FREE THE BROWNS AND THEIR SUPPORTERS!!!!!
In this June 18, 2007, file photo, Ed Brown, right, and his wife Elaine Brown listen to Ruby Ridge survivor Randy Weaver, center, at their home in in Plainfield, N.H.
MSM
CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — The New Hampshire compound of a tax-evading couple convicted of amassing an arsenal of weapons and holding federal law enforcement officials at bay for months is being sold at auction — even as prospective buyers have been kept off the land because it could still be booby-trapped.
The auction of Ed and Elaine Brown’s fortress-like home on 100 acres in Plainfield is scheduled for Friday afternoon at U.S. District Court in Concord. The minimum required bid is $250,000. Elaine Brown’s dental office in Lebanon also is being auctioned.
Prospective bidders have not been allowed to tour the property, and last year, the U.S. Marshals Service cited the possibility of land mines and other explosives buried on the property as a complication.
The court has ruled that the Browns and any heirs have no claims to the properties or any assets from their sale. If the properties sell, the first entities to be paid would be the municipalities of Plainfield and Lebanon, which are owed back property taxes.
AP Photo: Jim Cole, File
This June 18, 2007, file photo shows the home of Ed and Elaine Brown in Plainfield, N.H.
The Browns, who do not recognize the federal government’s authority to tax its citizens, had a nine-month standoff with authorities in 2007 after they were sentenced to five years in prison for tax evasion. U.S. marshals posing as supporters finally arrested them peacefully.
While the Browns kept federal marshals at bay, they welcomed a parade of anti-tax and anti-government supporters including Randy Weaver, whose wife and son were killed along with a deputy U.S. marshal in a 1992 shootout on Weaver’s property in Ruby Ridge, Idaho.
They were convicted in 2009 of amassing weapons, explosives and booby traps and plotting to kill federal agents who came to arrest them. Ed and Elaine Brown, both in their 70s, are serving 37 and 35 years in prison.
As of a year ago, numerous federal agencies with explosive detection equipment and dogs still couldn’t ensure the land was free of booby traps. But the hilltop house and the grounds up to the tree line have been searched extensively and have deemed free of improvised explosive devices and other booby traps.