you can eat sushi buffet in Portland, Oregon,
Speaker 1: because the owner asked him not to let his twelve
Speaker 1: year old Doberman, Juliette touch the spring rolls. Whether juliet
Speaker 1: the twelve year old Doberman is a real service dog
Speaker 1: is not for us to decide. Service dogs don't get
Speaker 1: certified or anything like that. There's no standard licensing process
Speaker 1: or a governing body. But the law does require a
Speaker 1: service dog to have a specialized training beyond that of
Speaker 1: a regular household pet, and that training has to be
Speaker 1: related to a specific task that they can perform related
Speaker 1: to the handler's disability. You're probably familiar with a lot
Speaker 1: of these types of tasks, right. A service dog might
Speaker 1: guide a visually impaired person around obstacles. They might detect
Speaker 1: allergens in food or sniff out low blood sugar, or
Speaker 1: predict seizures, or open a door, or provide deep pressure
Speaker 1: stimulation for some with a panic disorder. There are a
Speaker 1: million tasks that a service dog can be trained to perform,
Speaker 1: but there has to be training, and there has to
Speaker 1: be a task, and that task has to be directly
Speaker 1: related to the handler's disability. The law says that the
Speaker 1: positive impact of the dog's presence has to go beyond
Speaker 1: the handler's general comfort or well being. So it can't
Speaker 1: just be I like to have the dog here, I
Speaker 1: benefit from having the dog here. You have to be
Speaker 1: able to say a specific task, and so far he
Speaker 1: has declined to produce any evidence to the court if
Speaker 1: the dog has any special training, led alone training to
Speaker 1: carry out a particular task related to a disability. This
Speaker 1: one's still being litigated, so legally speaking, there is dispute
Speaker 1: here about the facts. Moller claims that he was braided,
Speaker 1: that the owner screamed at him, and he was humiliated
Speaker 1: when the restaurant kicked him out because of his well
Speaker 1: behaved service animal, and the restaurant owner has made a
Speaker 1: sworn statement that Moller has been a regular at her
Speaker 1: buffet for six years and she's always let it slide
Speaker 1: that his pet dog accompanies him into the restaurant because
Speaker 1: in past visits, this dog, this elderly Doberman, just sits
Speaker 1: quietly under the table and doesn't bother anyone. On this
Speaker 1: particular visit, though, the owner says that another customer complained
Speaker 1: that they saw the dog rest her head on the
Speaker 1: buffet so her face was very close to when possibly
Speaker 1: touching the food. She says she simply asked him to
Speaker 1: keep his dog at the dining table, as he'd done
Speaker 1: in past visits, and in her version of events, he
Speaker 1: did leave the restaurant visibly upset, but not because she
Speaker 1: screamed at him. After that interaction, he'd gotten into a
Speaker 1: verbal altercation with several other customers. At seventy five years old,
Speaker 1: I do think Robert Mahler's arms dealing days are long gone.
Speaker 1: I do have a feeling that he will not be
Speaker 1: recovering hundreds of thousands of dollars from the sushi buffet,
Speaker 1: But I'll keep an eye on both. Were Little Guys
Speaker 1: as a production of Coolzie Media and iHeartRadio. It's research
Speaker 1: written and recorded by me, Molly Hunger. Our executive producers
Speaker 1: are Sophie Lichtermann and Robert Evans. The show is edited
Speaker 1: by the wildly talented Lory Gigan. The theme music was
Speaker 1: composed by You can email me at Weird Little Guys
Speaker 1: podcast at gmail dot com. I will definitely read it,
Speaker 1: but I probably won't answer it. It's nothing personal. You
Speaker 1: can exchange conspiracy theories about the show with other listeners
Speaker 1: on the Weird Little Guys Supreddit. Just don't post anything
Speaker 1: that's going to make you one of my Weird Little
Speaker 1: Guys