ED FITZPATRICK was one of three men that entered Leonard Ginter's farmhouse in Arkansas and possibly witnessed Gordon Kahl's death.
FITZ#6/14
ED FITZPATRICK INTERVIEW:
START @ 06:14:40
FITZ#6/14
Ed Fitzpatrick , majored in law enforcement at Memphis St. University, and now a member of Ark. State police.
I started taking some law enforcement at Memphis St. and changed my major...one year with Shelby county sheriff's office. ...
16/24 ...well I supposed this one... the most noterity anyhow...
17/13 ... June of 1983, I think the day before we actually went out to Smithville, the info was developed by the FBI that Gordon Kahl was staying out at Bill WAdes's property in the home of Leonard Ginter...we scheduled a meeting for between the US Marshals, st. police, sheriff's dept., FBI for the next afternoon, that'd be friday afternoon ...
18/24 ...June 3 is when we had the meeting at the Lwrence county courthouse...
18/42 ...as I recall there were about 30 people there, special agent Jim Blassingame, put out all the information, they had aerial photos of the Ginter residence, the ways in and out ... developed a plan that myself, Sheriff Matthews , Special agents Jerry King and Jim Blasingame from the FBI , and Jim Hall from the Marshals office would drive up and remove the Ginters away from the residence if possible from there the house was supposed to be surrounded by the FBI agents, the state police and the Marshals office and at that time start negotiating with Hall, I mean with Gordon Kahl to come out and surrender...
20/08 ... I think there was probably some extra marshals that came in later...
21/19 ...No, not very often, I actually thought at the time, the guy was outnumbered 50 to 1 that he was going to surrender without any incident...
21/38 ...Well basically, I thought he was completely surrounded. if he was in fact there, he couldn't, you know there was no way out, and the only logical thing would have been to surrender...
22/07 ...Leonard Ginter was in a car attempting to leave the residence, when he was stopped by Sp. agent Jerry King of the FBI and brought back up to the front door ...I think that at the time he was stopped he had some type of rifle in the car with him ...
22/57 ...No I believe we had to stop for Leonard and then drove down the last fifty or sixty feet...at which time I think sp. agent King asked him if Gordon Kahl was in there in the house and he said no, so then he said, well call your wife out here , and he hollered,...23/19... "Norma come on out here, the FBI wants to talk to you" the inflection on FBI. ...well then I thought he was in there. ...
23/52 ...no, cause actually things from that point on happended so fast you didn't really think about anything, this whole episode from that point on took about six to ten seconds, and then it was really all over...
24/30 ...getting out of the car, King and Jim Blasingame were talking to Leonard Ginter, he called Norma outside ...she came outside and right at that point is when Sheriff Matthews entered the house...as soon as Mrs. Ginter came out Sheriff Matthews entered the residence from the front door and from this point he motioned to myself and deputy marshal Jim Hall and at that point we entered the residence behind him...
26/18 ...well, there was this narrow hallway and you took a left into the kitchen and right there was the icebox...and I saw Sheriff Matthews enter the room about fifteen feet ahead of me , turn around and fire a shot from a 41 magnum pistol...and evidently a shot came from somewhere over here and Sheriff Matthews fell to the ground. ...I was stopped right at the icebox, I couldn't see over here because of the icebox and at this point after Sheriff Matthews fell I ran outside and got right about here where there are windows all along here , at this point I fired five shots from a 12 gauge shotgun in the general vacinity of where I believed the gunfire came from...
27/45 ...after this point then uh, there was a woodpile over here. and I turned over behind this woodpile was special agent handley, I believe Dee Downing and Robert Spear. Trooper Spear. And at this point Jim Handley was the Swat team leader at this point and he took charge of the operation...
28/18 ...I fired the shots from outside in and then I went behind this woodpile for cover...
...at that point I didn't know...(where Hall was) ...he was behind me , see this was a hallwayand he was behind me in the hallway and his view was completely obstructed.
29/09 ..I would have been the only one who could have possibly seen anything...
29/29 ...I really don't recall... I went around and came outside and fired those shots and came back here ...and I just assumed that he exited the premises behind me and went to some location out in here.
END TAPE @ #06:29:44
FITZ#7
ED FITZPATRICK
START TAPE #07
JJ GOEs FOR COFFEE
00/45 the office partner makes some statement I can't hear clearly... Fitz. smiles & says...
I didn't have the heart to tell him where he really went...I'll betcha Huddleston or some of them tell him. (where did he go?) ...1/20...He went outside behind the tree and started throwing up and then he's just laying on the ground shaking. And you know he got the National Heroe Award from the US Marshal's Service and a $1,000 bonus check.
O2/00 JJ COMES BACK WITH COFFEE.
02/53 Up till now, twice in 16 years. ...
03/50 ...apx 4 minutes after the initial gunfire, Sheriff Matthews walked out of the residence under his own power, and fell apx. 15 feet from the side of the residence...
04/22 ...called for an ambulance and the ambulance transported him to the ELR of the Lawrence County hospital...
04/41 ...Yeah, seems as though I do remember that...Hall was over by the side of that garage by the side of the residence and that's where apx. where Sheriff Matthews collapses, where adj. to himself and I believe there were some other FBI agents on that side of the garage...
05/09 ...no one knew ...(the situation on GK)
05/25 ...at this point spc. agent Handley directed one of our sharpshooters and memebers of the FBI SWAT team to open fire on the residence while they attempted to shoot teargas into the residence...this went on for probablly 15 or 20 minutes...
06/22 ...well usually you're not scared at the time...but, later that night you get real scared. ...
08/22 ...I would say not, cause you're so conditioned in police work , trained that firearms are a last resort ...I think you absorb just so much of that that I don't think any of that can change. ...I feel like we fired soon enough on this incidence...
08/51 ...Yes, it did,... like I said before, this whole thing took about four seconds from the time that he entered the residence., at that point you don't really think about anything...
09/19 (did you know Gene Matthews?) Yes,...(tell me what kind of a Sheriff was he?) Why don't you cut this for a minute...(LAUGHS)
10/11 ...Well, I guess ideally, he would have come out and surrendered...
10/47 (Why didn't they use the bullhorn?) ...I think that things just progressed so quickly that uh, that was the original plan and things just didn't work out like that...
FITZ#7
12/01 ...at the time, we'd recieved some information that there might be tunnels under the house as an escape route..it was jointly decided that we would pour some diesel fuel down these exhaust vents and ignite it with CS teargas as a heat source and that way if anybody was in there at that point they would come out and surrender. ...
13/36 (Somebody went in and cut off the hands and feet) ...I've read something about that yeah...well, I don't know, the wilder the story you can come up with and somebody will print it and keeps them in the news.
14/55 ...well they were basically tax protestors and they didn't believe in paying income tax and they didn't recognize the fed govt. or the state govt. as having any authority over them, the only people had any powere was the county sheriff.
15/47 ...kind of an ambivalent, most of the time you just thought they were fruitcakes,,, then we started getting reports of these people storing massive amount of firearms and ammunition ...and you read about these people in other parts of the country who were extrememly violent. ...
16/30 ...like I said, on the way out there I didn't expect any resistance from Leonard and Norma Ginter at all, in fact there was none... on the way out there I felt that with some negotiation, if Kahl was there he would surrender...
17/34 ...I knew Bill WAde was not there at the time...that the first that I've ever heard that story...
18/47 ...I wouldn't even attempt to psychoanalyssis these people...I heard that and it's just rediculous.
20/11 Yea, I did hear about it and I never did find out whether it was accurate or not...I believe Prosecutor James Stalcup of Walnut Ridge has copies of the autopsy report.
21/00 ...nothing really changed, except the state poolice stepped their investigations on the possee comitatus and the CRA who had an armed camp in the mountains. ...
21/34 ...just a lot of aggravation...
22/26 ...well when you first called me up...this last lawsuit hadn't been settled and my thought was, no comment until that last litigation had been dismissed...
25/00 ...I didn't know,,, there was just no way of knowing cause you had no vision at all...I just fired thru the window where I thought he'd be ...thru and kinda of down, because at that point I thought he'd be kinda close to the ground.
25/36 (so you saw Gene Matthews fire at GK?) ...yes...
26/28 ...well, you know I've thought about it, expesially since there's so much interest in it seven years later. ...no I never heard of the book until you mentioned it today...
27/00 ...Eddie Murphy...
28/30 most of the us marshals live in little rock... we seldom see these federal people unless it's this special deal...
28/55 ...yes, I think that's quite possible...they believe there was probably one or two pellets from the #4 which I had...those were just lodged in the vest...didn't even penetrate the vest...
29/52 ...yeah, I would do exactly the same thing...
30/14 ...from where we are now, I very seldom here anything about em anymore...I'm sure things are still going on up there...I've heard about em before and for a couple of years afterward in the papers, but since then I think they've faded out. ...
31/00 ...Heh, I really like eddie murphy...fuck the bitch...
END TAPE #07:32
FITZ#7/32
START TAPE 07:32
REVIEWS THE release form with his lawyer over the phone...
34;33 now what he said...everything I said about Matthews ain't on this tape. ...his thing was, I might have said something that might have made somebody else mad and they can turn around and sue me now. ...and you can hold up this slip of paper and said we' didn't do it. ...
(everybody's afraid of being sued.)
35/40 ...well I've got good reason to be! (laughs) ... his family still lives up there and I'm still good friends with them and I don't want to say anything that's going to do them any harm...
END ED FITZPATRICK INTERVIEW
DERO DOWNING COMPLETES THE REST OF #O7:+