True Crime Chronicles: The brutal Mueller family murders and a White supremacist group's bloody legacy
- Dennis McCaslin
- 2 hours ago
- 4 min read
In the humid haze of a late June afternoon in 1996, two fishermen casting lines into the sluggish waters of the Illinois Bayou near Russellville, Arkansas, snagged something far more sinister than bass.
What emerged from the murky depths were three decomposed bodies, bound and weighted with rocks, their heads encased in plastic bags sealed with duct tape.
The victims were identified as William Mueller, a 52-year-old gun dealer known in local circles for his vast collection of firearms; his 28-year-old wife, Nancy; and her 8-year-old daughter, Sarah Powell.
The discovery sent shockwaves through the rural community of Pope County, transforming a quiet bayou into the scene of one of the most heinous crimes in Arkansas history.
The murders, committed on January 11, 1996, in the family's modest home near the unincorporated community of Tilly, were no random act of violence. They were the calculated work of two white supremacists, Chevie O'Brien Kehoe and Daniel Lewis Lee, driven by a twisted ideology to fund an armed uprising for a whites-only nation in the Pacific Northwest.
Chevie Kehoe, born in 1973 in Florida, was the eldest of eight sons in a nomadic family steeped in anti-government paranoia and Christian Identity theology, a fringe belief system that posits white Europeans as the true descendants of ancient Israelites, with Jews and people of color deemed inferior or demonic.
His father, Kirby Kehoe, a Vietnam War veteran, moved the family from Florida to North Carolina, then to a remote area in Stevens County, Washington, in 1985. There, young Chevie and his brother Cheyne were homeschooled after being pulled from public school, immersing them in survivalist training and white separatist rhetoric
.By his early 20s, Kehoe had formed the Aryan Peoples' Republic (or Aryan Peoples' Resistance), a militant group inspired by the "Northwest Territorial Imperative"--a call to carve out a white homeland in Idaho, Washington, and Montana through violence if necessary.
He married twice, fathered children, and built alliances within the shadowy world of Elohim City, an Oklahoma compound linked to other extremists (though unproven rumors swirled about ties to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing).
Kehoe's criminal resume grew: In 1995, he and an accomplice kidnapped and robbed a Jewish couple in Idaho, and he orchestrated the murder of fellow supremacist Jeremy Scott, whose body was buried after he was deemed a liability.
Enter Daniel Lewis Lee, a volatile drifter born in 1973 in Yukon, Oklahoma. Plagued by childhood seizures and mental health issues, Lee had a history of explosive violence: At 17, he participated in the murder of a teenager by forcing him into a sewer and stabbing him; he assaulted his mother, sister, and pregnant girlfriend; and he lost his left eye in a bar fight after hurling a racial slur.
Nicknamed "Cyclops" or "Cy," Lee sported white power tattoos and gravitated toward skinhead groups for the thrill of fights and chaos. He met Kehoe in late 1995 through mutual supremacist circles, quickly becoming his enforcer.
The Muellers entered this orbit innocently. William, a former Marine, ran a gun dealership from his home, attending shows across the region. In February 1995, Kehoe and his father Kirby burglarized the Mueller residence while the family was away, stealing over $50,000 in firearms, coins, and valuables--a grudge that would fester.
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On January 10, 1996, Kehoe and Lee left Lee's mother's home in Yukon, driving east toward Arkansas. Their target: the Muellers, whose cache of weapons and cash could bankroll Kehoe's ethnostate dreams. Arriving at the isolated home, the duo donned raid jackets emblazoned with "ATF" and "FBI," hiding inside--Kehoe behind a washing machine, Lee behind a couch.
When the family returned that evening, chaos erupted. Kehoe shouted "ATF! Raid!" as they subdued William, Nancy, and little Sarah. Using an electric cattle prod or stun gun, they tortured the victims for information on hidden safes and valuables.
William was handcuffed; all three were zapped repeatedly, even the child. Once the loot--estimated at $15,000 to $50,000 in cash and coins, plus hundreds of firearms and ammunition--was secured, the killers suffocated them with plastic bags taped over their heads.
Trial testimony later revealed a chilling detail: Lee refused to kill Sarah, so Kehoe did it himself. The bodies were driven to the Illinois Bayou, part of Lake Dardanelle, and dumped with rocks: William's wrist handcuffed to one, Nancy zip-tied, Sarah's small frame wrapped in yards of duct tape around a 69-pound boulder.
The perpetrators fled to Spokane, dividing the spoils and distributing weapons through supremacist networks. They bragged callously--Lee traded a stolen shotgun for a tattoo while boasting of "waxing" people and tossing them in a swamp; Kehoe joked about putting the victims on a "liquid diet."
In April 1996, the duo escalated with a pipe bomb at Spokane City Hall, causing minor damage but signaling their growing threat
For five months, the Muellers were presumed missing, their home eerily untouched. The bodies' discovery on June 30, 1996, launched a multi-agency probe involving the ATF, FBI, Arkansas State Police, and local sheriff's offices.
ndicted in December 1997 on federal RICO charges (racketeering, conspiracy, murder in aid of racketeering), the pair stood trial in Little Rock starting March 1999.
The 1999 trial exposed the depths of their hatred. Prosecutors painted Kehoe as the mastermind, Lee as the brutal enforcer with a history of violence. Gloria and Cheyne testified against Chevie, detailing the supremacist plot
. On May 4, the jury convicted both; sentencing deliberations dragged on. Ironically, the jury spared Kehoe the death penalty--voting for three life sentences without parole--while recommending death for Lee, citing his prior crimes and lack of remorse.
Judge G. Thomas Eisele hesitated, ordering a second penalty hearing in 2000, believing Kehoe the true ringleader. Appeals courts overruled, and Eisele imposed death in 2002.
ictims' relatives, including Nancy's mother Earlene Branch Peterson, opposed Lee's execution, arguing it dishonored the family's memory and that Kehoe deserved the harsher fate
.After years of appeals, Daniel Lewis Lee became the first federal inmate executed in nearly two decades when he received a lethal injection on July 14, 2020, at Terre Haute, Indiana.
Chevie Kehoe remains incarcerated, serving his life terms. As of last report he was a prisoner at the USP Big Sandy (Inez, Kentucky.
The Mueller murders stand as a grim reminder of how domestic extremism can turn ideological fantasy into unimaginable terror in America's heartland.
