Stalemate persists as suspect avoids police

June 27, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

GUN BARREL CITY, Texas

The past decade has taken a toll on John Joe Gray, holed up on his rural East Texas land while waiting for a siege that’s never happened.

He’s been living on 47 acres behind a fence without running water and electricity but with plenty of guns, daring authorities to arrest him for a 10-year-old, third-degree felony warrant. He says he hasn’t left his property since 2000, all the while allowing his distrust of a government he views as evil to fester.

The handmade warning signs have faded and the hordes of fellow militia members have long since gone, leaving behind only Gray and some relatives — he won’t say how many — on the tree-shaded property along a river in rural Henderson County, about 50 miles southeast of Dallas. They grow their own food and live in a shack and trailer — always wearing holsters with weapons. They don’t guard the entrance anymore.

Gray is thin and pale with a long, graying beard flowing down from his gaunt face — almost unrecognizable from photos taken in 2000 showing his short, dark hair and a mustache.

“I’ll never leave,” Gray told The Associated Press recently, wearing a holster that sheathed a knife on one side and gun on the other. “I don’t feel like a prisoner ... because I’m living out here and following God’s laws.”

Gray, now in his early 60s, had worked in construction and led a Texas militia group that often trained on the isolated property where he lived for about 15 years before the so-called standoff.

In late 1999 Gray was in a car pulled over for speeding in nearby Anderson County. State troopers saw high-powered rifles and anti-government materials in the car, but Gray refused to get out. When the troopers tried to remove him from the car, he reportedly bit one trooper’s hand and tried to grab his gun.

After his arrest, Gray showed up in court for a bail hearing, and Anderson County District Attorney Doug Lowe told the judge he feared Gray was a major threat because troopers found diagrams of plans to blow up a Dallas overpass.

“I wanted the judge to know what he was possibly thinking,” Lowe said.

But Gray posted bond and left, never showing up again in court. Gray then sent a handwritten letter on dusty notebook paper telling authorities that they’d “better bring plenty of body bags” if they stormed his compound, said Gary Thomas, a former investigator for Anderson County prosecutors.

That never happened. Authorities in Henderson County didn’t want to risk a gunbattle that likely would have killed officers or children on the compound, said Sheriff Ray Nutt, the third sheriff in office since 2000. If Gray is ever spotted driving in town or seen at a business, however, he will be arrested, Nutt said.