Boston Area News

CONCORD, N.H. (WBZ) ― It took ten months and one ruse for U.S. marshals to get convicted tax-evaders Ed and Elaine Brown out of their fortress-like home in Plainfield and finally under arrest.

The marshals posed as supporters to dupe the couple and take them into custody Thursday night, the head marshal said Friday.

"They invited us in, and we escorted them out," U.S. Marshal Stephen Monier said in the first public disclosure of details of the arrest.

A small team of marshals pulled off the ruse, arresting the Browns without incident on the couple's front porch, Monier said.

The arrests ended a months-long standoff that began when Ed Brown, 65, and his dentist wife Elaine, 67, walked out of their federal trial in Concord in January. She returned to the trial, but soon joined her husband at the home, where the couple vowed to resist violently if authorities tried to arrest them.

"We either walk out of here free or we die," Ed Brown said earlier this year.

At a news conference, Monier said officials found booby traps in the woods on the 100-plus-acre property and weapons, ammunition and homemade bombs inside and outside the house. He said more charges are likely.

The Browns were turned over to federal corrections officials to serve prison terms of 63 months. They were convicted in January of scheming to avoid federal income taxes by hiding $1.9 million of income between 1996 and 2003 and were sentenced in April.

The couple claims the federal income tax is not legitimate. Their argument -- repeatedly rejected by courts -- is that no law authorizes the federal income tax and that the 1913 constitutional amendment permitting it was never properly ratified.

Experts had praised the authorities' hands-off approach before the surprise arrests, but patience had worn thin among some of Plainfield's 2,400 residents. During the summer, town selectmen asked Monier to stop the influx of militiamen and other anti-government groups to the Browns' home and to bring the couple to justice.

Last month, authorities arrested four men accused of helping obstruct justice in the Browns' case. Charges ranged from accessory after the fact to possession and use of a firearm in relation to a crime of violence. Authorities also blocked access to a fundraising event on the Browns' property.

Earlier this year, officials cut power and telephone service in an effort to ratchet up pressure on the couple.

The home is on an isolated dirt road and includes a turret that offers a 360-degree view of the property and a driveway that had sometimes been barricaded with sport utility vehicles.

Heavily armed police surrounded the home in June while they seized commercial property the couple owned in a neighboring town. SWAT teams, military and explosives vehicles marshaled in the tiny town and sparked rumors of a raid.

Monier said then the gathered forces were only for surveillance.

The arrests "will be a relief to everyone in the community," said state Agriculture Commissioner Stephen Taylor, a Plainfield resident. "This has been such a distraction to everybody."

A message left for Elaine Brown's son, David Hatch-Bernier of Worcester, Mass., was not returned Thursday night.

David Grobe, a former dental patient of Elaine Brown's, said he noticed "an unusual amount of traffic all of a sudden" passing by the house, about 30 to 40 cars, about the time of the arrests. "There was no real indication that it was official," he said.

Neither he nor neighbor Robert Carpenter said they heard anything unusual. Carpenter said there were no marked cruisers, but a lot of large SUVs. "We called Plainfield Police and they called back and told us what was going on," he said.

Supporters of the Browns' cause called them leaders who were trying to protect their freedom.

"In many ways this was like a stab in the heart," said Mike Chambers, a talk show host on Republic Broadcasting Network, an Internet-based radio program based in Round Rock, Texas that has defended the Browns in the past.

On another Web site, supporter David Ridley of Manchester said Brown supporters should take part in "peaceable protests" at places such as the U.S. District Court.


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