Where the Mahon brothers entrapped by the government???
First of all I don't advocate murdering government employees for the fun of it, nor am I a racist that advocates murdering people with dark skin.
But when I read about how the cops arrested White supremacists Dennis Mahon and his brother it sure sounds like they violated their civil rights and entrapped them.
And while the Mahon brothers sound like racist jerks there doesn't seem to be any real evidence that say they committed the bombing other then Rebecca Williams testimony. And of course she was was paid thousands of dollars by the government to help manufacture a case against the brothers.
Maybe the Mahon brothers are guilty, maybe they are not, but either way it seems like the government didn't treat them fairly.
Source
Flagstaff woman worked undercover to nab White-supremacist bomber
by Richard Ruelas - Jun. 9, 2012 02:28 PM
The Republic | azcentral.com
She was a single mother of two in her 30s, seeking out a living in northern Arizona hanging drywall and doing landscaping. That is, until the day the federal government asked Rebecca Williams to become Cooperating Individual No. 986 and help solve a hate crime.
Williams would transform herself into Becca Stevens, budding White supremacist and trailer-park dweller, who would become the love interest of the man suspected of sending a package bomb to a Black city official in Scottsdale in February 2004.
Tristan Moreland, an agent with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, suspected the bomb to be the work of Dennis Mahon, a White supremacist he had tracked for decades. But he needed proof. And he needed help.
He would get both.
In the hundreds of hours of taped conversations Williams would have with Mahon over the next five years, Mahon preached hatred and gave her step-by-step instructions on making explosives. His words were damning enough for a jury to convict him and a judge to sentence him last month to 40 years in federal prison.
Those tapes also recorded the words of a man falling in love with the woman he knew as Becca. Mahon's attorney would argue in court that the charade was unfair, calling Williams a "trailer-park Mata Hari," referencing the famous exotic dancer and accused spy from World War I. She said Williams, a former topless dancer, worked Mahon "like she once worked a pole."
Williams had no training in the art of espionage. But she instinctively felt she might be able to get Mahon talking about explosives if she could first win his heart.
"Just from being a woman, I guess," Williams said. "I was just being me."
***
The blast in the Scottsdale municipal building on Feb. 26, 2004, left behind blood, shattered glass and debris. But scant evidence.
The package was addressed to Don Logan, director of the Scottsdale Office of Diversity and Dialogue. He and two other employees, Renita Linyard and Jacque Belland, were injured in the pipe-bomb attack. Logan survived the blast only because, suspicious of the package, he held it away from him as he opened it.
Investigators started looking for enemies in Logan's life, the most common suspects of this rare type of violence.
But ATF agent Moreland suspected a hate crime. In a note left with the bomb, he spotted a reference to an obscure White-supremacist group. He also made the connection between language in the note that was similar to what had been used in threatening calls made recently to the diversity officer in neighboring Tempe.
Moreland suspected Mahon, a supremacist who had long preached violence in order to achieve his goal of an all-White society. After starting a chapter of the Ku Klux Klan in the Kansas City area, Mahon moved to Arizona and started a wing of the White Aryan Resistance in 2001. He hoped to capitalize on growing tensions regarding illegal immigration.
Mahon made a phone call to the Scottsdale Office of Diversity and Dialogue in September 2003. It was in response to a newspaper brief that mentioned the upcoming celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month. Mahon's message said that the "White Aryan Resistance is growing in Scottsdale. There's a few White people who are standing up."
The message was disturbing enough that Logan alerted Scottsdale police. When the recording of that call was listened to again after the bombing, it gave Moreland more reason to suspect Mahon.
Moreland wanted to find someone to infiltrate Mahon's life. The government sometimes finds informers in people facing criminal charges, sending them back into their world of drugs or gangs to get information for law enforcement. But Moreland liked casting his own informers from law-abiding society.
For this job, he needed a woman who was attractive but unrefined enough to fit into a rural setting; she also needed to be comfortable using her sexuality. An ATF informer who had worked with the agency on drug cases said his sister, Rebecca, might fit the bill.
Rebecca Williams was born and raised in central Phoenix, in the rough neighborhood near the state Capitol. She married and had two children, including one born severely autistic. For a time, her husband watched the children while she worked. She took a job bartending at a Phoenix topless club, but the lure of the money led her to become a dancer instead.
"It paid very well," she said.
She and her husband divorced after 17 years of marriage. Williams quit dancing and moved to northern Arizona, working as a landscaper and drywall hanger, relying on friends to watch her children. Then her brother approached her with the prospect of working undercover for government investigations. It offered large rewards if successful. But more enticing to Williams, it sounded exciting.
"I kind of wanted to be a cop," said Williams, 41. Her father was in law enforcement; so was an uncle. She felt the lure of cracking cases.
"I've always been like a detective in the sense of spying things," she said. "My eyes don't miss anything."
She met with Moreland in Phoenix. Through pictures, she got her first look at Dennis Mahon and his twin, Daniel, who lived with him, and whom Moreland suspected also had a role in the bombing. Moreland told Williams about the crime, about the package designed to explode and kill a Black man because he promoted racial diversity.
Williams took a night to consider the offer.
"The main thing I thought about was (that) I was being asked to do this for a reason," she said. "I felt if I could stop somebody else from being bombed or hurt, then I wanted to do that."
She agreed to the job. Initially, it was to be a two-week trip to Catossa, Okla., where the Mahons had moved a few months after the 2004 bombing. Agents would be nearby in case something went wrong. She couldn't tell anyone, save her brother, what she was up to. She would be paid for her time. And there was talk of a $100,000 reward if her information secured a conviction.
On the flight to Oklahoma in January 2005, Williams and Moreland worked out a cover story for Becca Stevens: There was a warrant out for her arrest, and she was on the run. She also was looking to get revenge -- perhaps with a bomb -- on a child-molester neighbor in California.
Moreland also told Williams that she needed to get comfortable with the N-word. She would need to hear it without blanching and say it without flinching, with some emotion behind it. On the flight, Williams said, she said the word over and over to herself.
At the airport, she met Shelly, the undercover ATF agent who would be her partner in the surveillance. Moreland drove the two to a spot where more agents were parked with the fifth-wheel trailer that would be home for "Becca" and Shelly. The trailer was outfitted with cameras and microphones and had a Confederate flag over the kitchen window.
Moreland gave Williams one last bit of advice: No matter how long it takes, don't approach the Mahons. Let them come to her instead.
Shelly drove the pickup hauling the trailer into the KOA campground. Williams saw Dennis and Daniel Mahon sitting outside their own trailer drinking beer.
Shelly parked opposite the Mahons' trailer and Williams stepped out. She was wearing shorts, a camouflage baseball cap and a T-shirt that advertised her love of firearms. She tried not to pay attention to the Mahons but hoped they noticed her.
They did. Within 30 seconds, Williams said, the Mahons walked over to meet their new neighbors. They giggled and stammered over their words as they asked if the two ladies needed help setting up the septic tank.
"They were goofier than goofy," Williams said.
The Mahons invited Becca to dinner, maybe some beers afterward. Becca declined, playing hard to get.
But the next day, the brothers took Becca and Shelly to lunch. Afterward, Becca invited Dennis Mahon into her trailer for some get-to-know-you chatter.
Over the course of 90 minutes, Becca spun the concocted sob story about the man in California she wanted to hurt, maybe with a bomb. She acted as if she didn't want to tell the tale, allowing Mahon to coax it out of her.
Mahon tried to calm her down. He urged her to call an attorney and said he and his brother knew several. But she made it clear she wanted to do something more radical. And over the next few nights, Mahon started talking about explosives.
On one night, according to court documents, Mahon talked about putting phosphorous into a gas tank to blow up a vehicle. The next night, he talked about blowing up a house using a propane tank.
By the third night, he started talking about a very specific type of package bomb.
"A one-by-five will mess a man up," he told her. The measurements he gave -- 1 inch by 5 inches -- were the same as those of the Scottsdale bomb. That measurement was a detail investigators had never released to the public.
A few days later, Becca pressed Mahon on whether he had ever made a bomb that worked. Mahon responded: "God-damn diversity officer in Scottsdale."
The normally vociferous Mahon would drop his voice to a whisper when talking about bombings, Williams said, possibly out of paranoia that he was being recorded. He also got nervous and looked around furtively.
Williams felt a rush of adrenaline during these talks. She knew she was getting the goods, that this might crack the case. She paced the trailer. Mahon would think she was thinking about the molester she wanted to kill. She really was trying to suppress smiles and laughter.
The tapes of those first few days also showed Mahon becoming infatuated with Becca.
"Can I put you to sleep?" he asked after one of their bomb-making discussions. "I just want to cuddle with you. You're so beautiful."
Mahon often would try to hold Becca's hand or caress her arm. Williams had to respond in a way that let him think she wasn't repulsed.
"I had to let him think I was interested," Williams said. "I never shut him down at any point."
But as he fell for her, Williams found herself resenting Mahon more deeply. Her initial impression of the man as goofy would grow to something she later testified bordered on contempt.
She sat through evenings of Mahon spewing hatred between shots of his favorite beverage, the grain alcohol Everclear.
"There were several times I just wanted to bash his face in," she said.
But Williams had to continue the ruse, pretending that she was a fellow White supremacist. During one visit to the Mahons' trailer, she spotted a DVD whose cover showed a Latina in a bikini.
"Hey, what's this all about?" she asked. "Isn't she a little dark?"
The brothers laughed and crudely pointed out specific attributes of the woman's body they liked, regardless of skin color. The joke helped build Becca's credibility.
"It really made my skin crawl to listen to some of the stuff," she said. "And the really crazy sad thing is I don't think they believe it."
At the end of the evenings, she would decompress with a debriefing. She could vent to agents. And Moreland would give her pointers for the next day.
After two weeks, Williams left Catoosa, saying that she needed to keep moving so authorities wouldn't catch up with her. She said she was taking Mahon up on his advice to move to Arizona, where he believed she would find people who shared their racial views.
She returned to the Flagstaff area, but the government opened up a post-office box for her in Wickenburg, making it appear she lived there. Agent Moreland would compose letters to Mahon for her to copy in her own hand.
Williams also called Mahon a few times each week, recording each call and sending the tapes to Moreland's office in Phoenix. She sent a lot of tapes.
"This is CI 986 calling Dennis Mahon," she said before a typical call, made in November 2006 and labeled in court as Exhibit No. 225. After some chitchat, she asked Mahon the difference between an igniter and a detonator.
"Not too much, really," Mahon said, giving her details he said he pulled from the book "The Poor Man's James Bond."
Williams was paid $400 each month for the calls and $100 a day during trips where she saw Mahon face-to-face.
She went to Tulsa in 2006, again accompanied by Moreland and other agents listening in on the conversations. That visit didn't yield much information, but it seemed to cement Mahon's feelings for her. In phone calls afterward, he talked about a future together, wanting to settle down with her and take care of her, maybe have some children.
In a November 2006 call, Mahon told Becca, "I do trust you. I really do."
He trusted her enough to visit the scene of the Scottsdale bombing in May 2007, when the Mahons came to Arizona to visit Daniel's son.
Williams picked the Mahons up for lunch but told them she needed to go to downtown Scottsdale to take care of a traffic ticket. She showed them a fake citation that agents had created using her alias. The Mahons, who were seat-belted in her pickup truck -- which was equipped with hidden cameras and microphones -- squirmed as they got closer to the complex of municipal offices.
As they went by the diversity office, Daniel pointed at it. His voice was barely audible on the recordings, but, according to government-provided transcripts read in court, he said to Dennis, "This is it here ... Logan's from."
Williams asked where the bombing happened. Dennis whispered to her: "I didn't plant the bomb. I just helped make it." It was as close to a confession as the brothers would make.
The ATF had set up cameras and microphones throughout a rental house in Scottsdale that served as Becca's home, hoping to capture the brothers' thoughts after seeing the bombing scene. The Mahons agreed to come over that night for a barbecue, she said, but a little later, abruptly canceled. Williams worried she had blown her cover.
But, the next day, the Mahons asked her to visit their motel in Tempe. She hung out poolside for the afternoon wearing a bikini whose top looked like Confederate flags.
She still had them on the hook.
But by this time, more than three years of being a confidential informer was taking a toll on Williams' personal life. She would tell herself that she wasn't lying to her mother and her children, just that she couldn't tell them the whole truth.
Her occasional weeklong trips to visit the Mahons interrupted being a mother to her teenage children. She relied on friends, left microwavable meals and checked in daily with phone calls. Because she wasn't able to say she was working to solve a crime, she said she was taking vacations. But as the years dragged on, her kids began to resent her time away.
And during the times she was home, she couldn't relax, feeling on call to become "Becca" at any time.
"The phone would ring and it's Dennis (Mahon)," she said. Sometimes she would let the call go to voice mail, but during crucial times in the investigation, she would take the call, instantly becoming her alter-ego -- that woman who was comfortable with racial epithets and had a curiosity about how to blow people up.
Being an informer also made dating difficult. Boyfriends figured she was cheating when she said she suddenly had to leave town for a while without saying why. She tried a different strategy, saying she was working as a government informer, but the truth didn't work any better.
In January 2008, Williams left for her final undercover meeting with the Mahons. It was in Rockford, Ill., where the twins had moved to take care of their ailing mother. She met the two for dinner, then went back to her motel room, which was bugged and next to a room full of agents. But Daniel said he was going home, leaving Dennis alone with her.
It would begin what Williams would later say was the "longest night of my life."
Mahon took a shower and emerged naked. Williams laughed and handed him a towel. He asked for a back rub. Instead, she gave him a foot rub as he lay face down on the bed. He started moving his towel, exposing his privates. Williams covered the camera with a towel. She thought she heard laughter coming from agents in the other room.
"It feels so good," Mahon said, according to a recording of the encounter. Williams told him: "Don't feel guilty about it. Just enjoy it."
She noticed scars on his skin and asked about them. He talked about decades-old bombings of abortion clinics and synagogues.
"He just sang like a bird," Williams said.
At bedtime, she lay down fully clothed on one end of the bed. He slept stretched out, sometimes pawing at her. She kept swatting his hand away, and said she didn't sleep a wink the entire night. Two days later, he left her an apologetic message, saying it had been three years since he had been with a woman.
As the years dragged on, Williams' conversations and time with Mahon were producing less and less information about the Scottsdale bombing. But Moreland knew they were deep into a shadowy world and he wanted to develop leads into other crimes.
"We knew this attack against Don Logan was not their life's work," Moreland said. "We knew there was an opportunity to advance the investigation beyond Dennis and Daniel Mahon."
During Williams' time undercover, she ended up talking to people she later discovered were top figures in the White-supremacy movement.
On Mahon's end, he was getting impatient with Becca, his protege in hate. She had told him she would start a White-supremacy group in Arizona and, during one call in March 2008, he was looking for progress.
"Get your cell going down there," he told her. "I want to get some results."
In May, agents armed with a warrant obtained a cheek swab from the Mahon brothers, hoping to match their DNA to components of the Scottsdale bomb. After the swab, according to court testimony, Dennis asked his brother, "I wonder if our little bitch had something to do with it."
"I wouldn't be surprised," Daniel said.
But Williams was able to evade suspicion. Spurred by Moreland, she told the Mahons to go into hiding, and she kept up the letters and phone calls. Plus, Moreland believed Mahon would always think Becca was safe because he had approached her in the beginning.
In June 2009, Mahon woke up about 6 a.m. as agents ordered him outside. He called Williams.
"They've got a warrant for my arrest, evidently," he told her, according to a recording of the call. "I'll kill the bastards. I should kill them, because they know I'm taking care of my mother here."
Among the evidence agents found on the Mahons' property were two explosive devices with ball bearings glued to the outside.
In addition to the Mahons, agents also arrested Robert Joos, a Missouri man whose rural property was dotted with caves. Mahon had told Williams it might be a good place to hide from law enforcement should she need. Joos had given Williams two tours of his property, including one with Moreland working undercover with Becca. State police told Moreland they had tried for years to get on the property with no luck.
With the Mahons in custody, Williams was free to tell family and friends the truth. Her mother and stepfather were proud of her work, she said, but not all her friends took it well. Maybe they were spooked to be around someone who had made notorious enemies. Maybe they didn't believe her.
"It's just really changed my life, and it's going to be that way for a long time," Williams said. "It's like I have to completely start over again."
Despite the toll, Williams said she would go undercover again if it meant justice triumphing over evil.
***
Williams no longer had to deal with the Mahons. Their attorneys were a different matter.
Dennis Mahon's attorney subpoenaed Williams, ordering her to bring clothes she had worn when she was with Mahon, hinting that her appearance would be made an issue.
Indeed, it was the first question the attorney asked her at trial. She showed a photo of Becca wearing jeans and a tank top, and asked whether Williams would say the jeans were tight.
Williams sighed. "Yes, ma'am, they're tight," she replied.
Mahon's attorney played selected clips of the motel foot rub, some with the camera covered, where the audio sounded damning, as if something more than a foot massage was taking place.
The attorney asked whether Williams was working Mahon's ego with her sexy attire.
"I don't know about his ego," she replied. "I was working for the ATF."
On the witness stand, Williams wore a series of business suits, her hair dyed dark and pulled back in a long ponytail. It was a purposeful look, she said. The jury needed to see her face and see her as more than the blond, flirtatious Becca.
Mahon sat nearly emotionless at the defense table, even as clips of himself professing desperate love of Williams played in the courtroom. He appeared to look down during much of Williams' testimony, but she said he did catch her eye once. But he looked away as soon as he saw she was looking at him.
Williams was not in the courtroom when the verdict was read; the jury found Dennis Mahon guilty on three felony counts. They found his brother, Daniel Mahon, not guilty on the single conspiracy count he faced.
But Williams wanted to be there for the sentencing.
She'd been mentioned a lot during the trial, becoming almost entirely the focus of the closing argument by Mahon's attorney, but Williams did not get much mention at the sentencing. Prosecutors praised the investigating agencies. And Logan, the injured diversity officer, in his statement as a victim, thanked his family and supporters, and he addressed Mahon directly.
But no one singled out the novice spy who infiltrated a corner of the White-supremacy movement and secured a conviction in a race-motivated crime.
After the sentencing -- 40 years in federal prison -- the crowd filed into the hallway, waiting to shake Logan's hand.
Williams greeted him and whispered who she was. Although she had felt a years-long connection to him, they had never met. He smiled and thanked her quietly.
A crowd of reporters and cameramen waiting outside the courthouse surrounded Logan as he exited the building. Williams figured she could leave without notice.
But at the door, a woman in a purple dress stopped her. It was Logan's mother, Doris. She wanted to speak to the young woman who helped nab the man who nearly killed her son.
"Thank you," she said, hugging Williams tightly. "You take care of yourself," she said, dabbing at a tear. "I'll always remember you."
Reach the reporter at richard.ruelas@arizonarepublic.com.