August 12, 2025 • 25 mins
After their leader is killed in a violent firefight with federal agents, the remaining members of the Order come together to stand trial in a Seattle courtroom. For the first time, Alan Berg's friends and colleagues are privy to all the details of exactly who killed this titan of talk radio and the lengths they went to in order to track him down. And one particular detail in the prosecution's case truly shocks the staff at KOA radio in Denver, revealing that at one point a member of the Order actually walked amongst them.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Live Wire is a production of iHeart Podcasts and Modulator Media.
Previously on live Wire the Loud Life and Shocking Murder
of Alan Burd.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
The FEDS took a very we'd have to call it
a primary role in investigating the Area Nations as a whole,
because they were putting together a RICO prosecution based out
of Seattle.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
They found a murder weapon in one of the homes
of Gary Yarborough, who was one of the order defendants,
one of the people suspected in the armored car robbery,
and so the birdcase became part of our overall effort.
Speaker 4 (00:46):
Agents last October raided his home in Standpoint, Idaho.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
It was in that raid that they recovered a submachine.
Speaker 5 (00:53):
Gun like this a'm mac kinn, capable of.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Firing one thousand rounds per minute.
Speaker 4 (00:58):
The ammunition for them, MA ten is forty five caliber slugs,
the same type bullets that killed Alan Berg. There were
several that were drawn to Bob Matthews, whom we had
just previously encountered in an hotel in Oregon and had
(01:21):
engaged in a gunbatt over one FB agent. FBI agent
was shot and Bob Matthews was shot in the hand,
and he had escaped and had taken refuge in a
cabin and went along the shoreline of of the ocean
(01:41):
with the island. We moved in to make an arrest
on him, and he opened fire on us at the
house where he was fighting out. He was the only
one left in the house at that time. And then
(02:02):
eventually the encounter led into the light in the morning,
we found Matthews was dead inside the house.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
By that time that they accumulated a huge amount of
information about the group and its activities and its members.
So by the time we had that standoff in Wouldn't
Be Island, they had accumulated most of the information that
we would need for our indictment.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Following the lengthy firefight that ended with the death of
the order's leader, Robert Matthews, the mission to bring this
white supremacist militia to justice preceded in earnest. One by one,
federal officials began the process of indicting a variety of
individuals involved in this criminal enterprise bent on installing a
new racist order in the United States government, and as
(02:58):
the details of this group's crimes emerged, the lead up
to the trial became a media fixation.
Speaker 6 (03:03):
This is the arraignment that I remember most vividly because
it was in downtown Atlanta. I believe it was in
a federal courthouse, and there were media lined up waiting
for the arraignment, so it was a beehive of activity.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
That's koa radio reporter Lori Cantillo, a friend and colleague
of Allen Berg's, who covered every element of this high
profile trial.
Speaker 7 (03:32):
I was sort of a rising reporter with the station,
and I love to challenge. I believe I pitched for
that that. I said that I would love to work on.
Speaker 8 (03:46):
This case, and.
Speaker 6 (03:50):
I also have had an interest in.
Speaker 7 (03:54):
Hate groups and so forth, so I think I must
have pitched for that. I did most of the early
leg work, and like I said, the arraignments and arrests
of the members of the order.
Speaker 6 (04:07):
I had a listed phone number in the phone book,
and one night, in the middle of the night, I
picked up the phone and it was a prank call,
and it was somebody talking like Alan Berg after he
had died, just to harass me, I think. But that
was a very disturbing moment for me, and I remember
(04:30):
immediately unlisting my number after that happened.
Speaker 5 (04:34):
Twenty three members of the extremist group known as the
Order are accused of murders, armed robberies, counterfeiting, and an
arson attempt at an actuated theater in Seattle, all to
further their message of hate. The underground network came to
light after a fiery shootout on Whitby Island in Washington State,
in which leader Robert Matthews were killed.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
In all, twenty three members of the Order were indicted
by a federal grand jury based in Seattle for a
variety of including two armored car robberies in Seattle, counterfeiting,
the bombing of a synagogue in Boise, Idaho, the Yucaya,
California Brinks armored truck robbery that netted the group three
point six million dollars, and of course, their involvement in
(05:15):
the murder of alan Berg. Twelve of the twenty three
indicted members pleaded guilty. The long trial outlined in impressive
detail how these crimes were carried out and when it
came to the murder of alan Berg. Prosecutors presented the
links the group went to in silencing this prolific radio voice.
Here is David Heckenbach of the Denver District Attorney's office,
(05:38):
followed by US Attorney Peter Robinson, who worked out of
the Federal office in Northern California.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Once they were able to tell us the story and
what they understood about the drive from I think it
was Cordelaine, Idaho, down to Denver, the FB I could
check the phone records at furious. I mean, the leg
(06:05):
work involved was something staggering. But because there's an awful
lot of payphones back in that day there were no
such thing as a cell phones.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
We were trying to figure out how this was going
to work once we got details. But at some point
we decided we should combine our forces and try to
prosecute these people all in one case. And then once
we did that, then we agreed to do it in
Seattle because that seemed like more of the hub of
(06:36):
where the crimes had been committed. And also San Francisco.
You know, it was more of a defense friendly jurisdiction.
The defense lawyers were more skilled, the judges were more liberal.
So just from the government's point of view, it was
like a better venue to have a more you know,
pro law enforcement venue.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
I'm a journalists in filmmaker Tellent Panschewski, and this is
episode nine the trial of the Order. Even with the
details of their crimes uncovered by the collaborative efforts of
federal and local investigators in a number of states, sorting
(07:20):
out an ironclad racketeering case would be challenging well.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
The racketeering statute required basically that the government proved that
there was an enterprise that engaged in two or more
federal crimes, and so we described the Order as the
enterprise and then listed the various crimes that the members
had committed in furtherance of that enterprise, and those included
the murder of Alan Berg and another individual named Walter West,
(07:47):
who had been suspected as an informant of the group,
as well as the armored car robbery in Yukaya, California,
some others in Seattle, Washington, some counterfeiting crimes that were
committed along the way, as well as some robberies of
pornographic stores and things like that. So we basically listed
(08:10):
a number of crimes that became what we call the
predicate acts of the racketeering case, and then as prosecutors,
we split up those so that some of us were
responsible for some of those crimes and other of those crimes,
and that was kind of how we organized our trial preparation.
(08:30):
So I was responsible for the Yucaiah robbery. Jeene Wilson
was responsible for Alan Berg's murder, and he was also
the overall leader of our case, and other of the
lawyers were responsible for crimes in their areas as well.
Speaker 4 (08:52):
Well.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
The trial judge was Walter McGovern, who was a no
nonsense but very personable judge. Each defendant, there were ten
of them in the trial. They each had their own
defense lawyers, and they sat in a couple of benches
basically to my left, with a defense lawyer sitting next
to his client and the US marshals sitting next to
(09:15):
each person, so it was quite crowded in the room.
Then there was a table with myself and the four
other prosecutors and a couple of FBI agents who were
working with us in the courtroom, and one by one
witness we basically presented our case like brick by brick.
Our witnesses would come one by one and give their evidence,
(09:37):
and the jury, which was twelve people plus about four alternates,
was sitting there listening to all of that. Surprisingly to me,
in the courtroom. The atmosphere was pretty relaxed despite all
the security, because the defendants were pretty friendly and I
myself always as a prosecutor, and I think this was
(09:58):
maybe because I so to had a defense lawyer mentality also,
but I always wanted to treat people with respect when
I prosecuted them. I wanted them to have the dignity
of being seen as a human being despite the fact
that I was there to have them held accountable for
their crimes. And so I was also friendly to the defendants.
(10:21):
I talked to them at the breaks. Sometimes I sat
next to them and chatted about stuff, and so it
was a relaxed atmosphere in the trial itself, although a
very serious one and one in which the consequences were
quite serious for each of those people who are on trial.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
As you could imagine, this trial was a very serious affair.
Media from around the world descended on the courthouse, and
more than thirty Deputy marshals were assigned to the trial
from across the country, each standing in and around the
courtroom with their shotgun in hand. Additional metal detectors were
installed in the courthouse entrance and the chairs occupied by
(11:02):
the defendants and their lawyers were all bolted down to
the floor.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
We started off with the opening statements, and the government's
opening statements was given by Bob Wood, who was another
prosecutor from San Francisco who came up and worked with me,
and he is a very good trial lawyer, and he
outlined our whole case to the jury as clearly as
we could do it without trying to make it too complicated,
because we were worried. We didn't want there to be
(11:26):
it to be too complicated so that they had some
reasonable doubt when there wasn't really any if they truly understood.
So Bob did a great job with his closing argument,
and then some of the defense lawyers made closing arguments,
but I don't believe many of them did. A defendant
has the option of doing it at the beginning of
the case or at the beginning of the defense case,
(11:48):
but there was no real surprises from the defense at
the beginning of the trial. And then we started putting
on witness by witness each of the crimes that were
we were trying to prove. We found out after the
bag the Brinx robbery that there had been two employees
(12:08):
of Brink's armored car company who were involved in the robbery,
and so they provided.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Information to the Order.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
They ultimately pled guilty and testified, And so those were
two of my witnesses who I prepared and questioned when
they came and testified on the witness stand. In addition,
there were members of the Order who had turned state's
evidence and became witnesses for the prosecution, and we divided
(12:37):
those up, and so I had some of those, and
so did all of the other members of our team.
And then most of the people were eyewitnesses, the Brinks drivers,
people along the road who had seen them, alan Berg's wife,
I believe, testified, and other people who were privy to
the allen Berg murder, as well as people at Idaho
(13:02):
eastern Washington who had had different transactions with the defendants
and knew some things about who was living in different
places and things like that that we had to prove.
So that took up most of the four months of
the trial.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
As the case was made by prosecutors, the full organizational
configuration of the Order was presented in exhausting detail. How
different members took on specific roles and earned salaries as
well as bonuses for certain criminal acts and how these
crimes were committed to further the group's ultimate goal of
overthrowing America's quote Zionist occupied government unquote. While these arguments
(13:41):
presented by federal prosecutors unveiled the Order's numerous crimes and
great detail, they also, for the first time offered a
blow by blow account of who had murdered Allenberg and
how they had done it. Here is FBI agent Wayne Mannis.
Speaker 4 (13:56):
We were able to ascertain and improve that that the
people that were responsible for the assassination of Allenberg was
Robert Matthews for one David Lane, the individual I mentioned
earlier had had that very controversial conversation with him over
(14:19):
his talk show, an individual by the name of Robert Scutari,
and the actual trigger man who was in charge of
assassinations for the Order, an individual by the name of
Bruce Cheryl.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
Puis for Allen Burke's friends and colleagues who were still
grieving the loss of this larger than life figure. It
was a startling revelation to learn who had committed this
heinous crime, But there was a new detail unfurled by
the investigation that showed how far the Order had gone
to track down and murder Alan Burke.
Speaker 4 (15:02):
There was a lady by the name of Jean Craig
who was closely affiliated to Robert Matthews, and she went
to get for a week before the assassination and did
a very thorough job.
Speaker 9 (15:17):
Of identifying Alan Berg, his friend, his association's activities on
a daily basis.
Speaker 4 (15:28):
She followed him and surveilled him and knew exactly where
he worked, toward his residence, was when he generally gotten
home from work, what he did in terms of any
recreational activity, and provided all that information to the assassination group.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Jean Craig wasn't just any member of the order. Her daughter,
Zilla Craig, was the girlfriend of the group's leader, Robert Matthews,
and was the mother of one of his children. As
a middle aged woman who looked the part of a
starstruck fan, nobody questioned it when Geene Craig arrived at
KOA Studios looking for Alan Burke.
Speaker 8 (16:08):
We later learned that the radio station itself had been
cased by Gen Craig, who had posed as a prize
winner and apparently had been escorted around the station. So
the thought that these killers had actually been in our
midst was scary.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
Here is koa producer Susan Ryman, followed by station manager
Lee Larson.
Speaker 10 (16:36):
You know, if you think about it, these people came
to Denver to kill him. Jean Craig came into our
building and asked for a media kid. They later found
Allen's press picture riddled with bulletles. They used different target practice.
They were in sane.
Speaker 11 (16:55):
A number of the people from the radio station were
among the witnesses of the trial because one of the
co conspirators was a lady who had visited the radio
station pretending to be a fan of Alan's and asking
some of our promotion people if they had pictures of him,
(17:18):
if they had any other information about him, that she
was just such a fan and wanted to know all
about him.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
For alan Berg's friends and colleagues, this new detail in
his murder truly hit home. The Order had spent some
time profiling and tracking alan Berg before murdering him, even
sending one of their own to step foot in their
studio knowing that Gene Craig had been dispatched to their
place of work to conduct reconnaissance on Burke only poked
(17:47):
at an emotionally traumatic wound that remained fresh more than
a year after alan Berg's murder.
Speaker 12 (17:52):
As nineteen eighty four starts, the Order decides to up
there White power revolution. They start committing robberies, they start
counterfeiting money, and they start plotting who should we assassinate
first to really show the severity of what we're going
(18:16):
to do. They talk about Henry Kissinger, loner secretaries there.
They talk about Norman ly Or, television producer All the Family,
other shows. David Lane is in the group. David Lane
is from Denver. He says, I know this guy in Denver.
He's a loud mouth. He's on the radio. He's always
(18:37):
trying to stir things up. He's always going against people
like us who have our beliefs and our ideas. Why
don't we go to Denver and make this our first target?
And so they begin to make plans in the spring
of nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
This is alan Berg biographer Stephen Singer.
Speaker 12 (18:57):
They send Jean Craig down to Denver to do surveillance
on Burg. They figure out, you know, exactly what he
looks like. Very few people would be mistaken for Ellenberg.
He was about six foot two or three. He weighed
about one hundred and fifty pounds. He was ramrod thin.
(19:17):
He had grown long, bushy gray hair to cover the
scars that had been left on his head from his surgery.
He had a beard. He was very striking looking in
many ways. Then he dressed very very well. They do
the surveillance. They figure out where he lives, they figure
(19:40):
out where he works, They figure out what his routine is,
coming to work, going home from work, and they have
everything planned out.
Speaker 3 (19:56):
We rested our case and then it was the defense
turn to put on witnesses. They didn't call very many,
but one of them Artie mcbreerdy, who was a gentleman
from Arkansas who had helped them the order and some
of their activities. He testified in his own behalf and
I cross examined him. And then the defense rested, and
(20:18):
then we had our closing arguments, and Gene Wilson gave
the main closing argument for the government. I also gave
some part of it, and another person from Seattle named
Peter Mueller gave our rebuttal argument. All of the defense
lawyers made closing arguments in which they tried to point
out issues of reasonable doubt in our case, and ultimately
(20:39):
Judge McGovern gave the jury their instructions to what the
law was that they were to apply to the facts
that they heard.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
After a trial lasting several months, a verdict was reached
and read in February of nineteen eighty six. In all,
ten members of the Order were tried and convicted under
Rico statutes. Gary Lee Brough was sentenced to sixty years
in prison, Bruce Carrol Pierce, the man who pulled the trigger,
one hundred years. Upon his sentencing, Pierce stood in the
(21:10):
courtroom and told Federal District Judge Walter McGovern, I am
not going to waste my time or your time and
beg for mercy. Whatever I did, I did to bring
honor to myself and glory to my brothers, and glory
to God. In a pre sentencing report, Assistant United States
Attorney David Wilson wrote of Pierce that he could not
(21:31):
recall ever having faced a defendant who was a more
frightening danger to society. Order member Randolph George Dewey received
one hundred years, Richard Kemp sixty years, Andrew Barnhill, whose
weapon had been recovered at the scene of the Prince
Armored truck robbery that broke the whole case open. Received
(21:51):
forty years.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
And then it was at the end of December. There
was a period of time when the jury was deliberating
and they it was about four or five days, I think,
and then finally they just announced that they had reached
a verdict, and we all came back to court and
we listened to the verdict and everyone was found guilty
and the trial was over.
Speaker 12 (22:14):
Oh.
Speaker 6 (22:15):
Overjoyed when they were convicted, of.
Speaker 7 (22:17):
Course, I felt that, you know, however many years they're
going to lock them up.
Speaker 6 (22:22):
It wasn't enough.
Speaker 7 (22:25):
And I was happy to hear when some of them
died in prison.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
I have to say I was relieved, because you never
want to screw up a case like that, you know.
So I was expecting that we would win, but with
a jury, you never know, and so I was That
was my main emotion when I heard the verdict, was
just relief. Okay, we didn't screw it up. Afterwards, it
(22:54):
became very difficult to work on the routine cases that
I had in the Northern District of California as a prosecutor.
Was I felt like I had had my biggest challenge
as a prosecutor and that was never going to be
replicated again. And so, you know, a few years later,
I did decide to leave the US Attorney's office, And
(23:14):
that was basically the reason that I just thought I
had done everything as a prosecutor that I could do
in the ten years that I had been an assistant
US attorney, and I was ready for a new challenge.
So yeah, that was pretty much the highlight of my
career as a prosecutor.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
In a separate trial in nineteen eighty seven in Denver,
Pierce and Lane were found guilty of violating Alan Berg's
civil rights. Two other defendants in the trial, Jean Craig
and Richard Scutari, were found not guilty. All four were
already serving lengthy prison sentences following the Seattle Rico trial
the previous year. Pearson Lane both died in prison. Richard
(23:56):
Scutari was sentenced to sixty years in prison in Seattle,
and according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, he maintained
extensive connections with white supremacist activists in the United States, Sweden,
and Finland while in prison. Scutari was granted early release
last year, and according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons,
was released from their custody on January twenty first, twenty
(24:19):
twenty five. Before his release, I reached out to Scutari
last year through the Bureau of Prisons. He declined my
request for an interview with the Order disbanded and its
members in prison, the shocking final chapter of Allenberg's remarkable
life officially came to a close. But even more startling
(24:39):
than the details that emerged of his murder or the
shocking story of how the Order hunted Alan Berg down,
was how little attention was paid to Berg in the
years following his murder. In and around Denver, where he
had emerged as one of the most prominent voices on
local radio, he was mostly forgotten, no plaque or statue
commemorating his place in the community, not even an alley
(25:02):
named after him, and in the vast media landscapes he
had helped shape as one of the most dynamic voices
in radio, he was completely unknown, even while some of
his contemporaries became legends in the field. But with the
help of some of his old friends, a renewed appreciation
for Berg and his incredible career recently emerged around Denver,
(25:24):
an appreciation that helped cement his prominent place in radio history.
All that and more in the final episode of live Wire,
the Loud life and shocking Murder of Alan Berg. Live
Wire is a production of iHeart Podcasts and Modulator Media.
For more podcasts from iHeart Podcasts, visit the iHeartRadio app,
(25:48):
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Live Wire is a production of iHeart Podcasts and Modulator Media.
Previously on live Wire the Loud Life and Shocking Murder
of Alan Burd.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
The FEDS took a very we'd have to call it
a primary role in investigating the Area Nations as a whole,
because they were putting together a RICO prosecution based out
of Seattle.
Speaker 3 (00:30):
They found a murder weapon in one of the homes
of Gary Yarborough, who was one of the order defendants,
one of the people suspected in the armored car robbery,
and so the birdcase became part of our overall effort.
Speaker 4 (00:46):
Agents last October raided his home in Standpoint, Idaho.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
It was in that raid that they recovered a submachine.
Speaker 5 (00:53):
Gun like this a'm mac kinn, capable of.
Speaker 1 (00:56):
Firing one thousand rounds per minute.
Speaker 4 (00:58):
The ammunition for them, MA ten is forty five caliber slugs,
the same type bullets that killed Alan Berg. There were
several that were drawn to Bob Matthews, whom we had
just previously encountered in an hotel in Oregon and had
(01:21):
engaged in a gunbatt over one FB agent. FBI agent
was shot and Bob Matthews was shot in the hand,
and he had escaped and had taken refuge in a
cabin and went along the shoreline of of the ocean
(01:41):
with the island. We moved in to make an arrest
on him, and he opened fire on us at the
house where he was fighting out. He was the only
one left in the house at that time. And then
(02:02):
eventually the encounter led into the light in the morning,
we found Matthews was dead inside the house.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
By that time that they accumulated a huge amount of
information about the group and its activities and its members.
So by the time we had that standoff in Wouldn't
Be Island, they had accumulated most of the information that
we would need for our indictment.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
Following the lengthy firefight that ended with the death of
the order's leader, Robert Matthews, the mission to bring this
white supremacist militia to justice preceded in earnest. One by one,
federal officials began the process of indicting a variety of
individuals involved in this criminal enterprise bent on installing a
new racist order in the United States government, and as
(02:58):
the details of this group's crimes emerged, the lead up
to the trial became a media fixation.
Speaker 6 (03:03):
This is the arraignment that I remember most vividly because
it was in downtown Atlanta. I believe it was in
a federal courthouse, and there were media lined up waiting
for the arraignment, so it was a beehive of activity.
Speaker 1 (03:23):
That's koa radio reporter Lori Cantillo, a friend and colleague
of Allen Berg's, who covered every element of this high
profile trial.
Speaker 7 (03:32):
I was sort of a rising reporter with the station,
and I love to challenge. I believe I pitched for
that that. I said that I would love to work on.
Speaker 8 (03:46):
This case, and.
Speaker 6 (03:50):
I also have had an interest in.
Speaker 7 (03:54):
Hate groups and so forth, so I think I must
have pitched for that. I did most of the early
leg work, and like I said, the arraignments and arrests
of the members of the order.
Speaker 6 (04:07):
I had a listed phone number in the phone book,
and one night, in the middle of the night, I
picked up the phone and it was a prank call,
and it was somebody talking like Alan Berg after he
had died, just to harass me, I think. But that
was a very disturbing moment for me, and I remember
(04:30):
immediately unlisting my number after that happened.
Speaker 5 (04:34):
Twenty three members of the extremist group known as the
Order are accused of murders, armed robberies, counterfeiting, and an
arson attempt at an actuated theater in Seattle, all to
further their message of hate. The underground network came to
light after a fiery shootout on Whitby Island in Washington State,
in which leader Robert Matthews were killed.
Speaker 1 (04:54):
In all, twenty three members of the Order were indicted
by a federal grand jury based in Seattle for a
variety of including two armored car robberies in Seattle, counterfeiting,
the bombing of a synagogue in Boise, Idaho, the Yucaya,
California Brinks armored truck robbery that netted the group three
point six million dollars, and of course, their involvement in
(05:15):
the murder of alan Berg. Twelve of the twenty three
indicted members pleaded guilty. The long trial outlined in impressive
detail how these crimes were carried out and when it
came to the murder of alan Berg. Prosecutors presented the
links the group went to in silencing this prolific radio voice.
Here is David Heckenbach of the Denver District Attorney's office,
(05:38):
followed by US Attorney Peter Robinson, who worked out of
the Federal office in Northern California.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Once they were able to tell us the story and
what they understood about the drive from I think it
was Cordelaine, Idaho, down to Denver, the FB I could
check the phone records at furious. I mean, the leg
(06:05):
work involved was something staggering. But because there's an awful
lot of payphones back in that day there were no
such thing as a cell phones.
Speaker 3 (06:15):
We were trying to figure out how this was going
to work once we got details. But at some point
we decided we should combine our forces and try to
prosecute these people all in one case. And then once
we did that, then we agreed to do it in
Seattle because that seemed like more of the hub of
(06:36):
where the crimes had been committed. And also San Francisco.
You know, it was more of a defense friendly jurisdiction.
The defense lawyers were more skilled, the judges were more liberal.
So just from the government's point of view, it was
like a better venue to have a more you know,
pro law enforcement venue.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
I'm a journalists in filmmaker Tellent Panschewski, and this is
episode nine the trial of the Order. Even with the
details of their crimes uncovered by the collaborative efforts of
federal and local investigators in a number of states, sorting
(07:20):
out an ironclad racketeering case would be challenging well.
Speaker 3 (07:24):
The racketeering statute required basically that the government proved that
there was an enterprise that engaged in two or more
federal crimes, and so we described the Order as the
enterprise and then listed the various crimes that the members
had committed in furtherance of that enterprise, and those included
the murder of Alan Berg and another individual named Walter West,
(07:47):
who had been suspected as an informant of the group,
as well as the armored car robbery in Yukaya, California,
some others in Seattle, Washington, some counterfeiting crimes that were
committed along the way, as well as some robberies of
pornographic stores and things like that. So we basically listed
(08:10):
a number of crimes that became what we call the
predicate acts of the racketeering case, and then as prosecutors,
we split up those so that some of us were
responsible for some of those crimes and other of those crimes,
and that was kind of how we organized our trial preparation.
(08:30):
So I was responsible for the Yucaiah robbery. Jeene Wilson
was responsible for Alan Berg's murder, and he was also
the overall leader of our case, and other of the
lawyers were responsible for crimes in their areas as well.
Speaker 4 (08:52):
Well.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
The trial judge was Walter McGovern, who was a no
nonsense but very personable judge. Each defendant, there were ten
of them in the trial. They each had their own
defense lawyers, and they sat in a couple of benches
basically to my left, with a defense lawyer sitting next
to his client and the US marshals sitting next to
(09:15):
each person, so it was quite crowded in the room.
Then there was a table with myself and the four
other prosecutors and a couple of FBI agents who were
working with us in the courtroom, and one by one
witness we basically presented our case like brick by brick.
Our witnesses would come one by one and give their evidence,
(09:37):
and the jury, which was twelve people plus about four alternates,
was sitting there listening to all of that. Surprisingly to me,
in the courtroom. The atmosphere was pretty relaxed despite all
the security, because the defendants were pretty friendly and I
myself always as a prosecutor, and I think this was
(09:58):
maybe because I so to had a defense lawyer mentality also,
but I always wanted to treat people with respect when
I prosecuted them. I wanted them to have the dignity
of being seen as a human being despite the fact
that I was there to have them held accountable for
their crimes. And so I was also friendly to the defendants.
(10:21):
I talked to them at the breaks. Sometimes I sat
next to them and chatted about stuff, and so it
was a relaxed atmosphere in the trial itself, although a
very serious one and one in which the consequences were
quite serious for each of those people who are on trial.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
As you could imagine, this trial was a very serious affair.
Media from around the world descended on the courthouse, and
more than thirty Deputy marshals were assigned to the trial
from across the country, each standing in and around the
courtroom with their shotgun in hand. Additional metal detectors were
installed in the courthouse entrance and the chairs occupied by
(11:02):
the defendants and their lawyers were all bolted down to
the floor.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
We started off with the opening statements, and the government's
opening statements was given by Bob Wood, who was another
prosecutor from San Francisco who came up and worked with me,
and he is a very good trial lawyer, and he
outlined our whole case to the jury as clearly as
we could do it without trying to make it too complicated,
because we were worried. We didn't want there to be
(11:26):
it to be too complicated so that they had some
reasonable doubt when there wasn't really any if they truly understood.
So Bob did a great job with his closing argument,
and then some of the defense lawyers made closing arguments,
but I don't believe many of them did. A defendant
has the option of doing it at the beginning of
the case or at the beginning of the defense case,
(11:48):
but there was no real surprises from the defense at
the beginning of the trial. And then we started putting
on witness by witness each of the crimes that were
we were trying to prove. We found out after the
bag the Brinx robbery that there had been two employees
(12:08):
of Brink's armored car company who were involved in the robbery,
and so they provided.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Information to the Order.
Speaker 3 (12:16):
They ultimately pled guilty and testified, And so those were
two of my witnesses who I prepared and questioned when
they came and testified on the witness stand. In addition,
there were members of the Order who had turned state's
evidence and became witnesses for the prosecution, and we divided
(12:37):
those up, and so I had some of those, and
so did all of the other members of our team.
And then most of the people were eyewitnesses, the Brinks drivers,
people along the road who had seen them, alan Berg's wife,
I believe, testified, and other people who were privy to
the allen Berg murder, as well as people at Idaho
(13:02):
eastern Washington who had had different transactions with the defendants
and knew some things about who was living in different
places and things like that that we had to prove.
So that took up most of the four months of
the trial.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
As the case was made by prosecutors, the full organizational
configuration of the Order was presented in exhausting detail. How
different members took on specific roles and earned salaries as
well as bonuses for certain criminal acts and how these
crimes were committed to further the group's ultimate goal of
overthrowing America's quote Zionist occupied government unquote. While these arguments
(13:41):
presented by federal prosecutors unveiled the Order's numerous crimes and
great detail, they also, for the first time offered a
blow by blow account of who had murdered Allenberg and
how they had done it. Here is FBI agent Wayne Mannis.
Speaker 4 (13:56):
We were able to ascertain and improve that that the
people that were responsible for the assassination of Allenberg was
Robert Matthews for one David Lane, the individual I mentioned
earlier had had that very controversial conversation with him over
(14:19):
his talk show, an individual by the name of Robert Scutari,
and the actual trigger man who was in charge of
assassinations for the Order, an individual by the name of
Bruce Cheryl.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
Puis for Allen Burke's friends and colleagues who were still
grieving the loss of this larger than life figure. It
was a startling revelation to learn who had committed this
heinous crime, But there was a new detail unfurled by
the investigation that showed how far the Order had gone
to track down and murder Alan Burke.
Speaker 4 (15:02):
There was a lady by the name of Jean Craig
who was closely affiliated to Robert Matthews, and she went
to get for a week before the assassination and did
a very thorough job.
Speaker 9 (15:17):
Of identifying Alan Berg, his friend, his association's activities on
a daily basis.
Speaker 4 (15:28):
She followed him and surveilled him and knew exactly where
he worked, toward his residence, was when he generally gotten
home from work, what he did in terms of any
recreational activity, and provided all that information to the assassination group.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
Jean Craig wasn't just any member of the order. Her daughter,
Zilla Craig, was the girlfriend of the group's leader, Robert Matthews,
and was the mother of one of his children. As
a middle aged woman who looked the part of a
starstruck fan, nobody questioned it when Geene Craig arrived at
KOA Studios looking for Alan Burke.
Speaker 8 (16:08):
We later learned that the radio station itself had been
cased by Gen Craig, who had posed as a prize
winner and apparently had been escorted around the station. So
the thought that these killers had actually been in our
midst was scary.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
Here is koa producer Susan Ryman, followed by station manager
Lee Larson.
Speaker 10 (16:36):
You know, if you think about it, these people came
to Denver to kill him. Jean Craig came into our
building and asked for a media kid. They later found
Allen's press picture riddled with bulletles. They used different target practice.
They were in sane.
Speaker 11 (16:55):
A number of the people from the radio station were
among the witnesses of the trial because one of the
co conspirators was a lady who had visited the radio
station pretending to be a fan of Alan's and asking
some of our promotion people if they had pictures of him,
(17:18):
if they had any other information about him, that she
was just such a fan and wanted to know all
about him.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
For alan Berg's friends and colleagues, this new detail in
his murder truly hit home. The Order had spent some
time profiling and tracking alan Berg before murdering him, even
sending one of their own to step foot in their
studio knowing that Gene Craig had been dispatched to their
place of work to conduct reconnaissance on Burke only poked
(17:47):
at an emotionally traumatic wound that remained fresh more than
a year after alan Berg's murder.
Speaker 12 (17:52):
As nineteen eighty four starts, the Order decides to up
there White power revolution. They start committing robberies, they start
counterfeiting money, and they start plotting who should we assassinate
first to really show the severity of what we're going
(18:16):
to do. They talk about Henry Kissinger, loner secretaries there.
They talk about Norman ly Or, television producer All the Family,
other shows. David Lane is in the group. David Lane
is from Denver. He says, I know this guy in Denver.
He's a loud mouth. He's on the radio. He's always
(18:37):
trying to stir things up. He's always going against people
like us who have our beliefs and our ideas. Why
don't we go to Denver and make this our first target?
And so they begin to make plans in the spring
of nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 1 (18:54):
This is alan Berg biographer Stephen Singer.
Speaker 12 (18:57):
They send Jean Craig down to Denver to do surveillance
on Burg. They figure out, you know, exactly what he
looks like. Very few people would be mistaken for Ellenberg.
He was about six foot two or three. He weighed
about one hundred and fifty pounds. He was ramrod thin.
(19:17):
He had grown long, bushy gray hair to cover the
scars that had been left on his head from his surgery.
He had a beard. He was very striking looking in
many ways. Then he dressed very very well. They do
the surveillance. They figure out where he lives, they figure
(19:40):
out where he works, They figure out what his routine is,
coming to work, going home from work, and they have
everything planned out.
Speaker 3 (19:56):
We rested our case and then it was the defense
turn to put on witnesses. They didn't call very many,
but one of them Artie mcbreerdy, who was a gentleman
from Arkansas who had helped them the order and some
of their activities. He testified in his own behalf and
I cross examined him. And then the defense rested, and
(20:18):
then we had our closing arguments, and Gene Wilson gave
the main closing argument for the government. I also gave
some part of it, and another person from Seattle named
Peter Mueller gave our rebuttal argument. All of the defense
lawyers made closing arguments in which they tried to point
out issues of reasonable doubt in our case, and ultimately
(20:39):
Judge McGovern gave the jury their instructions to what the
law was that they were to apply to the facts
that they heard.
Speaker 1 (20:47):
After a trial lasting several months, a verdict was reached
and read in February of nineteen eighty six. In all,
ten members of the Order were tried and convicted under
Rico statutes. Gary Lee Brough was sentenced to sixty years
in prison, Bruce Carrol Pierce, the man who pulled the trigger,
one hundred years. Upon his sentencing, Pierce stood in the
(21:10):
courtroom and told Federal District Judge Walter McGovern, I am
not going to waste my time or your time and
beg for mercy. Whatever I did, I did to bring
honor to myself and glory to my brothers, and glory
to God. In a pre sentencing report, Assistant United States
Attorney David Wilson wrote of Pierce that he could not
(21:31):
recall ever having faced a defendant who was a more
frightening danger to society. Order member Randolph George Dewey received
one hundred years, Richard Kemp sixty years, Andrew Barnhill, whose
weapon had been recovered at the scene of the Prince
Armored truck robbery that broke the whole case open. Received
(21:51):
forty years.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
And then it was at the end of December. There
was a period of time when the jury was deliberating
and they it was about four or five days, I think,
and then finally they just announced that they had reached
a verdict, and we all came back to court and
we listened to the verdict and everyone was found guilty
and the trial was over.
Speaker 12 (22:14):
Oh.
Speaker 6 (22:15):
Overjoyed when they were convicted, of.
Speaker 7 (22:17):
Course, I felt that, you know, however many years they're
going to lock them up.
Speaker 6 (22:22):
It wasn't enough.
Speaker 7 (22:25):
And I was happy to hear when some of them
died in prison.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
I have to say I was relieved, because you never
want to screw up a case like that, you know.
So I was expecting that we would win, but with
a jury, you never know, and so I was That
was my main emotion when I heard the verdict, was
just relief. Okay, we didn't screw it up. Afterwards, it
(22:54):
became very difficult to work on the routine cases that
I had in the Northern District of California as a prosecutor.
Was I felt like I had had my biggest challenge
as a prosecutor and that was never going to be
replicated again. And so, you know, a few years later,
I did decide to leave the US Attorney's office, And
(23:14):
that was basically the reason that I just thought I
had done everything as a prosecutor that I could do
in the ten years that I had been an assistant
US attorney, and I was ready for a new challenge.
So yeah, that was pretty much the highlight of my
career as a prosecutor.
Speaker 1 (23:33):
In a separate trial in nineteen eighty seven in Denver,
Pierce and Lane were found guilty of violating Alan Berg's
civil rights. Two other defendants in the trial, Jean Craig
and Richard Scutari, were found not guilty. All four were
already serving lengthy prison sentences following the Seattle Rico trial
the previous year. Pearson Lane both died in prison. Richard
(23:56):
Scutari was sentenced to sixty years in prison in Seattle,
and according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, he maintained
extensive connections with white supremacist activists in the United States, Sweden,
and Finland while in prison. Scutari was granted early release
last year, and according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons,
was released from their custody on January twenty first, twenty
(24:19):
twenty five. Before his release, I reached out to Scutari
last year through the Bureau of Prisons. He declined my
request for an interview with the Order disbanded and its
members in prison, the shocking final chapter of Allenberg's remarkable
life officially came to a close. But even more startling
(24:39):
than the details that emerged of his murder or the
shocking story of how the Order hunted Alan Berg down,
was how little attention was paid to Berg in the
years following his murder. In and around Denver, where he
had emerged as one of the most prominent voices on
local radio, he was mostly forgotten, no plaque or statue
commemorating his place in the community, not even an alley
(25:02):
named after him, and in the vast media landscapes he
had helped shape as one of the most dynamic voices
in radio, he was completely unknown, even while some of
his contemporaries became legends in the field. But with the
help of some of his old friends, a renewed appreciation
for Berg and his incredible career recently emerged around Denver,
(25:24):
an appreciation that helped cement his prominent place in radio history.
All that and more in the final episode of live Wire,
the Loud life and shocking Murder of Alan Berg. Live
Wire is a production of iHeart Podcasts and Modulator Media.
For more podcasts from iHeart Podcasts, visit the iHeartRadio app,
(25:48):
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