Thread: Vegas cop killers had anti-government view

Police: Vegas cop killers had anti-government view

By MICHELLE RINDELS and JUSTIN PRITCHARD
The Associated Press
Published: Sunday, Jun. 8, 2014 - 10:56 pm
Last Modified: Monday, Jun. 9, 2014 - 4:37 pm


LAS VEGAS -- A husband and wife who went on a deadly shooting rampage in Las Vegas harbored anti-government beliefs and left a swastika and a "Don't tread on me" flag on the body of one of the two police officers they killed, authorities said Monday.

Jerad and Amanda Miller had been kicked off a Nevada ranch where anti-government protesters faced down federal agents earlier this year because they were "very radical," according to the son of rancher Cliven Bundy.

Assistant Sheriff Kevin McMahill said the Millers had ideology shared by "militia and white supremacists," including the belief that law enforcement was the "oppressor."

Police believe the shootings were an isolated act, not part of a broader conspiracy to target law enforcement, McMahill said.

Ammon Bundy, one of Cliven Bundy's sons, said by telephone that the Millers were at his father's ranch for a few days this spring before they were asked to leave by militia members for unspecified "conduct" problems. He called the couple "very radical" and said they "did not align themselves" with the beliefs of other protesters, who thwarted a roundup of Cliven Bundy's cattle by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, which wants to collect more than $1 million in grazing fees and penalties.

While thousands of people have been to the site over the last couple of months, "Not very many people were asked to leave. I think they may have been the only ones," Ammon Bundy said.

On Sunday, the two Las Vegas police officers were having lunch at a pizza buffet in an aging strip mall about 5 miles northeast of the Las Vegas Strip when the Millers fatally shot them. The attack at a CiCi's Pizza killed officers Alyn Beck, 41, and Igor Soldo, 31, both of whom were husbands and fathers.

According to McMahill, this is how Sunday's events unfolded:
The Millers left a neighbor's apartment where they had been staying around 4:30 a.m. and walked for hours, eventually reaching the strip mall, about 5 miles away.

Around 11:20 a.m., Jerad Miller went briefly into the restaurant, then left and got his wife, leaving their backpacks outside.

When they returned, the two officers were sitting in a booth. Jerad Miller fatally shot Soldo in the back of his head. As his partner tried to react, Miller shot him once in the throat. Amanda Miller then pulled her own gun and both shot Beck several times.

Police believe that while the Millers wanted to target police, the choice of Soldo and Beck was random.

Pulling the mortally wounded officers from the booth, they took their guns and ammunition and put a yellow Gadsden flag featuring the phrase "Don't tread on me" and a swastika on Beck's body. The flag, with its roots in the American Revolution, is a symbol for anti-government groups. Police said they believe the swastika was intended to paint police as Nazis, not necessarily as an expression of the Millers' own white-supremacist views.

The couple also told restaurant patrons that their act was "the beginning of the revolution," the same message as a note they left at the restaurant.

The couple went next to a Wal-Mart about a block away, where Jerad Miller entered, fired one round and "told the people to get out and this was a revolution and that the police were on the way."

In the frenzy, shopper Joseph Wilcox decided to confront Jerad Miller — not realizing that Amanda Miller was his accomplice. Wilcox went from the checkout area to Miller and pulled his concealed firearm. But before he could fire, Amanda Miller shot him in the ribs and Wilcox collapsed.

"Joseph died trying to protect others," Sheriff Doug Gillespie said.

By now, police had arrived, and two five-officer teams entered the massive store. Near the back, one team confronted the Millers, and exchanged fire. At one point, Jerad Miller tried to blast a rear emergency exit door open with a shotgun, but police had blocked it with a car and he could not escape.

By looking at the store's surveillance camera feeds, an officer saw that Jerad Miller had built a makeshift barricade around his wife.

As police closed in, Amanda Miller shot her husband several times with a handgun, killing him. She then shot herself in the head. When officers arrived, she was still breathing, and was taken to the hospital.

She later died.

Police found hundreds more rounds of unspent ammunition in the Millers' bags.

The couple moved to the Las Vegas area in January, police said. Amanda Miller had worked at a Hobby Lobby craft store there until she was fired in April, the chain store said in a written statement.
Jerad Miller, 31, was convicted of felony vehicle theft in Washington state, and several other offenses, including phone harassment, driving under the influence, theft and malicious mischief, between 2001 and 2003, according to a Washington State Patrol database.

He also had a criminal record in Indiana.

Miller attended Kennewick High School in Washington state for one semester in 1999, his freshman year, district spokeswoman Robyn Chastain said. The district had no other record of him attending schools in the district, or of what he did when he left the school.

He and his 22-year-old wife were married in August 2012, according to a marriage license on file in Indiana.

When police descended on their apartment complex Sunday night in a rundown neighborhood, officers evacuated other residents.

On Monday, Sheriff Gillespie said he was pairing officers together for safety and that, for now, 300 will be on patrol — twice what is normal.

Asked about worries that more officers may be targeted, he responded: "Is that weighing? Sure, there's no doubt about it."

Ammon Bundy said supporters of his father are saddened by the killings and "have had no quarrel" with Las Vegas police.

"The only thing worse than (government) tyranny is anarchy," he said. "And we certainly recognize that."

http://www.sacbee.com/2014/06/08/646...ven-bundy.html

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http://www.alipac.us/f19/3-dead-2-of...otings-304178/

Vegas cop-killer cried over ‘new world order’

By David K. Li
June 9, 2014 | 3:40pm

A YouTube video emerged Monday of tearful cop-killer Jerad Miller, professing love for his wife and sadness about the “new world order.”

The video was purported to have been made in July 2013 — according to the YouTube channel it was posted on today — 11 months before he and wife Amanda Miller murdered two Las Vegas police officers and a Walmart shopper on Sunday.

“Hey babe, it’s your husband,” the shirtless, inked-up Miller tells a camera, red-nosed and sniffling. “I love you so much. I’m going to miss your smile and your laugh and the way you can always bring a smile to my face, eventually, no matter how crabby of a mood I’m in, cause of the new world order and s—.”

Miller’s eyes are red with tears throughout the nearly 3-minute video.

“I wish we could live in a happy-go-lucky world and we didn’t have to worry about none of this and we didn’t have to go through this s—, but we do,” he said.

“And I know we can get through this, cause we really love each other so much, you know. And you’re my trouper. You’re so strong. You don’t see it, but you are.”

Then Miller seems to make reference to an act that’ll separate the pair and land him behind bars.

“But I love you so much with all my heart and it’s going to be tough, it’s going to be tough on both of us,” he said.

“But time will go by fast. And every night I’m just going to imagine that you’re just lying there next to me, that I’m holding you. And I’ll have dreams about you. Then I’ll wake up pissed off because I know I’m in jail.”

http://nypost.com/2014/06/09/vegas-c...w-world-order/

How much does right-wing rhetoric contribute to right-wing terrorism?

• BY PAUL WALDMAN
• June 9 at 12:18 pm

Yesterday, a man and a woman shot two police officers in a Las Vegas restaurant after saying, “this is a revolution.” Then they draped their bodies in a Gadsden flag.According to reports now coming in, the couple (who later killed themselves) appear to have been white supremacists and told neighbors they had gone to join the protests in support of anti-government rancher Cliven Bundy. It was one more incident of right-wing terrorism that, while not exactly an epidemic, has become enough of a trend to raise some troubling questions.

What I’m about to say will raise some hackles, but we need to talk about it. It’s long past time for prominent conservatives and Republicans to do some introspection and ask whether they’re contributing to outbreaks of right-wing violence.

Before I go on, let me be clear about what I’m not saying. I’m not saying that Republican members of Congress bear direct responsibility for everything some disturbed person from the same side of the political spectrum as them might do. I’m not saying that they are explicitly encouraging violence. Nor am I saying that you can’t find examples of liberals using hyperbolic, irresponsible words.

But what I am saying is this: there are some particular features of conservative political rhetoric today that help create an atmosphere in which violence and terrorism can germinate.

The most obvious component is the fetishization of firearms and the constant warnings that government will soon be coming to take your guns. But that’s only part of it. Just as meaningful is the conspiracy theorizing that became utterly mainstream once Barack Obama took office. If you tuned into one of many national television and radio programs on the right, you heard over and over that Obama was imposing a totalitarian state upon us. You might hear that FEMA was building secret concentration camps (Glenn Beck, the propagator of that theory, later recanted it, though he has a long history of violent rhetoric), or that Obama is seeding the government with agents of the Muslim Brotherhood. You grandfather probably got an email offering proof that Obama is literally the antichrist.

Meanwhile, conservatives have become prone to taking the political disagreements of the moment and couching them in apocalyptic terms, encouraging people to think that if Democrats have their way on any given debate, that our country, or at the very least our liberty, might literally be destroyed.

To take just one of an innumerable number of examples, when GOP Senator Ron Johnson says that the Affordable Care Act is “the greatest assault on freedom in our lifetime,” and hopes that the Supreme Court will intervene to preserve our “last shred of freedom,” is it at all surprising that some people might be tempted to take up arms? After all, if he’s right, and the ACA really means that freedom is being destroyed, then violent revolution seems justified. Johnson might respond by saying, “Well, of course I didn’t mean that literally.”

And I’m sure he didn’t — Johnson may be no rocket scientist, but he knows that despite the individual mandate going into effect, there are a few shreds of freedom remaining in America.

But the argument that no sane person could actually believe many of the things conservatives say shouldn’t absolve them of responsibility. When you broadcast every day that the government of the world’s oldest democracy is a totalitarian beast bent on turning America into a prison of oppression and fear, when you glorify lawbreakers like Cliven Bundy, when you say that your opponents would literally destroy the country if they could, you can’t profess surprise when some people decide that violence is the only means of forestalling the disaster you have warned them about.

To my conservative friends tempted to find outrageous things liberals have said in order to argue that both sides are equally to blame, I’d respond this way: Find me all the examples of people who shot up a church after reading books by Rachel Maddow and Paul Krugman, and then you’ll have a case.

In our recent history, every election of a Democratic president is followed by a rise in conspiracy-obsessed right-wing populism. In the 1960s it was the John Birch Society; in the 1990s it was the militia movement shouting about black UN helicopters, and during the Obama presidency it was the Tea Party. Some of those movements are ultimately harmless, but alongside and around them are people who take their rhetoric seriously and lash out in response. After these killings in Nevada, and the murders at a Jewish community center in Kansas, and the murders at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, and multiple murders by members of the “sovereign citizens” movement in the last few years, it’s worth remembering that since 9/11, right-wing terrorism has killedmany more Americans than al Qaeda terrorism.

And I promise you, these murders in Nevada will not be the last. It may be going too far to say that conservative politicians and media figures whose rhetoric has fed the deranged fantasies of terrorists and killers have blood on their hands. But they shouldn’t have a clear conscience, either.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...orism/?hpid=z3

Armed bystander died confronting gunman





Two slain Vegas officers mourned

In Walmart and carrying a weapon, Joseph Wilcox moved to confront the shooter, without realizing Jerad Miller wasn't alone. FULL STORY

• Note pinned to slain officer
• Bundy son: Couple was unwelcome
• Photos: Ambush in pizza shop
• Honor my brave friend, a good cop
• Killers' online posts | Details

Las Vegas cop-killing couple's message of hate

After storming a restaurant and killing two police officers, Jerad and Amanda Miller placed a swastika and a 'don't tread on me' flag on the officers' bodies before going to Walmart and taking more lives. VPC

Marisol Bello and Rick Jervis, USA TODAY 9:16 p.m. EDT June 9, 2014


(Photo: John Locher, AP)

Jerad Miller and his wife, Amanda, loved super villains.

They walked about their Las Vegas apartment complex dressed as Batman villains, the Joker and his vampy sidekick Harley Quinn.

Amanda Miller's Facebook profile photo shows the pair in their Joker costumes.

Police say it was a window into the couple's troubled lives. Underneath their painted faces, they were a homicidal rage against authority.

The couple opened fire Sunday in a Las Vegas pizza restaurant and killed two police officers, draping one body with a "don't tread on me" flag and a swastika. On another, they pinned a menacing note, authorities said Monday.

VEGAS RAMPAGE: Police release details

Then the couple fatally shot another man in a nearby Walmart before officers cornered them. At that point, police said, Amanda Miller, 22, shot her husband and then herself.

As the public reacts with horror, investigators are trying to piece together details on how the couple graduated from anti-government rhetoric to murder.

"To stop this oppression, I fear, can only be accomplished with bloodshed," Jerad Miller, 31, posted on Facebook on June 2. "I, however would rather die fighting for freedom, than live on my knees as a slave."

The couple's social media postings serve as an anatomy of their anti-government, pro-gun beliefs. Jerad Miller was particularly prolific about his hate against the government and police authority, often going on screeds against President Obama and gun restrictions.

HEARTBREAK: Slain Vegas officer leaves wife, 3 children

The couple were part of a growing far-right, anti-government movement that has exploded in followers in recent years, said Mark Potok, senior fellow of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups.

The center was not monitoring Jerad and Amanda Miller specifically.

But through the couple's Facebook postings and clues left at the bloody scene, it's clear they adhered to the anti-government "Patriot" movement," Potok said.

The Patriot movement, which was the name given to the militia trend of the 1990s, has seen its numbers soar from about 150 known groups before 2008 to more than 1,000 last year, he said. The election of President Obama in fall 2008 was a main catalyst for the rise of anti-government conspirators, Potok said.

"These are groups that believe the federal government is involved in a plot to impose martial law, take away people's weapons … and ultimately force the United States into becoming a socialist country," he said.

According to an analysis of Jerad Miller's Facebook postings by the center, the social media page was littered with signs of his allegiance to the Patriot movement: He cited Patriot guns right activist Adam Kokesh. He "liked" Three Percenter Nation, a Patriot group headed by a former Alabama militiaman, and his profile picture shows two knives and the word "Patriot," with a stars and stripes motif.

Also, the Gadsden flag left at the pizza parlor by Jerad Miller is an emblem of the Patriot movement, Potok said.

Patriot members today constitute one of the most dangerous threats monitored by the center, he said.

"The only terrorist threat we face is not just jihadist," Potok said. "We have a homegrown terrorist movement that poses a very serious threat."

Witnesses say the couple shouted, "this is a revolution" when they walked into the pizza restaurant. And they had sprinkled ominous warnings about their impending spree in the days – and hours – before their anti-government attack.

"The dawn of a new day," read a post on Jerad Miller's Facebook page from June 7. "May all of our coming sacrifices be worth it."

On the morning before they left home with a shopping cart of weapons and 100 rounds of ammunition, they had warned neighbors of their intentions, NBC News reported.

"We gotta do what we gotta do," Jerad Miller told Kelly Fielder, adding that he and his wife, Amanda, were departing for an "underground world."

Amanda Miller then embraced the neighbor and said, "I am so sorry,"
Fielder said she had heard Jerad Miller make anti-government statements in the past — including a desire to overthrow the government and President Obama and kill police officers — but was not alarmed by them, NBC News reported.

"I thought he was just all talk," Fielder, who described herself as Amanda's "best friend," told NBC Los Angeles.

It was talk the couple was not shy about sharing. They could be heard spewing racist and anti-government opinions, another neighbor told the Las Vegas Sun.

The duo told people they planned to commit a mass shooting, Brandon Moore, a resident of the complex, told the newspaper.

"They were handing out white-power propaganda and were talking about doing the next Columbine," Moore said.

The couple married in 2012 and lived in Lafayette, Indiana, where Amanda Miller's parents live. After they were evicted from their apartment, they moved to Las Vegas in January.

Jerad Miller had a troubled history that included a long record of arrests and convictions for drug offenses going back to 2007.

On Facebook, he professed support for Cliven Bundy, the cattle rancher cited for grazing his cattle on public land without a permit. He boasted of spending time at Bundy's ranch during a recent standoff there between armed militia members and federal government agents.

He railed against the landlord who evicted the couple in Indiana and against the prison system for incarcerating him.

"He was just weird, really weird," said Connie Kennedy, a neighbor in Lafayette. She said the first time she met Jerad Miller he rambled on about rampant pollution and America becoming a communist nation.

In July 2013, Jerad Miller posted teary videos on YouTube to his wife before he was sent back to jail for violating an in-house arrest.

"I wish the world was perfect and we could live happily without all this crap," he said.

The Lafayette Journal & Courier contributed to this report.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/n...ting/10248805/

Sheriff's office: Las Vegas couple saw police as oppressors

By Michael Pearson, Saeed Ahmed and Kevin Conlon, CNN
updated 8:29 AM EDT, Tue June 10, 2014
Your video will play in 0 sec
STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• NEW: "I should have called the cops," says a woman who knew the couple
• The citizen victim was carrying a weapon, said he was going to confront the suspects
• Couple in shootings put a "Don't Tread on Me" flag and swastika on one officer's body
• Jerad Miller and his wife also left note saying "this is the beginning of the revolution"

(CNN) VIDEO @ http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/09/justice/las-vegas-shooting/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

Las Vegas shooter Jerad Miller: petty criminal, 'Joker,' aspiring terrorist
Christian Science Monitor - 22 minutes ago

http://www.alipac.us/f19/las-vegas-p...vement-304385/

Teen gunman in Oregon school shooting got weapons from home

TROUTDALE Ore. Wed Jun 11, 2014 3:09pm EDT

Police officers enter the building after a shooting at Reynolds High School in Troutdale, Oregon June 10, 2014.
CREDIT: REUTERS/STEVE DIPAOLA

(Reuters) - The teenage gunman who killed a classmate at an Oregon high school on Tuesday was armed with a military-style rifle and a semi-automatic handgun that he obtained from his family's home, and had no apparent link to his victim, police said on Wednesday.

Police said an autopsy of the suspect, Jared Michael Padgett, 15, confirmed that he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound after exchanging fire with police inside Reynolds High School in the town of Troutdale, a Portland suburb.

Troutdale Police Chief Scott Anderson declined at a news conference to offer any explanation for what may have driven Padgett to walk into a boy's locker room at the school and shoot a fellow freshman student, 14-year-old Emilio Hoffman.

"At this time it would be inappropriate to discuss a motive," Anderson said, adding that the investigation was continuing.

But he credited a school gym teacher, Todd Rispler, with preventing further loss of life. Rispler was grazed by gunfire as he encountered Padgett but made his way to the school office to warn administrators of the attack and initiate a lockdown, Anderson said.

Anderson said Padgett opened fire with an AR-15-style rifle and also was carrying a semi-automatic pistol that he did not use, as well as a knife and nine loaded ammunition magazines capable of holding several hundred rounds.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/...0EM27720140611