Modern-day anarchists resort to legalese in murder defence

A man accused of brutally slaying two women in a custody battle has made a shocking claim as part of his defence.

Veronica Butler, left, and Jilian Kelley were murdered. Source: Facebook/Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation

He has “dominion over all things”. His three children are his “God-given property”. And that’s the defence a murder-accused “sovereign citizen” gives for his part in the brutal slaying of two Kansas women over a bitter custody battle.

“I am a creation of nature and nature’s God,” the defendant declares in an affidavit submitted to the Texas County District Court at Guymon, Oklahoma.

“A people, a man, found alive and living, commonly known by my family, friends and neighbours as Paul Grice and so here I will stand.”

He is the fifth member of a community prayer group calling themselves “God’s Misfits” to be charged with the March 30 murder of Veronica Butler, 27 and court supervisor Jillian Kelley, 39, as they drove along a rural dirt lane. They were on their way to pick up Butler’s two children to attend a friend’s birthday party.

“Blood was found on the roadway and the edge of the roadway,” court documents report. “Butler’s glasses were also found in the roadway south of the vehicle, near a broken hammer. A pistol magazine was found inside Kelley’s purse at the scene, but no pistol was found.”

The children, aged six and eight, had meanwhile reportedly been placed in the care of family friends who were known to regularly host God’s Misfits prayer sessions.

A police search for the missing women ended 14 days later with the discovery of a shallow straw-covered pit in a cattle-grazing paddock leased by one of the accused.

The arrests include the children’s grandmother and local Republican Party chair, Tifany Adams, 54, her boyfriend Tad Callum, 43, and two God’s Misfits members – Cole Twombley, 50, and his wife Cora, 44. The fifth, Paul Jeremiah Grice, 31, was arrested in May.

Adams was a central figure in a heated custody battle over who had rights over the children. Court documents say she has confessed her involvement in the killings.

But all involved believe they are somehow “outside the law” of Oklahoma and the United States.

“The custody dispute is only part of the story,” says local investigative reporter Max McCoy. “It appears the Misfits may have embraced reckless and vengeful violence as an extension of their apocalyptic religious beliefs that children are property and that no government or other human institution can interfere in parental authority.”

Veronica Butler, left, and Jilian Kelley were murdered. Source: Facebook/Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation

State of denial

The brutal murder of the Kansas mother and court supervisor is just one incident among an increasing trend of violent attacks being linked to “sovereign citizen” movements in the United States, Europe and Australia.

On December 12, 2022, Gareth Train, his partner Stacey and his brother Nathaniel executed two police officers and killed a concerned neighbour in Queensland’s Western Downs.

“If you are a conservative, anti-vax, freedom lover, protester, common law, conspiracy talker, alternative news, independent critical thinker, truther, Christian, patriot etc etc expect a visit from these hammers – they are here to kill, maim and take you to re-education school,” one social media video linked to the trio declared.

Also in December 2022, German police arrested former special forces troops, politicians and judges to foil a coup-plot by the far-right terrorist organisation Reichsbürger (Reich Citizens). The sovereign-citizen group argues they are subjects of a defunct German regional monarchy overthrown by a 1918 revolution, not the Federal Republic of Germany.

According to criminology expert Professor Christine Sarteschi of Chatham University, the anarchist extremist movement is becoming increasingly organised.

Bureaucratic even.

Cole Twombly, Tifany Adams, Tad Cullum and Cora Twombly (clockwise, from top left). Source: Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation

Rejecting law through legalese

“Over the past several years, a new variation of sovereign citizens has emerged, known as American State Nationals,” Professor Sarteschi writes in The Conversation. “In my research, I learned that they have been congregating on social media and gathering at seminars. Their leaders teach traditional sovereign citizen ideology along with new methods that supposedly let them live outside the law.”

Their argument goes something like this:

Driver's licences, marriage certificates, social security cards, car registration, voter enrolment – all are “contracts with the government”.

These contracts require signatories to obey laws.

So, if you fill out a $500 set of quasi-legal forms and statements, you can cancel these “contracts” and live outside the rule of law …

In July last year, Grice – who has reportedly admitted helping divert and block Butler’s car as part of the murder conspiracy – paid $200 to certify a set of documents at an Oklahoma county clerk’s office.

He then had it sent to US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, believing it would legally invalidate his US citizenship.

“I am not anti-government, anti-military, or anti-America,” Grice insists in the documents. “Quite the contrary. For Generations, My family served the United States of America in both active and inactive service all over the world.”

But he then goes on to proclaim: “I am no longer a citizen of the corrupt political corporate state of Michigan and the United States of America”.

The murder of the mother and court supervisor is just one incident among an increasing trend of violent attacks being linked to ‘sovereign citizen’ movements. Picture: Supplied

Alternate realities

“Grice’s world was based not on reality but instead spun from poisonous conspiracy theories, half-baked legal hypotheses and religious delusion,” says McCoy.

The $500 sovereign citizen forms didn’t help. They don’t meet US citizenship renunciation requirements or follow established legal procedures.

“Perhaps paradoxically, American State Nationals are also told to acquire a federal document that group members call a noncitizen national passport,” adds Professor Sarteschi. “They believe this document gives them many special privileges, including no longer being a US citizen and having immunity from US laws. They believe this even though US law applies to everyone within the borders of the US.”

If they simply read it, she adds, they’d discover it does no such thing: “The document certifies that its bearer does “owe permanent allegiance to the United States”.”

Sovereign citizen dogma grew in popularity during the COVID-19 lockdown era.

But it has its origins in a 1960s anti-tax movement called the California Rangers. Its founder, William Potter Gale, was also a proud white supremacist. He was convicted of tax crimes in 1988.

However, the ideology quickly took root among US militia movements.

Paul Jeremiah Grice. Source: Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation

And it has since evolved into an extremist movement that rejects democracy in favour of “righteous” autocracy, denies the legitimacy of state and legal powers, and applies a fundamentalist lens to Christian biblical teachings – especially those establishing men as the supreme authority over a household.

And the “God’s Misfits” view of America is not one we recognise.

In their world, it remains under 1861 Civil War era martial law. Grice states his belief the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution enforces slavery and denies due process and equal status under the law. And that the federal government in Washington DC had converted itself into a corporation to “sell” US citizens to foreign states as debt.

He also insists state and federal judges, attorneys, and authorities are colluding in an international child trafficking conspiracy.

“I must now also leave Babylon the Great and not partake of her sins any longer lest I receive her plagues, for her sins have reaching unto Heaven, and God will remember her iniquities,” he declares. “May God have mercy on the people of the United States/UNITED STATES!”

The odd grammar and capitals are not mistakes, apparently.

“It’s as if the sovereigns believe there is a kind of magic code to legal documents, that if only they get the weird spelling and capitalisation right, all of their problems will be solved,” notes McCoy. “But there doesn’t appear to be a Sovereign Citizens Stylebook, and every document looks a bit different.”

Jamie Seidel is a freelance writer | @JamieSeidel