Excerpts from article:
Last year, four men were arrested in connection with 22 bank robberies in seven Midwest states, netting a reported $250,000 and nearly matching Jesse James' string of bank, stage coach and train heists.
Mr. Langan was born in Saipan, where his father worked for the CIA.
In 1992, when robbers knocked off a Pizza Hut in Lavonia, Ga., Mr. Guthrie and Mr. Langan were suspects. Mr. Langan was arrested in Cincinnati and escorted back to Georgia by Franklin County Sheriff Hugh Roach.
Sheriff Roach recalls conversations in which Mr. Langan told him he was an Aryan Nations supporter and "said he wanted to tie up the court system so it couldn't operate."
In 1993, the Secret Service wanted to find Mr. Guthrie; it was investigating allegations he had made threats against George Bush when he was president. Mr. Langan agreed that if he was released he would help the government track down his old friend.
He didn't. He returned to Cincinnati, and after a few contacts with the Secret Service, he disappeared.
On Wednesday, 38-year-old reputed gang leader Peter K. Langan, also known as "Commando Pedro," goes on trial on charges of robbing two Ohio banks in what prosecutors claim was supposed to be a means to an end -- the overthrow of the government.
The trial comes two months after a fellow gang member was convicted of bank robbery in Iowa. A star witness there -- he'll also testify in Ohio -- was a former Aryan Republican Army soldier now cooperating with the government. The fourth man committed suicide last year after pleading guilty.
And in 1995, they bought a Ford Fairmont for a getaway car in the name of a retired FBI agent who had worked white supremacist cases in the Northwest. They abandoned it, leaving on the front seat an article about Timothy McVeigh, charged in the Oklahoma City federal building bombing.
In exchange for a cup of coffee, a cigarette and a call to his sister, Mr. Langan told authorities about a storage locker in Shawnee, Kan.
There they found pipe bombs, weapons, circuit boards, a Santa suit, FBI raid jackets and office addresses, and Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton masks.
Mr. Langan was surprisingly talkative and cheerful. He boasted his father had worked for the CIA, made a goofy face when asked to sit for a mug shot and told an FBI agent, "They call me Dennis the Menace."
by J.D.Cash, with Jeff Holladay
Excerpt:
In July, Guthrie agreed to a plea bargain in which he would testify against the other defendants charged in the robbery conspiracy. But only nine days after signing the deal with prosecutors -- and just one day after telling the Los Angeles Times reporter he intended to write a "tell-all" book about the entire white supremamcist scheme-- Guthrie was found hanged in his jail cell in Covington, Kentucky. His death was ruled a suicide.
Langan's trial is set to begin this October, but events even more shocking than the bank robberies themselves could come to light. The Columbus Dispatch newspaper quoted Langan's sister, Leslie Mahoney, on Langan's remarks about the upcoming trial: "When they (the FBI) find out what I've really been doing the past two years, they'll really be surprised."