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Map of Carollton
Kilgore, OH
Posted on 03/07/2003 5:14:18 AM PST by mommadooo3
3/6/2003 - FBI Arrests Ohio Man
The FBI converged on a rural house in Kilgore, Ohio Thursday and arrested a man on charges of providing false I-Ds to help illegal aliens get into the U-S from Canada. FBI agent Mitchell Marrone said the agency was tipped off by CNN after the television network received anonymous e-mails stating that someone in Ohio was helping illegal aliens enter the county. There was even an allegation in the e-mails that the person had Sarin gas and was planning a terrorist attack. The FBI is not saying what it discovered at Fernwalt’s house when they arrested him.
Carroll man suspected of smuggling terrorists who plotted gas attack
Thursday, March 6, 2003
By TIM BOTOS Repository staff writer
AKRON —— An anonymous e-mail to CNN led federal authorities to a home in Kilgore this week. The owner of the home, Anthony Fernwalt, was arrested Tuesday. The formal criminal charge is violating Title 18, United States Code, Section 1028.
Simply put, the 50-year-old Carroll County man is accused of transferring, making or having false IDs. But federal court records outline what could have been a more sinister plan.
Accusations of smuggling Pakistani and Indian residents through Canada into the U.S.; aliases; and a planned terrorist attack, using chemicals such as gas.
“We take every precaution ... when these kinds of allegations are made,” said Mitchell J. Marrone, agent-in-charge of the FBI’s office in Canton.
Fernwalt’s wife, Patty, said her husband actually turned himself in at about 10 a.m. Tuesday. She said she hadn’t been able to speak with him since, and hasn’t been told what the charge is.
Fernwalt’s criminal record includes passing a bad check, tampering with a coin machine, possessing powder to make a crude bomb and having a weapon under disability (it’s illegal for a felon to have a weapon). Carroll County sheriff’s deputies also charged him Tuesday with falsification.
Fernwalt is the same man who once brought national attention to tiny St. Jude Orthodox Catholic Church in Barberton. In 1992, while cleaning the building, he said he saw a painting of the Virgin Mary “crying.” In the next few weeks, thousands flocked to the church around the clock for a glimpse of that painting, and to pray.
Fernwalt also was claiming to have regular apparitions, or visions of the Virgin Mary. A year later, he helped form Christ in the Hills, which evolved into a retreat and shrine near his home in Kilgore.
On Tuesday, federal agents searched the home and the shrine at 4375 Post Rd. Marrone would not say what FBI agents were looking for, or what they found.
However, he said no sarin gas or weapons were discovered.
Fernwalt appeared in U.S. District Court in Akron on Wednesday morning. A magistrate judge ordered a psychiatric evaluation to determine if Fernwalt is competent to stand trial.
A court affidavit from Sue Ellen Clark, special agent of the FBI, describes events that led agents to the Carroll County retreat this week:
In January, an e-mailer, using the name Tony Black, began contacting CNN and the Fox News Network.
Black said he was a Muslim, converted to Christianity. He said he was brought to this country with the help of Waine Coxall, an alias used by Tony Fernwalt.
The series of e-mails were sent from truck stops and libraries in east St. Louis, Illinois and South Dakota. A final message was sent Jan. 22 from a convenience store across the street from a truck stop in Cambridge.
In the electronic messages, Black warned that Fernwalt had smuggled terrorists across the border from Canada through Fort Covington, N.Y., and Enosburg, Vt. Black said those terrorists were planning for a chemical attack using sarin gas.
FBI agents were not able to determine the identity of Black. However, investigators do know that Fernwalt regularly travels to New York and Canada. Patty Fernwalt told The Repository her husband recently returned from a funeral in New York. She also said he had been in Canada when he suffered a stroke.
On Feb. 28, the sheriff’s office in Jefferson County, east of Carroll County, notified the FBI that Fernwalt came to their office the day before.
They said Fernwalt confessed to obtaining Canadian birth certificates of dead people. Fernwalt said Dr. Paramjit Singh, who is jailed on a drug charge, used those certificates to smuggle Pakistani and Indian nationals into the United States through Canada.
Fernwalt said the birth certificates then were used to get Canadian driver’s licenses in the names of dead people. The licenses helped get those nationals into the United States.
Fernwalt also gave sheriff’s officials an Ontario, Canada, driver’s license, a Canadian birth certificate, medical card and hunting and fishing licenses, all issued in Waine Coxall’s name. The driver’s license included a photo of Fernwalt.
Carroll County sheriff’s officials told the FBI that in the summer of 2002, deputies were at Fernwalt’s compound.
A nearly mile-long driveway leads to the Post Road retreat. The place includes a concrete shrine building, homes, a springhouse and other outbuildings.
While there, deputies saw a Canadian ID card with Fernwalt’s photo, but issued in another name. However, they didn’t seize the ID or even ask him about it that day.
Patty Fernwalt said she gave authorities a key Tuesday morning. However, she said they kicked in a door while conducting the search. She doesn’t know what they could possibly be looking for.
“They really had a parade,” she said. “It was a waste of taxpayers’ money.”
I think all of the NE ohio gas station owners need checked, as there is a new operation a day being opened by mideastern men.
I know this guy! He is nuts, and used to hang around here a few years' back. He got into trouble with the local law--I forget all the details--and I was supposed to evaluate him for the court, but somehow (I think extradited elsewhere) the case never came up beyond arraignment.
Guy HAS to be nuts. Makes a claim about a 'holy finding' and then helps wanna be terrorists come sneakin' in the country?
Maybe he thought he could be the founder for St. Mary Kaboom.
I know lots of people in Guernsey County but, sorry, no Rudds.
Well, have to leave the thread for a while...horses need tending. WBB.
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