Who Are Those Guys?
In the 1969 film classic Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang has just robbed a train owned by E.H. Harriman. In the midst of their glee, the gang watches as a shorter train shrieks to a halt some distance down the tracks. For a breathless moment, no one quite knows what to expect. Then out jumps a posse of men on horseback, and they ride hard toward the outlaws. The gang leaves the money and flees. They’ve outrun posses before, but this one seems different.
To try to diminish the posse’s strength, they split up. Butch and Sundance ride off together for a while and then turn around. They find that the entire posse is after them. They devise several more tricks, such as using only one horse, but the faceless riders are relentless. At several different junctures, exhausted and astonished by the persistence of their pursuers, they ask, “Who are those guys?”
It seems that E. H. Harriman of the Union Pacific Railroad has hired the best trackers in the business. They have been deputized by the U.S. Marshals to go after the fugitives and track them down-even, it seems, to Bolivia. And they just don’t give up.
While those scenes are from a movie, the truth according to historian Frederick S. Calhoun in The Lawmen, is that U. S. Marshals Frank A. Hadsell worked closely with Pinkerton detectives to find these notorious robbers but never managed to apprehend them. The Hole-in-the-Wall hideout in the Wyoming mountains was impossible to locate and the gang proved maddeningly elusive. “The most Hadsell and his posses could do,” reports Calhoun, “was chase the outlaws out of Wyoming.”
Nevertheless, the image of a special law enforcement team that won’t quit left a strong impression on the culture. The movie echoed the way the U.S. Marshals have been portrayed in countless westerns. Notable Marshals in other movies have been played by John Wayne, ex-President Ronald Reagan, and Tommy Lee Jones, who starred in both The Fugitive remake and its sequel, U.S. Marshals. The DVD version of the latter film includes a succinct overview of the Marshals, “Justice under the Star.”
Accordingly, their motto is “Justice, Integrity, and Service,” and the Marshals’ famous five-sided star is the oldest emblem of federal law enforcement in our country. “Portrayed throughout history for legendary heroics in the face of lawlessness,” says the official Web site, “these deputies carry out their daily assignments with dedication and professionalism.”
Let’s take a brief look at their history and function, and then talk with a man who earned one of these prestigious appointments.
First formed on September 24, 1789, with the federal judiciary under George Washington’s presidency, the Marshals were empowered to be the federal government’s civilian law enforcement arm. Washington himself appointed the first men to hold this position. Their duties involved supporting and protecting federal judges and carrying out the laws that the judges, the President, or Congress handed down. They served subpoenas, warrants, and other process papers issued by the courts. They also made the arrests and handled the prisoners. These functions involved them in some of the most significant events in American history, including such incidents as the Whiskey Rebellion, the civil rights protests, the Sioux occupation of Wounded Knee, the Branch Davidian confrontation in Waco, and the arrest of many infamous fugitives. Until they were tentatively centralized under a director in 1969, many of them acted on their own authority.
Each Marshal is appointed by the sitting president to serve a four-year term, renewable if that president extends his term, and each is assigned to a judicial district. When the Marshals were first formed over two centuries ago, there were only sixteen districts. Now there are ninety-four. Within each, the chief deputy Marshals, a career position, is the senior law enforcement officer, serving directly under the political appointee.
The U. S. Marshals Service is now one of five bureaus within the Department of Justice and has the widest range of jurisdiction under the federal code. The Marshals work with many career deputies, and when necessary, they can quickly deputize state and local law enforcement for special situations. To date, they have arrested 55 percent of federal fugitives, “more than all other federal agencies combined,” and since 1983, they have cleared 145 of the 157 fugitives listed as the “15 Most Wanted.”
- Their duties fulfill five primary missions:
- Judicial security to ensure a safe open court environment with 24-hour protection
- Witness security through the witness protection program
- Prisoner transport over 94,000 prisoners are taken into custody each year and 285,000 are moved from one place to another, including by air transport
- Fugitive investigation and apprehension
- The Asset Seizure and Forfeiture Program, which deprives drug dealers and money launderers of the fruits of their crimes
In 1971, a specially trained tactical unit, the Special Operations Group (SOG), was also created to respond in a paramilitary manner to significant civil disorders, terrorism or hostage situations. They operate as a team to move quickly to contain critical incidents anywhere in the U.S. or its territories.
While many people think of U.S. Marshals as lone lawmen in the Wild West going up against ornery outlaws, in fact the Marshals are present in every state and many of their tasks are administrative. Even so, over 400 Marshals have been killed in the line of duty, so there’s still a sense that men and women who pledge to protect the justice system may face danger as they carry out their duties. The job is never predictable.
Among the most famous of the U.S. Marshals was Wyatt Earp. His legend is heroic but the truth is far different. He and one of his brothers were deputy Marshals, and both abused their power for personal agendas. The famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral was simply a street fight, nothing more. It became a legend based, in part, on the misunderstanding of another Marshal.
On the afternoon of October 26, 1881, Wyatt Earp and two of his brothers armed themselves and went over to the O. K. Corral in Tombstone, Arizona. A lifelong friend and skilled gunslinger, Doc Holliday, joined them. Altogether, there were four of them preparing to confront four rough men who were reputedly part of a dangerous group of cattle rustlers known as The Cowboys.
Recently, the films Tombstone and Wyatt Earp explored the life and times of this famous man, continuing the heroic tradition that has made him almost an archetype of the American West and making the gunfight a central event inspired by courage and determination. Wyatt’s self-confidence and heroism were depicted in both films, but there was more to the story than simply killing some bad guys to make the town a better place to live. In fact, Wyatt Earp’s entire stint with law enforcement lasted only about six years, starting in 1875. During that time, he befriended Bat Masterson, another man destined to become a Marshal, but he also abused the star.
What many people don’t know is that Wyatt’s own father was a U.S. Provost Marshal in Iowa, so he had a strong role model in law enforcement, but that didn’t stop him from getting into trouble. Wyatt himself, according to Old West historians, was once jailed for stealing horses and he jumped bail, so he was never tried. Yet the Wild West needed men of skill and confidence to keep things in order, so despite being an outlaw he served as a deputy sheriff and a federal Deputy Marshal in such towns as Wichita and Dodge City.
The Earp brothers came to the lawless town of Tombstone in 1879 to get rich from silver mining. Virgil Earp became a Deputy Marshal and then served locally as the town Marshal, while Morgan Earp worked for the police. They were asked to go after the Cowboys, who robbed stagecoaches and disturbed the tenuous peace between Mexico and the U.S. by going over the border at night to rustle cattle and kill Mexicans. Yet even when a Marshal arrested one of these men, prejudiced juries generally did not convict anyone for crimes against a Mexican, so those in law enforcement quickly realized the futility. In fact, the Cowboys even murdered two Deputy Marshals, so going after them was clearly a dangerous and thankless job.
During this time, says Frederick Calhoun in The Lawmen, Wyatt decided that he wanted to be sheriff of Cochise County, which meant getting paid large fees for collecting taxes. It also meant animosity between him and Sheriff Johnny Behan, who wanted to keep the job. Wyatt not only went after Behan’s job but also his common-law wife, Josephine, and a feud soon developed between the Earp brothers and the sheriff who had befriended the Clanton clanbelieved to be part of the Cowboys.
The Cowboys grew in strength, number, and violent incidents, and in January of 1881, they killed 40 Mexicans across the border. The Mexicans retaliated, and there were more deaths on both sides of the border, including Old Man Clanton, the clan leader. Finally the Mexican government complained and the Marshal in Prescott, AZ, Crowley Dake, asked the local Deputy Marshal, Virgil Earp, to arrest the Cowboys. Since there were over 100 of them, it was no easy task, and Virgil had signed on to collect fees and hand out warrants, not chase down outlaws. He wasn’t interested.
Yet somehow Dake got the idea that the gunfight at the O.K. Corral was part of Virgil’s effort to follow orders. It seems that Virgil had deputized Wyatt, Morgan and Doc Holliday to go with him to confront the Clantons. That gave it the appearance of “official business.” Yet as Calhoun reports, it was anything but.
Earlier that day, October 26, there was an argument between Wyatt and Ike Clanton over the betrayal of a confidence. For the reward money, Wyatt had asked for Ike’s assistance in identifying the perpetrators of a robbery, but Ike had decided not to help. They agreed to say nothing to anyone about the conversation, but word got around and Ike felt betrayed. So did Wyatt. He hit Ike with a pistol and then Virgil arrested him for disturbing the peace. Ike was released and found his brother, Billy, along with the McLaury bothers, Frank and Tom. While saddling his horse to leave town, he complained to Sheriff Behan. All four were preparing to leave.
That was when Virgil deputized Morgan, Wyatt, and Doc, and together they approached the vacant lot next to the infamous corral. Virgil used his authority as the town Marshal to charge them with bringing handguns into the city limits, which was against the town law. Without even checking to see if they were armed, Wyatt opened fire. In fact, two of the men were unarmed and thus were gunned down in cold blood right in front of Sheriff Behan. Wyatt later claimed that Frank McLaury went for his gun first, so Wyatt killed him in self-defense. Then Doc fired at Tom McLaury, hitting him in the gut, while Ike ran for cover. Virgil and Morgan both shot at Billy.
Frank went after his horse as he held his wound closed, while Tom collapsed and died against a telephone pole.
Morgan took a shot in the shoulder from Billy, and Morgan shot at Frank, shattering the top of his skull.
Billy fired at Doc, hitting his gun holster and bruising his leg. Billy then fired at Virgil and hit him in the leg. Wyatt and Virgil shot back, killing Billy.
The entire fight lasted less than a minute. Wyatt, who had shot first, was the only one to escape unscathed. Three men were dead, three wounded, and the Cowboys continued their plunder as if nothing had ever happened. That’s probably because the gunfight had been personal, not business.
According to historian Bob Katz, the Tombstone city fathers considered the gunfight an outright homicide and Virgil was terminated as a Marshal. Not long afterward, he was ambushed, losing the use of his arm, so Wyatt asked for a commission from Marshal Dake as a Deputy Marshal. He got it, as well as money, to go after the Cowboys. Instead, he went after the men who had attacked Virgil. It didn’t much matter to him whether they were part of the notorious gang.
Then when unknown gunmen assassinated Morgan Earp in a pool hall two months later, Wyatt and another brother, Warren, along with Doc Holliday, formed a posse and went after the three suspects, gunning them down. They had no evidence, only their suspicions. Their aim was not justice but revenge. Or, as Doc Holliday says of Wyatt in Tombstone, “It’s not revenge he’s after. It’s a reckoning.” To avoid being arrested for these murders, Wyatt then fled from Arizona to Colorado with Josephine.
Under McKinley’s presidency, as reported in some accounts, Wyatt Earp was invited to become a U.S. Marshal, but he declined the honor and went to Alaska to set up a business. He apparently did better with mining than he did with upholding the law.
Once the Wild West was gone after the 1800s, local law enforcement began to control jurisdictions and the Marshals lost their public prominence; in the early 1900s Hoover created the FBI, and his forceful personality made it into a major agency. Now its name has more influence and force, so the FBI gets more funds and recognition than the Marshals. Nevertheless, the heroic Old West Marshal is part of American history and culture.
“As far as I’m concerned,” says former U.S. Marshals Roger Ray, “John Wayne is the U.S. Marshals.”
Ray has participated in every facet of the Marshals’ role, from prisoner transport to witness protection to asset seizure. Let’s get a closer look at his career.
U.S. Marshal
Like his fictional role model, Marshal Cahill, Roger Ray has a long history with law enforcement. He once worked as an intern at the Federal Bureau of Prisons and then joined the Army, where he became a military police officer. His experience there was instrumental in inspiring his interest in the Marshals Service. “I couldn’t have found a more interesting and challenging career,” he said. “The diversity of what the Marshals do surpasses that of the FBI or Secret Service. They have specific assignments but we do it all.”
Ray had an unusual military stint that prepared him for different types of operations. “When I was in the Army I played the role of a hippie in anti-war demonstrations,” he recalls. “So I wore a wig, and I would go out and crash cars and burn buildings. I had a pretty good time, and the Deputy Provost Marshal of the Army, who was to become the United States Marshal for the District of Columbia, would see these demonstrations.”
Ray impressed this man, Colonel Anthony Pappa, so he invited Ray to come to work for the Marshals in Washington, D.C. “I love law enforcement so I went down and signed up. I started off in 1971 as the lowest person you could imagine in the Marshals Service, and finally in 1985 I was appointed by President Reagan to the highest office.”
He served as one of the 94 political appointees for nine years until President Clinton replaced him.
“How I like to describe the Marshals,” Ray says, “is if you looked at the federal law enforcement system, you see the hub of a wheel. The Marshals are the center of that wheel, because everything flows to the Marshals and comes back to the Marshals. All federal warrants must go through the U.S. Marshals Office and return to the court after being served. Marshals consider unserved warrants as fugitives from justice and do not give up the chase until they are apprehended.”
In fact, he points out, the Marshals arrest more people every year than all the other law enforcement agencies combined.
The protection and transport of prisoners is one of the Marshals’ primary duties, and Ray has met a few rather famous prisoners, from traitor John Walker Lindh to Larry Chin, a convicted spy for the Red Chinese who committed suicide in a local jail under contract to the Marshals Service. “He got hold of a plastic bag and put it over his head and suffocated.” He also transported the participants in the Watergate burglary and cover-up.
Watergate was one of the top presidential scandals of modern times, and many powerful men took a humiliating fall. It all started on June 17, 1972, when the police found five intruders inside the headquarters for the Democratic National Committee. They were there to adjust bugging equipment and photograph secret documents. The reporting team of Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward from The Washington Post uncovered a multi-level operation of spying and sabotage that led to President Nixon himself. Former presidential aide John Dean gave damaging testimony about Nixon to the Senate, wrote David Ho in The Philadelphia Inquirer on the 30th anniversary, and Nixon called him a traitor. Dean went to prison for over four months, as did high-placed Republicans such as G. Gordon Liddy and Howard Hunt. Altogether, as reported by the Washington Post, 40 government officials were indicted and two years after the initial arrests, Nixon resigned in shame.
Through it all, the men who were arrested had to be transported from prison to court and back again. “I handled all of the Watergate burglars,” Ray recalls, and among his favorite of these prisoners was Howard Hunt. “I found him very interesting to talk to. He was an author, so he was always looking for a story line. G. Gordon Liddy was interesting to talk to because he was a former FBI agent, but he would not discuss any aspect of the Watergate scandal.”
Yet prisoner transport can be demanding as well. With a partner, who would take turns guarding and driving, Ray would have to go on lengthy trips. “I might be on the road maybe two to three weeks at a time. We used our own personal cars-I usually tried to find somebody with a Cadillac-and we would travel from D.C. as far as Kansas City, Kansas. We would drop some off and pick some up, and then make our way back to D.C.”
He was quick to learn ways to keep them in line. “I always tried to treat the prisoners well and feed them good food because I didn’t want any problems. I would tell them ‘Hey, fellas, we can stop and eat at Kentucky Fried if you want, or I can go get a loaf of bread and make you a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.’ When you’re on the road with these guys, for three to four hundred miles, it can be a little tedious. I only had to tape one man’s mouth in my whole time of transporting prisoners. He just wouldn’t stop cursing. He was getting the other prisoner’s riled up, and I finally told him, ‘I’m gonna duct tape your mouth if you keep this up’ and he just kept on and on, so I taped his mouth up for the rest of the way that day. The next morning when we continued the trip, there was not a word out of him.”
Ray’s career started in D.C., which was different than the experience of most other Marshals, because it was a federal city where the Marshals also served as a sheriff. “We had to do all the processing, all the evictions, everything that normally a sheriff’s office would do.” At the same time, he still had to support the activities of the federal courts. Yet he found that doing so many different jobs made for a good learning experience.
After four years, he moved on to a management intern program with four other Marshals, in which they learned all the different facets of the Marshals Service. However, since the local U.S. Marshals were not used to being managed from a central agency, those in the field weren’t keen about having a “spy” from headquarters. Because he had a friend who knew him, Ray ended up in Alexandria, Virginia. He got interesting cases there, many of which involved protests and demonstrations against the Pentagon.
“We would have maybe 400 arrests in a day, and in that little Alexandria courthouse we didn’t have that much room, but I coordinated getting those people in. One day, I really had to put my thinking cap on. I had about 400 women without any ID on them and I had no jail space for these ladies. What they had been arrested for was a maximum of three days in jail, for trespassing or blocking entrances. So I’m trying to think what am I gonna do with all of them, and I thought, well, I’ll take the Arlington County jail gymnasium and get the military to give me cots. But before I could coordinate this, all these women came in and I had no place to put them. So I put them all on busses and sent them riding around the beltway [surrounding D.C.] until I could get all the arrangements made.”
The U.S. Marshal in the Eastern District of Virginia was impressed, so he promoted Ray to be the Chief Deputy Marshal for that district. Then when President Carter left office along with his appointees, Ray served as the court-appointed Marshal. Eventually President Reagan appointed him to the esteemed position of U.S. Marshal and the Senate confirmed him.
While serving the Eastern District of Virginia, Marshal Ray assisted U.S. Marshal Herbert Rutherford for the District of Columbia in a famous ruse that netted quite a number of fugitives and resolved many outstanding warrants. These individuals were notified that tickets to a Washington Redskins football game were being held for them at a certain address. The Marshals even had it all set up with a breakfast and cheerleaders. When the fugitives arrived, they were given breakfast and then taken from their families or friends into a private room and told that they were all under arrest.
“They fell for it,” says Ray, “because it was free and because going to a Redskins game was a big deal.”
While there were fun moments, there were also times of high risk. Much of what Ray saw and experienced from the 1970s onward arose from the turmoil of the previous decade, so we’ll step back for a look at one of the central events in the Marshals’ history.
Although the Marshals were once charged with finding and returning fugitive slaves before their emancipation, and with arresting those who helped slaves to escape, things turned around during the 1960s civil rights movements.
The government had decided to do something about the legacy of bigotry against blacks, but the legislation set federal officials at odds with state officials. Many southerners resisted the mandate to equalize opportunities, believing the white man to be morally superior to blacks.
However, the force of minority protest was a wave washing through the country. It could not be stopped and the Marshals were the primary enforcers of federal laws, so they were on the front lines of many of the disturbances. When Martin Luther King marched from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, to protest the resistance there to register blacks to vote, President Lyndon Johnson sent 100 Deputy Marshals, along with FBI agents and 4,000 soldiers, to protect the marchers. The deputies were actually to go with the marchers the entire 54 miles.
The court also ordered school desegregation nationwide, which met with fierce resistance. There was no way that southerners were going to support, let alone enforce, the call to teach black children in the same schools as white children. To their thinking, school desegregation would collapse their whole way of life.
The deputies were sent to ensure that orders were carried out, and those Marshals who lived in these communities knew they were risking their own homes and families to carry out their duties. Their opponents were fellow churchgoers and local law enforcementeven governors.
blocks Marshal James McShane and James
Meredith (right) from attempting to enter
University of Mississippi (CORBIS)
Abuse against blacks, who were blamed for these changes, was brutal and often illegal, but it was difficult to stop. Young James Meredith was nevertheless determined to be the first black man to be enrolled at the University of Mississippi at Oxford. The state was trying to thwart him, led by Governor Ross Barnett and Lieutenant Governor Paul Johnson. On September 26, 1962, Johnson actually went to the school as the Marshals escorted Meredith up the steps, using a barricade of state troopers to block them. Marshal James McShane was on one side of Meredith and the government’s civil rights attorney, John Doar, was on the other. Johnson refused them entry on the grounds of “breach of peace.”
McShane tried to shoulder him out of the way, but the patrol officers held firm. McShane then tried several times to get past them but was unsuccessful.
Johnson told him he was being senseless. McShane responded that he was doing his duty.
That afternoon, McShane and his deputies, along with Meredith, had to turn back and drive away.
However, they weren’t giving up. They were representatives of the federal government under President Kennedy, and even the highest state official had no authority over them, despite how it might have looked that day. The courts had ordered the school to admit Meredith, and President Kennedy and all his staff had a stake in seeing this through. To let the “southern way of life” dehumanize people was contrary to the views of the new administration.
Within days, says Calhoun, “southern anger coalesced into a bubbling, violent riot against federal interference.” The Marshals took the brunt of it.
On September 30, more deputies were sent into Oxford. Kennedy wanted them to seize the Lyceum, a building that housed the university’s administrative offices, including the registrar where Meredith had to go. They equipped themselves with helmets, teargas and gas maskswhich turned out to be a wise moveand went to the campus. They also had riot batons (most homemade) and service revolvers, just in case. Prison guards and patrolmen were sworn as deputies until their force numbered over 500.
James Meredith watched the news on television and awaited their success.
The impressive ring of deputies that formed outside the Lyceum quickly attracted a crowd. Jeers became taunts, and students began to throw things. Then the news spread and the crowd grew larger and uglier. People who had broken into the chemistry building began to throw vials of acid. Bigoted outsiders mixed with the students, hurling rocks and bricks. State troopers stood by and watched until the governor ordered them to leave. Now the deputies were alone with a violent mob.
Kennedy went on television to urge the people to end this peacefully, but McShane found that he had to use teargas to protect his men. However, the smoke guns kept the gas down low and the wind blew it right back at the deputies. While they were busy with this, Meredith took up residence in the room assigned to him in the dorm, protected by other Marshals.
The rioters began shooting at the deputies, and one of them was badly hit. Word spread that he was dead, alerting everyone there to the fact that there was no medical assistance available. Although the deputies never used their guns, two rioters were killedmost likely by stray bullets or careless shooting. Many people were arrested and put into the basement of the Lyceum, which was soon full. The rioters numbered around 3,000 and there was no way to contain them all.
By 10 p.m., things seemed desperate. Teargas supplies were running low and the people were attacking in unrelenting waves. In came the National Guard, who had to endure the crowd’s attack, and many were injured by projectiles.
Back at the dorm, the Marshals hid Meredith in the closet and guarded the room with weapons drawn. No one knew how far the mob would go.
Then around 2:00 a.m., the Army arrived at the Lyceum and cleared the place. The mob dispersed, their fury spent. But the Marshals had control of the building in which the registrar was housed. They remained there the rest of the night.
Early the next morning, James Meredith was escorted in to register. By 8:30 a.m., he was officially a student at the University of Mississippi. As he attended classes, the deputies protected him, and they continued to do so throughout the entire school year.
To gain this victory, 160 Marshals were injured, some quite seriously, and 200 rioters were placed under arrest. The Marshal rumored to have died was, in fact, alive and at the hospital in critical condition, but he would recover.
Students did heckle and attack Meredith throughout the year, spewing their hatred at him and bombarding his dorm, but the Marshals stayed with him until the campus grew more tolerant, and then a contingent of Marshals showed up when he graduated with a degree in political science. Meredith’s courage and that of the Marshals made a difference. They had risked their lives to perform their duty and had helped to change the course of America’s history.
Yet other minorities, too, wanted a voice, and a decade later, the Marshals were once again engaged in violencethis time deadly.
Shortly after Watergate during the spring of 1973, the longest civil uprising since the Civil War occurred. The place was Wounded Knee, South Dakota, and the siege lasted 71 days. Roger Ray was there for nearly three months and he recalls that it was quite intense. “A situation like this is surreal, but I was reminded that when I used to play cowboys and Indians as a child, I always wanted to be the Indian. Now here I was shooting at them.”
Civil rights activists had infiltrated several groups, urging defiance to obtain and preserve rights for minorities. The American Indian Movement (AIM) was one such organization, and in 1971 it began to demonstrate openly for better treatment of American Indians. AIM members first occupied Alcatraz Island near San Francisco to get their demands heard, which effectively stopped the tourist business there, and they repeated this at the naval air station in Minneapolis, MN.
This protest brought out the Marshals Service’s newly-formed Special Operations Group (SOG). Trying to evict AIM, but the Marshals fought the intruders with clubs, knives, and anything else they could lay their hands on. On this occasion, the activists were subdued.
Congress decided to end the Alcatraz occupation, which by this time had been in place for 19 months, and this duty also fell to the Marshals. They took two Coast Guard cutters out to the island, Calhoun recounts, with about 30 men, and routed the 17 American Indians who were still there. Rather than arresting anyone, they simply ordered them to leave. Then they remained there overnight to ensure that the activists did not return. The Marshals withdrew the next day, and the tourist boats soon revived their practice of taking people to see the abandoned prison.
However, this did not stop AIM. The group had attempted to get its demands heard peaceably but felt that the government had treated them badly.
The Marshals monitored the activists’ movements, but nothing much happened until near the close of 1972. Activist Russell Means helped to plan a demonstration, as reported in his autobiography, which was to take place in Washington, D.C. during election week. He wanted a federal law enacted to make it a first-degree crime to kill an American Indian, and he helped to organize a series of caravans, “The Trail of Broken Treaties,” to show up in force. However, the housing in D.C. that AIM had been promised was inadequate, so Means and his group seized the Bureau of Indian Affairs offices, renaming this place the Native American Embassy. They were evicted, but they left a lot of damage behind. AIM wanted the government to understand that as a people they had been mistreated and exploited. They wanted things to change.
However, not all Americans Indians wanted activists as their spokespeople. Means returned to South Dakota only to find that Dick Wilson, the president of the Oglala Tribal Council and a man considered to be aligned with the enemy government, had gotten a court order to prevent Means from having meetings on the reservation. Means challenged this and was twice arrested. Then he led a riot that involved the arrest of 80 people. The tribal leaders turned on Wilson and requested AIM’s assistance, so on February 27, 1973, Means brought 200 armed supporters to the small hamlet of Wounded Knee, where in 1890 the U.S. military had massacred some 350 Sioux. Two thousand members of various tribes came in to lend support.
Knee (CORBIS)
This action brought in the FBI, the National Guard, and U.S. Marshals, around 300 strong and all heavily armed. Using armored personnel carriers, they blocked all roads to Wounded Knee, cut off food supplies, shut off the electricity, and engaged in daily gun battles. Just before the siege, the Marshals had activated their SOG team here, and in mid-February deputies had trained the reservation police in methods of riot control. They also helped to fortify official government buildings, placing teargas canisters in strategic places. Then half of the deputies returned to their districts. Once the occupation began, which included taking hostages, 100 more deputies were sent back. Their job was to contain the situation in a way that did not jeopardize lives.
Yet the warriors, men and women alike, refused to give up. One AIM member was killed while another bled to death inside the compound.
On March 12, according to the Chronology of Native American History, the Indians declared Wounded Knee a sovereign territory of the Oglala Sioux Nation. The siege was into its second month when Means offered to fly to Washington to negotiate, but his participation was refused until he and his people laid down their arms. Means said no, and he was arrested and detained.
In the meantime, those who were still at Wounded Knee continued to agitate. The confrontation ended on May 8 only after the government agreed to investigate the wrongdoings of the tribal government, the incidents of police brutality against American Indians, abuse of the land that the Indians considered theirs, and the federal government’s Indian policies.
The final tally: two people killed, 12 wounded (including two Marshals) and 1,200 arrested. Tamara Highfill reports that a contingent of 12 people smuggling in food inexplicably disappeared and were never found, suggesting that they, too, were murdered. She says there was little effort on the government’s part to investigate.
Ultimately, federal grand juries indicted 185 people, but only 15 were ever convicted. In the end, no significant reforms were enacted.
Calhoun says that the situation did show how effectively the Marshals could perform. “The Marshals had professionally maintained their discipline, performed the tasks assigned to them, and established reasonable procedures.”
Two days later, on May 10, U. S. Attorney General Kleindienst set up a directorship for the Marshals, naming Wayne B. Coleburn for the position, for the supervision of all of their activities, which were spelled out as:
- the execution of federal arrest warrants
- the service of civil and criminal process
- the custody of federal prisoners from arrest to imprisonment or release
- the protection of federal courts, jurists, court officers, and government witnesses
- the prevention of air piracy
- the administration of training schools for Marshals
Five months afterward, this charter was revoked when the Nixon administration fell from power. Then after further political shake-up, it was restored, but that has not ended efforts to make significant changes in the structure of the Marshals Service. Even today, legislation is being proposed that takes aim at the most fundamental aspect of the position of U.S. Marshals: the presidential appointment.
Thurmond (AP)
In response to the issues raised over the Marshal’s politicized office, Senator Strom Thurmond proposed to make it a career position rather than one that changes with the ebb and flow of political parties.
The primary issue is that many of the U.S. Marshals who come into the job do so because of connections rather than law enforcement experience. That means that more support staff are needed to cover for some inexperience and weaknesses. Making the position a career position, chosen through merit and advancement, would save a substantial amount of taxpayer money and make the management of the Marshals Service more efficient.
Although there is a national Director of the Marshals Service, located in Arlington, VA, only the President can authorize disciplinary action against a Marshal, which effectively undercuts the director’s leadership. In addition, the position of Chief Deputy Marshal, which is a career position, becomes crucial for continuity in that district’s law enforcement. In other words, the second highest position has more practical responsibility than does the highest position, and the Chief Deputy Marshal may have to report to an inexperienced leader.
Roger Ray has been in both positions. He ultimately served as a U.S. Marshal, and when his turn came to be replaced during the reign of a new president, he argued for reform. However, in retrospect, he does see the advantages of getting new qualified individuals into these positions and feels the president should continue to appoint the U.S. Marshals as they have over the past two centuries.
Yet many disagree, most notably, they say, because a law enforcement system should not operate by political favors. Historian Frederick Calhoun agrees. “The Service remained too politicized. The presidential appointment of the U.S. Marshals haunted the organization. It could never escape the taint of politics as long as its top district managers owed their appointments to political favors, not professional advancement.”
Since the top position is transient, the Chief Deputy Marshal’s allegiances are of necessity somewhat tenuous. That hardly supports the camaraderie needed for many of the tasks these officers perform.
Senator Thurmond calls the current organization inefficient and structurally unsound and the inherent limitations in power of the director’s position means that the agency is loosely organized at best. Legislation to make the changes had passed the House of Representatives in 1997 but not the Senate. Thurmond hopes to bring it back to the floor and make the change effective for the new presidential term that begins in 2005.
“It is time,” he writes,” that we professionalized one of our most important law enforcement agencies.”
Whether or not he’s successful, it won’t change the fact that the U.S. Marshals have been and will continue to be a fundamental part of American history.
Among the many duties performed by the Marshals, perhaps hunting down fugitives gets the most attention. Let’s look at how the special task force successfully developed and closed a case.
When it was formed in 1983, the U.S. Marshals Service Fugitive Task Force, headquartered in Philadelphia, PA, was the first of its kind, and it became the standard for all others. Formed initially as a temporary measure, its success soon ensured that it became a permanent feature of the organization. Its sole function is to track down and arrest people for whom felony warrants have been issued, especially career criminals. The Marshals Service supports the task force with office space, information systems, and administrative personnel, and it’s staffed by five permanent Marshals Service employees, two Philadelphia police officers, two Pennsylvania State troopers, and the occasional law enforcement team from New Jersey.
Marshal in The Fugitive
(AP)
From 1983 until the present time, over 12,000 fugitives have been apprehended, and the team’s walls are covered with posters to that effect. They also have posters of movies about the Marshals, and the current Task Force supervisor, Steve Quinn, said that he likes the line shouted by Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive: “I don’t care!” Their job, they say, is not to concern themselves with an individual’s guilt or innocence, but simply to bring that person in.
Dennis Matulewicz is the Chief Deputy Marshal for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and once headed up the Fugitive Task Force. Having spent years chasing down dangerous felons, his favorite quote is something Hemingway once said: “There is nothing like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.” To him it’s like a drug; the excitement is addictive.
His office is in the U.S. Federal Court building in Philadelphia, which houses the district courts, the circuit courts and magistrates. In the institutionally white hallway leading up to it are posters that depict great moments in U.S. Marshals’ history, along with the mug shots of the 15 Most Wanted fugitives. The decoration was his idea, and his co-workers appreciate the improved aesthetics. Ordinarily, he’s known for his “just the facts” approach.
Inside Matulewicz’s office, along with more such posters, is a signed photo of President Reagan as an actor playing a Marshal, a collection of law enforcement hats and baseball-style caps embroidered with the names of various jurisdictions and of America’s Most Wanted. He also has his father’s police cap from when he was an officer on Philadelphia police force. His fictional heroes include Gary Cooper in High Noon, John Wayne’s Marshal Cahill, and the television persona Marshal Dillon. In fact, he once hoped to get a placement out west, but the job in Philadelphia opened up, so he took it.
He attributes much of the success of the Task Force to attitude: “We have a rapport with the local law enforcement; we don’t come in and take over, we tend to stay in the background and work the case with them as a team. People trust us, so we achieve good working relationships. And we don’t seek the glory.” Of the Marshals in general, he says, “We have limited resources, but we’re the best at what we do.”
In one of his early cases, for example, he followed a man who had left during his trial on a drug charge. “The case went on and on, but I kept tracking him, and one day he gave himself up. He said, ‘You’re always a step behind me. No matter where I go, I know you’re coming. I couldn’t take it anymore.’ That was satisfying. I know I’ve had an effect.”
Talk about “Who are those guys?”
The most dramatic case that he can recall from his stint as Task Force supervisor is one that was shown on America’s Most Wanted and featured Task Force members as actors. Steve Quinn was lead investigator. It involved two fugitives, Robert Thomas Nauss and Hans Vorhauer, whom Marshal Thomas Rapone categorizes as “one-percenters”those individuals who own motorcycles in this country who are outlaws.
(Pennsylvania Department of Corrections)
Nauss, a former leader of the Warlocks motorcycle gang, was convicted in 1977 of the murder of his 21-year-old girlfriend, a Philadelphia beauty queen named Elizabeth Ann Landy. She had disappeared on December 11, 1971, while on a date with Nauss. They had spent the evening at the home of a fellow biker, and according to one report, Nauss tried to choke her. She got away and locked herself in the bathroom, but he persuaded her to come out. Then after they went to bed, he bludgeoned her to death with a baseball bat and hung her. He reportedly told a friend, “She won’t bother me anymore.”
John Weir testified that on December 12, he had burned Landy’s clothing and purse, and that other men had transported her body to a disposal site in New Jersey. They buried her in a shallow grave in the woods. Although she’d never been found, a witness at Nauss’s trial claimed that he’d displayed her body in his garage.
Even without a body or an eyewitness to the incident, Nauss was convicted of first-degree murderthe first such conviction in Pennsylvania’s history. He was sentenced to life in prison in the state correctional institution at Graterford, PA.
(Pennsylvania Department of Corrections)
For the next six years, he spent a lot of time in the prison’s wood shop with Hans Vorhauer, a manufacturer of illegal drugs. Vorhauer was reputedly a genius and a master of disguise, and he had a plan. On November 15, 1983, the two criminals successfully escaped from Graterford by smuggling themselves out in an armoire that Vorhauer had built. They were helped by an unknown couple who picked them up in a truck. They were gone before anyone realized it.
sculptor
When a quick capture eluded the task force, it seemed likely that the fugitives had altered their appearance, so the Task Force sought help from Philadelphia-based forensic sculptor and artist, Frank Bender. Captain Allen Kurtz from the Philadelphia Police Department had seen Bender’s talents on other fugitive cases, so he introduced the artist to Matulewicz, who was supervising the effort to track the escaped convicts.
“We had Nauss’s Warlock pictures from before his incarceration,” said Matulewicz, “and his intake picture at the prison, all of which were several years old. We wanted Frank to give us an updated look so we’d know what to look for on the street.”
To get a point of reference, Bender looked at their surveillance photos from the neighborhood where Vorhauer’s girlfriend lived. “I said to myself,” he recalls, “that he had the highest IQ of any prisoner who’d entered the Pennsylvania state prison system and was equally street-smart. He was seen once without a cap, and then with a baseball cap, so I figured he’d change the color of his hair, and he’d make it blond, because it would work with the color of his skin. So I made a drawing like that with blond hair, and it turned out that’s exactly what he’d done.”
So Vorhauer was caught first, because he made the mistake of coming back into the area. From him, the Task Force learned the identity of the couple who had assisted with the escape.
Now they needed to find Nauss. He had grown up in Upper Darby, PA, in western Philadelphia and by the time he was 19, he was a hardcore biker. Besides murder, he committed a variety of crimes, robbery, rape, and drug trafficking. For obvious identifying features, he had a large blue parrot tattoo on his upper right arm.
“We had several leads generated about Nauss,” says Matulewicz. “One was in the Poconos, where we set up in a cabin for several weeks and operated a surveillance team involving about a dozen people. But he wasn’t there. Then we heard that he was out West, so we went out there and set up surveillance across from a motorcycle parts distributor. Again, no results.”
They asked Bender for a sculpture to show on America’s Most Wanted, so he tried to think what Nauss would do to facilitate his ability to blend in. “I thought Nauss would be clean-shaven, short-haired and living in suburbia,” he says, “because he’d come from a good family. I felt that even though he was an outlaw biker, if he ever left that element, he’d go back to what he’d known.”
Matulewicz wasn’t so sure. “That was the first time we’d worked with Frank, and he came up with this idea of a clean-cut guy. We didn’t know about that. Bikers were bikers were bikers, but this incident was also during a time when some bikers were catching on and realizing that if they looked more respectable, they wouldn’t stand out as much. Nauss knew there was a national manhunt on for him, so he’d also know that a clean-cut guy wouldn’t attract as much attention as a biker would.”
When Bender was finished, Nauss’s bust was definitely clean cut with short dark hair, neatly combed. He was described on the show as being five-foot-nine, 190 pounds, and age 35. His distinguishing marks, which Bender had noted, were a downward slant of eyes, small chin, muscular neck, and ears close to jaw line. For disguises, he’d had goatees and mustaches at different times, but the Task Force members all believed that he was now clean-shaven.
In addition to his physical appearance, the show host John Walsh pointed out that Nauss was a mechanic and knew motorcycle repair. He had a love-hate relationship with women and was prone to violence. Besides his parrot tattoo, he had another tattoo on his right forearm of three skulls and on his upper left arm of a skull, dagger, and the phrase, “Born to lose.”
Once the bust was shown to the public, a tip came in that led to his capture.
Pennsylvania (Special thanks to Pennsyl-
vania Department of Corrections)
Despite a few false leads, the incident had been exciting and had resulted in a successful capture. “It was an adventure,” says Matulewicz. “It’s all part of the chase.”
Butch Cassidy, to his chagrin, was right: When they have a job to do, they do it.
“America’s Star,” Official tape of the U.S. Marshals, from the Philadelphia office.
America’s Most Wanted: “The Robert Nauss Story.”
Brown, Dee Alexander. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, New York: Henry Holt, 1970.
Calhoun, Frederick S. The Lawmen: United States Marshals and their Deputies, 1789-1989. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1990.
Carbin, Jenn. “Bender on a Roll,”www.citypaper.net.
Chronology of Native American History: From Pre-Columbian Times to the Present Day. Detroit, MI: Gale Research, 1994.
The Eighteen Eleven: Professional Journal of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, March 2002.
Highfield, Tamara. “Siege at Wounded Knee,” tn.essortment.com
Ho, David. “A Look Back at the 30th Anniversary of the Watergate Break-in,” Philadelphia Inquirer, Tuesday, June 18, 2002.
Interviews with Violent Crime Fugitive Task Force members, Philadelphia, PA.
Interview with former U.S. Marshals Roger Ray and Chief Deputy Marshals Dennis Matulewicz.
“Justice under the Star,” Warner Productions, 1992: a feature on the U.S. Marshals DVD.
Katz, Bob. “Wyatt Earp: Desert Lawman and Adventurer.”www.desertusa.com.
Margasak, Larry, “U.S. Marshals Work without Fanfare,” Associated Press, Feb 9, 2002.
The Marshals Monitor, published by the U.S. Department of Justice.
MSNBC Time and Again archive.
UCLA College library Exhibits at www.ucla.edu/libraries.
U.S. Marshals Web site:www.usdoj.gov/Marshals
U.S. Marshals Service Fugitive Task Force, Eastern District of PA archive document.
Where White Men Fear to Tread: Autobiography of Russell Means. New York: St. Martin’s press, 1997.
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