Speaker 1: You're listening to Law and Order Criminal Justice System, a
Speaker 1: production of Wolf Entertainment and iHeart podcasts.
Speaker 2: In the criminal justice System, landmark trials transcend the courtroom
Speaker 2: to reshape the law. The brave many women who investigate
Speaker 2: and prosecute these cases are part of a select group
Speaker 2: that is defined American history. These are their stories. May nineteenth,
Speaker 2: twenty seventeen, Tampa, Florida.
Speaker 1: A hostage situation. Police respond to a call of three
Speaker 1: people being held at gunpoint at a nearby strip mall.
Speaker 1: The attacker, a twenty four year old by the name
Speaker 1: of Devon Arthur's, is apprehended. While in police custody, Arthur's
Speaker 1: was asked if anyone else was hurt. His response was chilling, said,
Speaker 1: and I quote the people in the apartment, but they
Speaker 1: aren't hurt, they're dead. Arthur's directed police to a street
Speaker 1: line with pastel colored condos. Inside one of the apartments,
Speaker 1: they found two young men Arthur's roommates, dead on the floor.
Speaker 1: Police walked through the rooms, surveying the scene. Inside the
Speaker 1: bedroom of a fourth roommate, they found something that had
Speaker 1: nothing to do with the double murder, but was almost
Speaker 1: equally disturbing.
Speaker 3: He had a framed picture of Timothy mcveay in his room.
Speaker 3: He idolized McVeigh and he wanted to do something similar
Speaker 3: to what McVeigh did, and he was working on constructing
Speaker 3: explosive devices.
Speaker 1: The picture of McVeigh belonged to a man named Brandon Russell,
Speaker 1: and investigators had just uncovered the first layer of his
Speaker 1: hidden world. It wouldn't be long until they learned it
Speaker 1: went even first. There secret chat rooms, stockpilp, explosives, and
Speaker 1: a blueprint for a deadly attack.
Speaker 4: I got a call, get out to Lavardia Airport.
Speaker 5: There's been a bombing.
Speaker 3: There was a thirty two foot crater in front of
Speaker 3: what was left of the building.
Speaker 1: I was trying to figure out, am I dead? Am
Speaker 1: I alive? Where am I? I'm Anethega Nicolazzi. That's why
Speaker 1: terrorism works. It doesn't care who you are. From Wolf
Speaker 1: Entertainment and iHeart Podcasts, this is Lawn Order Criminal Justice System.
Speaker 1: This season, we've explored cases that change the trajectory of
Speaker 1: the United States, moments that cost lives and forced law
Speaker 1: enforcement to respond to the aftermath. Those are the cases
Speaker 1: that make headlines, the ones that define era. But as
Speaker 1: we saw in the last episode, there's another side to
Speaker 1: this fight, one that you almost never hear about, the
Speaker 1: attacks that didn't happen, the plots that were stopped before
Speaker 1: they could claim lives. This episode is about those cases,
Speaker 1: the near misses, the moments where agents stepped in just
Speaker 1: in time, the plots were thwarted before they could become tragedies.
Speaker 1: Take the case of twenty one year old Brandon Russell.
Speaker 1: His shrine to Timothy McVeigh wasn't just extremist theater. He
Speaker 1: was connected to something larger, something far beyond that Tampa apartment.
Speaker 3: The reason Brandon Russell and his group Adam Woff and
Speaker 3: Division are so important is because they became early leaders
Speaker 3: in the accelerationist movements.
Speaker 1: As Michael Jensen explains, the accelerationist movement believes that terror
Speaker 1: itself can be the spark to bring down democracy, and
Speaker 1: Brandon Russell's neo Nazi group, the atam Waffen Division, which
Speaker 1: means atomic weapons in German, they embraced it.
Speaker 3: So they got onto a forum that was called Iron March,
Speaker 3: which was an online forum of white supremacist organizations. Essentially,
Speaker 3: they got in there, started using Iron March and quickly
Speaker 3: became kind of the most popular group that was acting there.
Speaker 3: Brandon Russell was the leader of Adam Waffen Division on
Speaker 3: Iron March.
Speaker 1: While Russell's network spread internationally, that part of his identity
Speaker 1: was well masked.
Speaker 3: Russell was also a member of the US National Guard
Speaker 3: at the time that he was doing all of this.
Speaker 3: As someone in the military, he was gathering the tactical
Speaker 3: knowledge and skills that he would need to be potentially
Speaker 3: quite deadly if he wanted to.
Speaker 1: Inside his garage, investigators uncovered far more than ideology. They
Speaker 1: found explosive materials, radiation sources, and bomb making components. It
Speaker 1: was clear Russell wasn't just dabbling in extremism, he was
Speaker 1: preparing to attack. The threat was taken seriously. Russell was
Speaker 1: charged with possession of an unregistered destructive device and unlawful
Speaker 1: storage of explosive material. He was convicted and sent to prison.
Speaker 1: Even while incarcerated, he was laying the groundwork for what
Speaker 1: came next.
Speaker 3: And then he gets released, goes on to federal supervision,
Speaker 3: and within a year is arrested again. He and a
Speaker 3: woman that he had started communicating with while he was
Speaker 3: in prison were plotting a series of attacks to attack
Speaker 3: the Baltimore power grid.
Speaker 1: But federal agents were listening. They had inserted a confidential
Speaker 1: informant tracking the couple's plans as they took form, but
Speaker 1: before they were put in motion, Russell was arrested a
Speaker 1: second time. The grid attack never happened. From an online
Speaker 1: forum to real world violence, both stopped before a disaster.
Speaker 1: This is just one of many cases that highlight the
Speaker 1: attacks that have been prevented before extremists succeeded. One of
Speaker 1: those cases began in Kansas with an FBI agent who
Speaker 1: found herself in the middle of a deadly plot.
Speaker 6: My name is Amy Kuhn and I am currently a
Speaker 6: special Agent in the Garden City resident Agent out of
Speaker 6: the Kansas City Division. I just had my seventeenth year anniversary.
Speaker 1: Amy was drawn to the Bureau from a young age,
Speaker 1: even if it seemed out of reach.
Speaker 6: I grew up in a really small town, and the
Speaker 6: FBI was not a job that people where I grew
Speaker 6: up with had. The FBI was something I was interested in,
Speaker 6: so I went to law school with the antition of
Speaker 6: trying to get into the FBI. I worked as a
Speaker 6: prosecutor for a couple of years, and then I got
Speaker 6: accepted into the FBI.
Speaker 1: Her career began in Garden City, a small town in
Speaker 1: southwest Kansas, filled with wide open prairie and farmland. The
Speaker 1: office looked very different from the larger field divisions seen elsewhere.
Speaker 6: The Garden City FBI office is two agents and we
Speaker 6: don't have any support staff there. The western third of
Speaker 6: Kansas is our territory, and now there is one DEA
Speaker 6: agent in Garden City, but kind of for that area,
Speaker 6: that's the only federal law enforcement presence that's out there.
Speaker 1: Her post couldn't have been further from the hubs of
Speaker 1: federal law enforcement.
Speaker 6: We are probably six and a half hours from Kansas City,
Speaker 6: six hours to Denver, five hours to Albuquerque, four and
Speaker 6: a half hours to Oklahoma City. It is a rural area,
Speaker 6: lots of agriculture, and Garden City is like the big
Speaker 6: city for the area, centrally located in the middle of nowhere,
Speaker 6: not what most people would consider a big city.
Speaker 1: The community she served had been shaped by its industry.
Speaker 1: Garden City was a meatpacking town. The plants employed thousands,
Speaker 1: drawing workers from across the region and immigrants who came
Speaker 1: to the US looking for work.
Speaker 6: And the plants they have some recruiters that will go
Speaker 6: to refugee camps and just say, hey, we'll give you
Speaker 6: housing for a certain amount of time and we'll pay
Speaker 6: you if you want to come live in wherever the
Speaker 6: meatpacking plant is.
Speaker 1: The area became an unlikely melting pot. In Garden City
Speaker 1: schools alone, children spoke dozens of languages.
Speaker 6: So in Garden City there's like fifty languages spoken in
Speaker 6: the school system.
Speaker 1: Families arrived from Mexico and Cuba, from Somalia and Vietnam,
Speaker 1: each new wave building on the last, each new group
Speaker 1: becoming part of the community.
Speaker 6: They've just accepted who the new refugee is.
Speaker 1: On the surface, all was calm, but this quiet posting
Speaker 1: would soon pull her into something she had never faced before.
Speaker 4: It was my first domestic terrorism.
Speaker 1: Case, and the investigation had the potential to impact her
Speaker 1: community forever. In the summer of twoenty fifteen, a story
Speaker 1: began spreading online.
Speaker 6: There was a Facebook message that came out that had
Speaker 6: a picture of a Palestinian flag and it said that
Speaker 6: Palestinian flag had been hung up in the Garden City library,
Speaker 6: that there was an ISIS flag there, and there were
Speaker 6: some Maali's that were recruiting for ISIS in the library.
Speaker 6: We got several calls regarding that Facebook message.
Speaker 4: People were concerned about it.
Speaker 1: The calls kept coming. Amy went to see for herself
Speaker 1: to try and get answers, but when she got there,
Speaker 1: the flag was gone.
Speaker 6: I went to the library and tried to figure out
Speaker 6: where this information came from. And interviewing people, I discovered
Speaker 6: who had taken the Palestinian flag down.
Speaker 4: That was Dan Day. He was just a local citizen.
Speaker 1: Amy located Dan and the two met. She wanted to
Speaker 1: figure out what had happened and why Dan's explanation cast
Speaker 1: the rumors in a different light.
Speaker 6: He said he didn't really see people recruiting for ISIS.
Speaker 6: There were Somalis in the library that use the library frequently,
Speaker 6: but he didn't see an ISIS flag. The Palestinian flag
Speaker 6: had been posted and he took it down because it
Speaker 6: was supporting Palestine. In talking to people, what I came
Speaker 6: to the conclusion of was it had gotten blown out
Speaker 6: of proportion. There was no ISIS recruiting and there was
Speaker 6: no ISIS flag at the library.
Speaker 1: The rumors had turned out to be a false alarm.
Speaker 1: But Amy's collaboration with Dan was just beginning because he
Speaker 1: went on to tell her about a meeting that would
Speaker 1: soon lead to an investigation of its own.
Speaker 6: He said he had been to a militia meeting for
Speaker 6: a security force, and the people were very concerned about
Speaker 6: the Somali presence in the southwest Kansas, and we're concerned
Speaker 6: that there were ISIS members. And at the time, this
Speaker 6: is twenty fifteen, there were a lot of beheading videos
Speaker 6: that were being shown on YouTube and internet. So it
Speaker 6: was a time when people were very frightened of ISSIS.
Speaker 6: And during certain holy days for Muslims, there would be
Speaker 6: a group of Somalis that would meet on Tennis Court
Speaker 6: and they would pray all together there on some of
Speaker 6: the religious holidays, and this group had a particular problem
Speaker 6: with that.
Speaker 1: Militias are generally described as an armed force made up
Speaker 1: of civilian volunteers.
Speaker 6: In general, it is part of constitution you have a
Speaker 6: right to have militias and bear arms. And so a
Speaker 6: lot of these militia groups, the commonalty is that they
Speaker 6: are patriots, They believe in the United States, and they
Speaker 6: want to protect the values they deem important in the
Speaker 6: United States. A lot of the militias want to be
Speaker 6: armed and they want to not lose that freedom. A
Speaker 6: lot of the militia groups, we don't have concerns about
Speaker 6: it because they just meet and do their own thing
Speaker 6: and there's not ever any issues from them.
Speaker 1: It wasn't that it was a militia meeting that caught
Speaker 1: Amy's attention, it was what was being said at the time.
Speaker 1: There were a lot of online conversations that were being monitored.
Speaker 6: There were a lot of what I would call Facebook warriors.
Speaker 6: There were a lot of people talking a big game
Speaker 6: on the internet and posting stuff, but actually doing anything
Speaker 6: was not as prevalent.
Speaker 1: For Amy. What raised red flags was that this group's
Speaker 1: hostility was pointed, and it raised the question of whether
Speaker 1: words might turn into action.
Speaker 6: That's what makes domestic terrorism hard is that you are
Speaker 6: investigating something that a lot of people deem First Amendment
Speaker 6: right protected. So you have to balance that line. And
Speaker 6: to me, some of the things that were concerning to
Speaker 6: me were that they were focusing on the Somali population.
Speaker 4: Just the fact that they were focusing.
Speaker 6: Their energy on one particular group, it gave me concern
Speaker 6: to at least try to get somebody that could determine
Speaker 6: if there was even a problem.
Speaker 1: All of which left Amy walking a fine line. The
Speaker 1: challenge was how to move forward without overstepping her next
Speaker 1: move was to see whether she could develop a source
Speaker 1: inside the group.
Speaker 6: We left the meeting and I told my partner Robin Smith,
Speaker 6: I said, I think I might try to open Dan Day.
Speaker 4: As a source.
Speaker 6: Robin said that guy really, like, You're not going to
Speaker 6: get anything out of that guy, essentially, and I said, yeah,
Speaker 6: I think I will. So I called Dan Day and
Speaker 6: I met with him again, and he described that Kansas
Speaker 6: Security Force was a militia. A militia is not illegal,
Speaker 6: but he said that they had talked about doing surveillance
Speaker 6: of people and that starts getting into kind of a
Speaker 6: fuzzy area. I told Dan that if he wanted to
Speaker 6: continue going to Kansas Security Force meetings, I would be
Speaker 6: interested in anything that you find out about Somali's or
Speaker 6: any illegal activities that are going on that they think
Speaker 6: they're discovering.
Speaker 4: He said, okay.
Speaker 1: Stepping into that role wasn't easy.
Speaker 6: Dan was pretty nervous type of guy, and I think
Speaker 6: initially my partner didn't think he would be very well
Speaker 6: suited for it. But Dan was very patriotic and he
Speaker 6: wanted to do something that he felt was right that
Speaker 6: was protecting his community and his country. And I also
Speaker 6: think that he enjoyed being part of the team and
Speaker 6: he felt.
Speaker 4: It was important what he was doing.
Speaker 1: With Dan on board, Amy now had someone on the inside.
Speaker 1: She quickly realized that the conversations went beyond the in
Speaker 1: person meetings.
Speaker 6: They met a lot online. They would have a lot
Speaker 6: of Facebook messaging, and they would have Zello calls. They
Speaker 6: did not believe it could be monitored by the government.
Speaker 6: So that's the app that a lot.
Speaker 4: Of these militia groups were using, was this Zello app.
Speaker 6: So they would have these nightly Zello calls and check ins.
Speaker 1: And the tone of those communications started to change.
Speaker 6: They started talking about wanting to do something to one
Speaker 6: of the Somali businesses. They would talk about throwing pigs
Speaker 6: in their store or wrapping bacon around the handles, and
Speaker 6: so they started talking about things that would be a
Speaker 6: civil rights violation if they followed through with it. And
Speaker 6: then they also were planning surveillance.
Speaker 1: The words were moving from ideas to actual plans.
Speaker 6: They were going to be in separate vehicles, use this
Speaker 6: Zello app as walkie talkies, and they were going to
Speaker 6: follow some of these Somalis to see where they went
Speaker 6: and what they were doing, like a police surveillance. So
Speaker 6: at that point we felt that there was enough to
Speaker 6: open a domestic terrorism investigation.
Speaker 1: And it quickly got internal attention.
Speaker 6: When I did open the case, it had a lot
Speaker 6: of oversight from our division council. I had to give
Speaker 6: him updates to make sure that we weren't infringing on
Speaker 6: anybody's constitutional rights. So I would update him frequently, and
Speaker 6: I was in frequent contact with the prosecutor, who was
Speaker 6: also concerned about people's rights.
Speaker 1: Amy wasn't sure where the case would lead.
Speaker 6: I thought, at most maybe some of these militia guys
Speaker 6: were going to be doing surveillance and do something stupid
Speaker 6: and you know, pull out a gun and shoot somebody
Speaker 6: that they shouldn't like.
Speaker 4: I never thought it would end up where it did.
Speaker 1: The group that Amy was monitoring was a small part
Speaker 1: of a much larger organization that spread across Cans.
Speaker 6: Kansas Security Force was a statewide organization and they had
Speaker 6: it split up into zones. DAN was a part of
Speaker 6: was the Southwest Kansas zone. I think there were three zones.
Speaker 1: It wasn't the entirety of Kansas Security Force. Or KSF
Speaker 1: that was viewed as a potential threat.
Speaker 6: Kansas Security Force in general, there were no issues with
Speaker 6: there were a few people that ended up being members
Speaker 6: of Kansas Security Force that were a problem.
Speaker 1: The world Dan Day was navigating was about to take
Speaker 1: on a more dangerous edge.
Speaker 6: When Patrick Stein comes into the picture. He is who
Speaker 6: recruits Dan to be a member of KSF. Patrick Stein
Speaker 6: was a farmer in Ford County, didn't like immigrants, and
Speaker 6: he's expressed racist idealies.
Speaker 1: His rhetoric quickly escalated beyond talk.
Speaker 6: Patrick Stein called Dan Day and said, can you take
Speaker 6: me around to these addresses that were going to be surveilling.
Speaker 6: So Dan took him around. There were a couple African
Speaker 6: stores and apartment complex and when Dan took him around,
Speaker 6: he went off, for lack of a better term, on
Speaker 6: the somalies. He was calling him names and he said
Speaker 6: he wanted to shoot some of them. So that's when
Speaker 6: we thought we might have a bigger problem.
Speaker 1: Dan grew uneasy with where Stein was pushing things.
Speaker 6: After Stein met with Dan, Dan called me and he
Speaker 6: was very concerned and he didn't want to do the
Speaker 6: surveillance because he was afraid that Patrick Stein was going
Speaker 6: to shoot somebody or do something.
Speaker 1: Out in rural western Kansas, FBI backup wasn't easy. There
Speaker 1: were no nearby buildings or vantage points that could keep
Speaker 1: agents hidden from view. Cover was scarce, and every move
Speaker 1: risk exposure.
Speaker 6: I said, well, that's why you have to go. I said,
Speaker 6: I can't come and do surveillance. You need to stick
Speaker 6: by Patrick Stein's side, and you have to be the
Speaker 6: voice of reason. You need to try to keep him
Speaker 6: from doing something stupid.
Speaker 4: Dan was very concerned at that time.
Speaker 1: Dan's warnings made it clear Stein wasn't just talking. His
Speaker 1: volatility posed a real risk.
Speaker 4: So we opened a case on Patrick Stein.
Speaker 6: We told Dan that whatever Patrick Stein was doing, that's
Speaker 6: who we wanted to focus on.
Speaker 1: Stein's anger continued to simmer. Then came the shooting at
Speaker 1: the Pulse nightclub in Orlando two.
Speaker 3: O'clock in the morning. An officer who was working at
Speaker 3: Paul's nightclub engaged this gunman in a firefight.
Speaker 2: The person I was with or shot in the back.
Speaker 1: I had taken my bandanna off and tied it up,
Speaker 1: put it in a knockbull hole that was in his.
Speaker 2: Back so that he wasn't lead.
Speaker 1: In June twenty sixteen, a man swearing allegiance to ISIS
Speaker 1: shot and killed forty nine people and wounded fifty three
Speaker 1: at the Gay nightclub in Florida.
Speaker 6: The next day, patrick Stein called Dan day and said,
Speaker 6: we have to do something. We can't let this happen again.
Speaker 6: We need to take action. He believed that most of
Speaker 6: the Muslims in southwest Kansas were associated with ISIS, so
Speaker 6: he felt they needed to do something before Muslims and
Speaker 6: ISIS took over the United States.
Speaker 1: Stein wasted no time.
Speaker 6: So patrick Stein organized a meeting in a field in
Speaker 6: a rural area and gathered people that he deemed would
Speaker 6: be willing to do something.
Speaker 1: Dan went to the meeting to capture what happened.
Speaker 4: He was recording it was a whole thing. His car
Speaker 4: broke down.
Speaker 6: I had to take him to meet up with Stein,
Speaker 6: so he had had a stressful day already. I dropped
Speaker 6: him off and Stein picked him up, and he rode
Speaker 6: with Stein to the meeting, which was about three hour
Speaker 6: drive to where they went.
Speaker 4: Stein didn't have air conditioning and Dan.
Speaker 6: Did not take anything to drink, and it was June
Speaker 6: and it was really hot.
Speaker 1: The FBI couldn't directly keep eyes on the gathering as
Speaker 1: it was in a wide open field outside of town.
Speaker 1: Amy was listening on the wire from far away, knowing
Speaker 1: if something went wrong, Dan was on his own. It
Speaker 1: was a dangerous assignment for a civilian. Despite being surrounded
Speaker 1: by armed, angry men in the middle of nowhere, Dan
Speaker 1: kept the recorder running. The conversation dragged on in the
Speaker 1: sweltering heat, moving from complaints to violent ideas.
Speaker 6: So they're in this field talking about what they should do,
Speaker 6: and there's things brought up, like shooting at a mosque.
Speaker 1: Hours dragged on until the strain became too much.
Speaker 6: I was trying to text him and I was getting
Speaker 6: no response.
Speaker 1: Had Dan's cover been blown? The silence felt like an eternity.
Speaker 1: With informant Dan day on responsive. The question for the
Speaker 1: FBI became whether to break cover and intervene.
Speaker 4: So my bosses were like, do we need to go in?
Speaker 4: What's going on?
Speaker 6: And because of the rule of nature, we had a
Speaker 6: surveillance team, but they were a long ways away because
Speaker 6: we did not want to burn Dan, and I felt
Speaker 6: his safety would be more at issue if we went in.
Speaker 1: As the team considered what to do, Amy's phone suddenly buzzed.
Speaker 6: Dan texted me and said he was in the hospital
Speaker 6: in Hutchison.
Speaker 4: He had passed out.
Speaker 6: They had called an ambulance, the ambulance had taken him
Speaker 6: to the hospital. I was like, all right, So Robin
Speaker 6: and I loaded up to go get him from the
Speaker 6: hospital in.
Speaker 1: Hutch The heat had taken its toll and he had
Speaker 1: passed out. Most importantly that Amy Dan was safe. The
Speaker 1: device he had been carrying also survived, and so did
Speaker 1: the recording. But would they be able to use it.
Speaker 6: It's clear when he passes out we were consensually recording.
Speaker 4: Not to mention it.
Speaker 6: Also, when he passes out, we no longer have a
Speaker 6: consenting party. It becomes an illegal title iree because our
Speaker 6: consenting party is not there.
Speaker 1: That meant every second of audio after Dan collapsed couldn't
Speaker 1: be used.
Speaker 6: They did not find the recording device on him, neither
Speaker 6: the people in the field nor the hospital people. When
Speaker 6: Robin and I got to the hospital, we turned off
Speaker 6: the recording device. Also, I sent the recording and I said, hey,
Speaker 6: we got to have somebody review this before we can
Speaker 6: listen to it, because it's tainted. We had a taint
Speaker 6: review team that figured out when he passed out in
Speaker 6: the field and spliced that out.
Speaker 1: The agent assembled the remaining pieces of the meetings, recording
Speaker 1: what happened that night served as an important reminder the
Speaker 1: fine line between the success of a case and personal harm,
Speaker 1: especially when it comes to a civilian informant. But what
Speaker 1: was left of the usable tape from Dan's recorder would
Speaker 1: become essential.
Speaker 6: That meeting in the field became the beginning of our
Speaker 6: conspiracy for court.
Speaker 1: But the case was still evolving.
Speaker 6: Patrick Stein was a true believer. I think he genuinely
Speaker 6: believed that basically all Somali's were Muslim and all the
Speaker 6: Muslims wanted to do harm to United States citizens.
Speaker 1: There was a small group of men that also shared
Speaker 1: his ideology.
Speaker 6: Patrick Stein, Curtis Allen, Gavin Wright, and Dan all become
Speaker 6: part of this group called the Crusaders.
Speaker 1: Even the name Crusaders was telling a throwback to religious wars.
Speaker 1: It framed them as patriotic religious avengers. Alan and Wright
Speaker 1: would become Stein's keyco conspirators, joining him in a plan
Speaker 1: that was beginning to take shape.
Speaker 6: They set up a new group on Signal and they
Speaker 6: named the group Crusaders.
Speaker 4: Two point zero.
Speaker 1: Signal is a privacy focused messaging app with end to
Speaker 1: end encryption for the FBI. It raised the question were
Speaker 1: these men simply exercising our right to privacy or working
Speaker 1: to cover their tracks. Their encrypted chats gave them a
Speaker 1: private space to push each other further, and Patrick.
Speaker 6: Stein frequently talked about that they were essentially the new
Speaker 6: Crusaders and that they were getting the Muslims out again,
Speaker 6: much like the original Crusaders.
Speaker 1: And inside that echo chamber, the talk evolved from vague
Speaker 1: anger to concrete plotting.
Speaker 6: They talked to some other members of KSF that they
Speaker 6: thought would be down for their cause. Ultimately, the people
Speaker 6: that they approached said, look, we are willing to respond
Speaker 6: if something happens, but we don't want to initiate anything.
Speaker 6: Whereas Curtis, Patrick and Gavin were talking about initiating something,
Speaker 6: there was one member that had his wife not been there,
Speaker 6: would have probably been on board, but she said, yeah,
Speaker 6: we're not doing that.
Speaker 4: We have kids.
Speaker 1: They split from the larger group, leaving Stein, Alan and
Speaker 1: Wright on their own, isolated but committed.
Speaker 6: They would have meetings and these meetings would last a hours,
Speaker 6: six hours a long time. They were all very paranoid
Speaker 6: about government listening in so They would make everybody put
Speaker 6: their cell phones in a room and they would turn
Speaker 6: the music up so the government couldn't listen to them.
Speaker 1: It soon became clear why they didn't want to be heard.
Speaker 6: They would talk about a lot of different conspiracy theories.
Speaker 6: They would also talk about what they wanted to do.
Speaker 6: They talked about blowing stuff up. They talked about shooting
Speaker 6: landlords because the landlords were allowing these Muslims to rent
Speaker 6: from them, going in and shooting.
Speaker 4: Up a bunch apartments.
Speaker 6: They talked about trying to put a bomb at a parade.
Speaker 6: There were a lot of different ideas, but ultimately they
Speaker 6: decided that they wanted to do something At three h
Speaker 6: five West Mary. It's an apartment complex. There's a large
Speaker 6: Somali population and Muslim population, and one of the apartments
Speaker 6: had been turned into a mosque.
Speaker 1: And the something they wanted to do was deadly.
Speaker 6: Ultimately, they decided on some sort of bomb to blow
Speaker 6: up the mosque, and they started working on their own
Speaker 6: homemade explosives. They wanted to do trash can bombs or
Speaker 6: car bombs, park them in the parking lot and blow
Speaker 6: up the apartment complex. They also talked about trying to
Speaker 6: drop some kind of bomb through the air ducks.
Speaker 1: The scope of their plot was unmistakable. What had started
Speaker 1: as talk had evolved into a plan for mass casualties.
Speaker 1: As the plan grew more specific, Amy Enter team faced
Speaker 1: a problem. Dan Day was their only source. Stein and
Speaker 1: his group were asking for others and safety and the
Speaker 1: investigation were at risk.
Speaker 6: They thought that they might need help with their explosive devices.
Speaker 6: So this is about the time that we introduced an
Speaker 6: undercover because we were concerned that they were moving very quickly.
Speaker 6: Patrick Sin was using drugs at this time too, so
Speaker 6: sometimes his behavior was kind of erratic, and there was
Speaker 6: always a concern that Dan Day might get cut out.
Speaker 6: And he was the only eyes and ears that we
Speaker 6: had into this. They didn't really use cell phones a lot.
Speaker 6: They met in person. Also, when going to court, undercovers
Speaker 6: generally are more reliable.
Speaker 1: And that is basically because an undercover agent is a
Speaker 1: member of law enforcement, whereas with a civilian like Dan
Speaker 1: there's always the risk that they get scared and cut
Speaker 1: and run and won't be willing to testify. Dan was
Speaker 1: true trusted by Stein and his pals, so agents wanted
Speaker 1: to use that to their advantage.
Speaker 6: From the beginning, Dan had told them some of his
Speaker 6: relatives were involved in some illegal activities. He told them
Speaker 6: he had a family member that ran guns, like he's
Speaker 6: a guy that can get stuff and they were friends.
Speaker 1: That family member was fiction, but it was the cover
Speaker 1: story for an FBI operative.
Speaker 6: Dan was like, Hey, do you want to meet up
Speaker 6: with this guy? And as a group, they decided that
Speaker 6: they did want to meet up, but Gavin and Curtis
Speaker 6: did not want to go meet in person because they
Speaker 6: were concerned that it was a government agent. But they
Speaker 6: still wanted to know what the guy had to say,
Speaker 6: so patrick Stein decided he was going to go talk
Speaker 6: to him.
Speaker 1: The meeting went according to plan, the FBI's plan.
Speaker 6: They came up with a list of things that was
Speaker 6: like grenades, debt, cord, there are four items. We have
Speaker 6: multiple undercovers there, and Dan dropped a package off with them.
Speaker 4: They paid him.
Speaker 6: Then he introduces the undercover to patrick Stein.
Speaker 1: Stein's reaction left little doubt that this was the right match.
Speaker 6: They have a conversation and patrick Stein basically has a
Speaker 6: man crush on.
Speaker 4: The undercover from the beginning.
Speaker 6: He likes everything that the undercover says and he is
Speaker 6: fully supportive After the conversation, Stein believed that he could
Speaker 6: make explosives and he knew what he was doing. The
Speaker 6: name that the undercover used with these guys was Brian.
Speaker 1: With that first meeting complete, Brian, the FBI undercover became embedded,
Speaker 1: and it didn't take long before Stein began confiding in him.
Speaker 6: All of this is actually in text communications between Patrick
Speaker 6: Stein and Brian. Patrick Stein's like, well, here's our plan.
Speaker 6: We want to have bombs set up at the apartment
Speaker 6: complex to completely wipe out the complex. We want to
Speaker 6: do it during prayer time to kill the most people
Speaker 6: that we can because everybody will be there at prayer time.
Speaker 4: He said.
Speaker 6: We were thinking trash can bombs or car bombs. Then
Speaker 6: the undercover says, well, I can provide you a car
Speaker 6: bomb that would be able to take out the complex,
Speaker 6: and patrick Stein says, oh, and I have fertilizer because
Speaker 6: he works on a farm.
Speaker 1: Even as undercover, Brian offered to supply materials. The others
Speaker 1: kept experimenting on their own in.
Speaker 6: Case they couldn't figure out how to make it work.
Speaker 6: Curtis Allen and Gavin Wright continued.
Speaker 4: To make explosives to the point where they made HMTD.
Speaker 1: For amateur bomb makers. HMTD is a go to ingredient.
Speaker 6: The hardest part of making explosives is that initial explosive
Speaker 6: that sets the larger explosive off. So they were successful
Speaker 6: in making HMTD, and we have a recording where they're
Speaker 6: talking to Dan about how they made it and they
Speaker 6: almost blew up the sink in the bathroom, and that
Speaker 6: they had made a couple batches. At the time, Gavin
Speaker 6: Wright and his brother owned a company called GMNG Mobile
Speaker 6: Homes and they had made this HMTD at GNG Mobile Homes,
Speaker 6: which was also a business that people came into. So
Speaker 6: then we had concerns about people's safety.
Speaker 1: They had also decided when the attack would take place.
Speaker 6: They wanted to do it the day after the election.
Speaker 6: This is in October of twenty sixteen, when Hillary Clinton
Speaker 6: and Trump are running against each other. They didn't want
Speaker 6: to do anything that would cause Hillary to be elected,
Speaker 6: and so they were planning it for.
Speaker 4: The day after the election. In November.
Speaker 1: Actual preparation began.
Speaker 6: At the same time, We're trying to set up a
Speaker 6: second meeting with Brian and they were going to shoot
Speaker 6: fully automatic weapons in a field. Curtis Allen and Gavin
Speaker 6: Wright were still kind of on the fence, but it
Speaker 6: looked positive that they were going to be coming to
Speaker 6: the meeting. Patrick Stein was all in and Dan was
Speaker 6: going to be there with Patrick. We had several undercovers
Speaker 6: to try to make the shooting as safe as possible, because,
Speaker 6: as you can imagine, if you have a group of
Speaker 6: people that you're investigating shooting automatic weapons, and there's a
Speaker 6: lot that goes into getting approvals for that.
Speaker 1: The operation was ready to go, but then it hit
Speaker 1: a snack.
Speaker 6: It was Columbus Day. We had set up the shooting
Speaker 6: in the field. We practiced how to run through with
Speaker 6: all of the personnel that we were using. We finished
Speaker 6: rehearsing and Dan Day gets a call saying Curtis Allen
Speaker 6: has been arrested for domestic violence against his girlfriend. And
Speaker 6: about the same time, Robin got a call from a
Speaker 6: Liberal PD detective saying they might need the FBI's help
Speaker 6: because they had just arrested in an individual who had
Speaker 6: a lot of militia stuff and his girlfriend was saying
Speaker 6: that Curtis Allen was part of a group that was
Speaker 6: planning on doing something. So we leave the field and
Speaker 6: we're like okay, So this is a new turn. Now,
Speaker 6: what are we going to do?
Speaker 1: Local police had stumbled onto the very plot that the
Speaker 1: FBI had been watching for months. Amy and her partner
Speaker 1: needed to improvise.
Speaker 6: Local law enforcement still did not know about our investigation
Speaker 6: at this point, so we came up with a plan
Speaker 6: that Robin and I were going to go down to
Speaker 6: Liberal PD and see what they had, and we were
Speaker 6: still going to go forward with shooting the automatic weapons.
Speaker 6: Curtis Allen is in jail, but the hope was to
Speaker 6: still get Patrick Stein and Gavin.
Speaker 1: Wright at the station. Amy and her partner sat down
Speaker 1: with Alan's girlfriend.
Speaker 6: We go down to go speak with Curtis's girlfriend. I
Speaker 6: interviewed her and she is claiming that Curtis Allen is
Speaker 6: part of a group that is planning on doing something
Speaker 6: to Somali's She didn't no for sure what it was,
Speaker 6: but she knew that involved killing Muslims and that they
Speaker 6: had been making explosives.
Speaker 1: Her motive may have been tied to their relationship impossible revenge,
Speaker 1: but her information corroborated some of what the FBI already knew.
Speaker 6: She and Curtis had gotten into a fight and he
Speaker 6: had grabbed her arm and she was out for vengeance,
Speaker 6: so she gave up all the information she knew about
Speaker 6: Curtis and him being part of a militia group. She
Speaker 6: also said he's making silencers and he has a bunch
Speaker 6: of weapons. So Liberal PD did a search warrant at
Speaker 6: their trailer and took all of his guns. They also
Speaker 6: found potential bomb making stuff, militia stuff, and they found
Speaker 6: a manifesto for the group explaining why they were doing this.
Speaker 1: The writings laid out ambitions that went far beyond Garden City.
Speaker 6: Ultimately, they wanted to start a chain reaction of militia
Speaker 6: groups taking action against Muslims across the country.
Speaker 1: The investigation had reached a tipping point. The conspirators were
Speaker 1: no longer just talking. They were plotting a campaign for
Speaker 1: nationwide violence. And with Curtis Allen behind bars, the question
Speaker 1: was no longer whether to act, but when.
Speaker 6: After the search warrants, we talked to the AUSA and
Speaker 6: grand jury was the next week. So Wednesday night, leaving
Speaker 6: we thought, well, indict these guys next week. About ten
Speaker 6: minutes after I got home that night, I get a
Speaker 6: call from the ASAC saying the decision has been made
Speaker 6: that we are arresting these guys on Friday.
Speaker 1: The timeline changed overnight.
Speaker 6: We started working on everything that had to be done
Speaker 6: in order to get these guys arrested. Friday. At six
Speaker 6: o'clock in the morning, we reached back out to Stein
Speaker 6: and Stein was going to deliver four bags of fertilizer
Speaker 6: to the undercover Friday morning.
Speaker 1: Fertilizer may sound ordinary, but in the wrong hands it's
Speaker 1: anything but. Mixed with fuel and a detonator, it becomes
Speaker 1: a powerful bomb, the same kind that was used in
Speaker 1: the Oklahoma City bombing. Stopping Stein before he could make
Speaker 1: that handoff became the priority.
Speaker 6: We also worked on a plan to arrest Gavin and
Speaker 6: do search warrants at Gavin house, patrick Stein's house, Gavin's vehicle,
Speaker 6: patrick Stein's vehicle.
Speaker 1: Patrick Stein never made it past the parking.
Speaker 6: Lot, so patrick Stein gets arrested Friday morning at the
Speaker 6: McDonald's in Dodge City by the Kansas City swat team.
Speaker 6: He pulls up and walks inside to meet with the undercover.
Speaker 6: They have a short conversation and then they're walking out
Speaker 6: to move the fertilizer from one vehicle to the other.
Speaker 4: And they arrest him in the parking lot. When he
Speaker 4: comes out.
Speaker 6: The SWAT team handed him over to Robin and I
Speaker 6: and we took him to the Sheriff's office and interviewed him.
Speaker 1: Did he seem surprised?
Speaker 4: He was very surprised. He was shocked.
Speaker 6: He basically says, how could you do this? I had
Speaker 6: a cross on and he saw my cross and he
Speaker 6: was like, how can you allow them to arrest me
Speaker 6: when we are protecting you.
Speaker 4: You should be in my corner.
Speaker 1: His accomplices soon followed.
Speaker 6: Curtis aund was transferred into federal custody. And I had
Speaker 6: tried to interview him and he asked for an attorney,
Speaker 6: so he didn't talk to us. Gavin Wright was arrested
Speaker 6: and he also didn't talk to anybody.
Speaker 1: By that Friday morning, the plot to bomb three h
Speaker 1: five West Mary Street and kill as many as they
Speaker 1: could was over. The three men who called themselves the
Speaker 1: Crusaders were behind bars.
Speaker 5: At THEI agents say that this investigation took them into
Speaker 5: a hidden culture of both hate and violence. Thoriti to say.
Speaker 5: Curtis Wayne, Allen Patrick, Eugene Stein, and Gavin Wayne Wright
Speaker 5: were all arrested after they planned to bomb an apartment
Speaker 5: complex in Garden City, in Southwest Kansas. The Council on
Speaker 5: American Islamic Relations issued a statement after the arrest that
Speaker 5: says state and federal authority should offer or stepped up
Speaker 5: protection to local communities. If convicted, all three men could
Speaker 5: face life in prison.
Speaker 6: They were charged with conspiracy to make a weapon of
Speaker 6: mass destruction WMD.
Speaker 1: They were all tried together at trial. The defense strategy
Speaker 1: was clear from the start.
Speaker 6: They tried to use an entrapment case. They did the
Speaker 6: openings in court, and one of the defense councils opening
Speaker 6: was that we had conspired to put cases on these
Speaker 6: guys when they were just law abiding citizens and part
Speaker 6: of a militia group. Basically, they tried to argue that
Speaker 6: these guys were just misunderstood and they were militia members
Speaker 6: trying to protect themselves and they weren't actually going to
Speaker 6: do anything, but the government pushed them to do it.
Speaker 6: But the judge ruled that there wasn't entrapment.
Speaker 1: The recordings the FBI had gathered left little room for doubt.
Speaker 6: The other thing that happened is they got charged with
Speaker 6: a hate crime. We worked with Civil Rights Division out
Speaker 6: a headquarters to do a hate crime because in the recordings.
Speaker 4: They talked about.
Speaker 6: Doing this because they were Muslim and because they were Somali,
Speaker 6: and Patrick Stein called them cockroaches, and he said he
Speaker 6: was the Orcan man and.
Speaker 4: He was going to exterminate all of them.
Speaker 6: And they had put a map up and labeled all
Speaker 6: the places that Somali's lived and their stores.
Speaker 1: The jury heard the evidence, and their verdicts spoke volumes.
Speaker 6: They were all found guilty of conspiracy for Weabino mass destruction.
Speaker 6: They were all found guilty of hate crimes.
Speaker 1: When the case went to sentencing, prosecutors recommended life in prison.
Speaker 1: Patrick Stein, the ringleader, was sentenced to thirty years. Curtis
Speaker 1: Allen was given twenty five. Gavin Wright, who was also
Speaker 1: convicted of lying to federal agents, received twenty six. Looking back,
Speaker 1: Amy as quick to share the credit.
Speaker 6: Clearly, it made a difference in a lot of people's lives,
Speaker 6: which I'm grateful for, but.
Speaker 4: I can't take the credit for that.
Speaker 6: I often tell people it's better to be lucky than good.
Speaker 6: I mean, obviously I put a lot of work into
Speaker 6: the investigation, but ultimately I think the right people were
Speaker 6: around at the right time, and it was maybe faded.
Speaker 6: I think God had a hand in it, So you know,
Speaker 6: I just did my small part.
Speaker 1: The FBI's investigation and the resulting trial saved countless lives.
Speaker 1: But for Amy, the real hero is Dan Day.
Speaker 6: Had it not been for him, I think that Garden
Speaker 6: City would be a significantly different place today than it
Speaker 6: was back then.
Speaker 1: So interesting, like he comes to your attention because he
Speaker 1: takes down a Palestinian flag in a library, right, and
Speaker 1: by the end of it, he really single handedly, obviously
Speaker 1: with the help of a lot of people afterwards, saved
Speaker 1: so many people.
Speaker 6: Yes, I consider Dan Day a hero, and I think
Speaker 6: everybody that is involved in this case would say that
Speaker 6: Dan Day was a hero.
Speaker 4: But then he had a heart condition and passed away
Speaker 4: a couple years ago.
Speaker 1: Dan's loss was felt deeply by those who knew him.
Speaker 1: Over the years, threats have multiplied, terrorism has changed, and
Speaker 1: the dangers now are more extreme than they once were.
Speaker 1: But the tools to fight back are sharper and those
Speaker 1: working to keep us safe are as determined as ever.
Speaker 2: Next time, on Law and Order criminal justice system.
Speaker 6: We are following reports of a mass shooting at Tops
Speaker 6: supermarket in Buffalo, New York.
Speaker 4: I decided to see if my mother's cart was there.
Speaker 4: I got another detective asked him to go in. When
Speaker 4: he didn't come.
Speaker 3: Back, I knew and they actually used a shopping cart
Speaker 3: to load the store manager and push that card out
Speaker 3: and got them evacuated from the store. It's someone with
Speaker 3: an easily acquired assault rifle walking into a public place
Speaker 3: that has no security deterrence and opening fire.
Speaker 2: Law and Order Criminal Justice System is the production of
Speaker 2: Wolf Entertainment and iHeart Podcasts. Our host is Anna Sega Nicolazzi.
Speaker 2: The show was written by Cooper Mall, Executive produced by
Speaker 2: Dick Wolf, Elliot Wolf, and Steven Michael at Wolf Entertainment
Speaker 2: on behalf of iHeart Podcasts. Executive producers Trevor Young and
Speaker 2: Matt Frederick, with supervising producer Chandler Mays and producer Jesse Funk.
Speaker 2: This season is executive produced by Anna Sega Nicolazzi. Our
Speaker 2: researchers are Luke Stantz and Carolyn Tolmage. Editing and sound
Speaker 2: designed by Trevor Young and Jesse Funk. Original music by
Speaker 2: John O'Hara, Original theme by Mike Post with additional music
Speaker 2: by Steve Moore and additional voice over by me Steve
Speaker 2: Zernkelton Special. Thanks to Fox five in New York for
Speaker 2: providing archival material for the show. For more podcasts from
Speaker 2: iHeart in Wolf Entertainment, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 2: or wherever you get your favorite shows. Thanks for listening.