Thursday, May 26, 2011

Enemy at gate? Not in this case

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On the other side of the barbed-wire fence, John Joe Gray, a "free-standing man" and fugitive from the law, is locked and loaded for the coming apocalypse or authorities - whichever shows up first.

"It's coming," he says. "It's time this country knows God is coming."

A rifle is slung across his back and a gun belt around his waist holds a revolver and extra cartridges. A knife is strapped to the other side of his lean torso. A battered felt hat frames a deeply lined face and bushy beard.

Dangling from a nearby tree, a hangman's noose strangles a weathered sign that sums up his stance: "Solution to tyranny."

Warily covering Gray's flanks are two of his six children, sons Jonathan, 39, and Timothy, 33. The dark-bearded, fit and tanned brothers are as well-armed as their 62-year-old father.

Ten feet behind her brothers and father, long-haired Ruth Gray, 31, stands solemn and silent. She, too, is armed to the teeth.

Next to her is teenager Jessica Gray, "who is old enough," according to her father, Jonathan. She has on a cowboy hat that the wind keeps blowing off, a long denim skirt, a sequined denim vest and cowboy boots. She's packing a pistol and binoculars.

Law is ignoring him

This is one stubborn side of what has been called America's longest-running standoff with law enforcement.

But it's been a single-sided siege. Henderson County authorities have pointedly ignored the would-be war.

For more than 11 years, John Joe Gray and his country clan have been holed up inside their own private prison, a 47-acre strip of Trinity River bottomland about 100 miles southeast of Fort Worth in Henderson County.



2 comments:

  1. The Gray's are nuttier than squirrel turds... They are also within their Rights.

    They got crossed up with the law in Texas over a dispute of custody from a divorce. Things went dowhill after that... The scuffle with the troopers, illegal in and of itself on the troopers side, was just another by-product.

    Ignore him? They had a dozen law enforcement agencies up there at first. They even had Chuck Norris in to try and talk 'em out. It was only over time that they have come to "ignore" him...

    "Ignore" my arse... His very existance is a thumb in their eye. Kudo's to the Gray's for sticking to their guns.

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