PLAINFIELD, N.H. (AP) — To avoid serving prison sentences for tax evasion, Ed Brown and his wife, Elaine, have cut themselves off from the world on their own terms.
From behind the 8-inch concrete walls of their 110-acre hilltop compound, the two taunt police and SWAT teams and play to reporters and government haters with references to past standoffs that turned deadly. Residents want the Browns’ standoff to end before their small Connecticut River town becomes the next Ruby Ridge or Waco.
The Browns raised the specter of the first case, the 1992 shootout at an Idaho property called Ruby Ridge, by holding a press conference Monday with Randy Weaver, whose wife and child were killed there along with a deputy U.S. marshal.
Ed Brown warned authorities they wouldn’t take him alive: “We either walk out of here free or we die.”
The Browns were sentenced in absentia to 63-month prison sentences in April, after being convicted of conspiring to evade taxes on nearly $1.9 million in Elaine Brown’s income and of plotting to disguise large financial transactions.
Though they have refused to leave the compound, U.S. Marshal Stephen Monier insists he has no plans to raid it to make them serve their time and instead will seek a peaceful surrender.
Some observers praise the authorities’ hands-off approach, but patience is wearing thin for Plainfield’s 2,400 residents. Town selectmen recently wrote to Mr. Monier, asking him to stop the influx of militiamen and other anti-government groups to the Browns’ home and to bring the couple to justice.
“While we understand and support efforts to achieve a quiet resolution to this matter, the longer the Browns remain at large the better the chance, in our view, that our local police force will be involved in an incident with them or their group of supporters,” the letter reads. “In short, we believe that it is time that definitive action be taken.”
It’s a sentiment echoed throughout the town.
“The people of Plainfield feel the whole thing has been mismanaged from the get-go,” said Stephen Taylor, a Plainfield native who is state agriculture commissioner.
The Browns’ home on an isolated dirt road includes a turret that offers a 360-degree view of the property and a driveway that is sometimes barricaded with sport utility vehicles.
Ed Brown, a retired exterminator, and his wife, a dentist, have bragged that the compound is self-sufficient and capable of running entirely on solar, wind and geothermal energies.
Sitting in lawn chairs around the Browns’ long gravel driveway, the couple’s supporters rail against Freemasons, the Illuminati, the Federal Reserve, the Vatican and the mainstream press.
Some defend the Browns’ claim — repeatedly rejected by courts — that no law authorizes the federal income tax and that the 1913 constitutional amendment permitting it was never properly ratified.
“The income tax can take more than the Mafia can with a machine gun. Believe me,” said Alfred Liseo of Meriden, Conn.
“The Mafia doesn’t have popular support,” Bill Walker said. “The government has support of millions of ignorant people who have the wool pulled over their eyes. They think they need to pay. They don’t.”
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