Gordon Wendell Kahl was born in North Dakota in 1920. He grew up to be a farmer and, when World War II came along, he went to war as a tailgunner and came home a highly-decorated war hero.
Although he had a 400-acre farm near Heaton, ND, he bounced around the Texas oilfields in later life as a mechanic and general worker.
     Somewhere along the way, Mr. Kahl developed a zealous aversion to paying income taxes. In 1977 a Federal judge in Midland, TX, sentenced Mr. Kahl, then 57, to a year in jail and five years probation for failure to pay income taxes for the years 1973 and 1974.
     Mr. Kahl told the judge that he might as well serve the whole six years in jail, because he wasn't going to pay the taxes. The judge thought Mr. Kahl was nuts to think that way, so he committed him to a federal psychiatric program at Springfield, MO. Mr. Kahl refused for three months to say anything to the psychiatrists, so he was sent to the federal pen at Leavenworth, KS, where he served another nine months before he was released on the condition that he report regularly to a probation officer.
     He did not. He returned to North Dakota. Then, in March, 1981, a warrant was issued for the arrest of the 61-year-old Kahl due to his failure to report to a probation officer in Bismarck, ND. At the time, a federal marshal tried to talk him into mending his ways.
      He did not.
     For several months nothing happened. Then in August the feds seized 80 acres of Kahl's farm and auctioned off the land against a lien of $7,074 in back taxes.
     By this time, Mr. Kahl had become a member of the Posse Comitatus, a survivalist group which recognizes no power higher than that wielded by the county, and which believes income taxes are wrong. Mr. Kahl made it generally known to his friends and neighbors that when the feds came next time, he would not be taken alive.
     On Sunday, February 13, 1983, fourteen tax protesters sat in a meeting at Dr, Clarence Martin's clinic in Medina, ND, among them Gordon Kahl, his wife Joan and his son Yorivon. Medina police chief Darrell Graf, who usually attended these meetings, was absent.
     The group wondered about the men in a pickup outside. Kahl realized the time had come. The senior Kahl took off in one car with Scott Faul. Yori and his mother went in another vehicle with David Broer and Vernon Wegner.
     There was a roadblock. Guns were waved. Someone fired first. A hail of automatic weapons fire shot two US marshals dead in the road, wounded another marshal and two additional lawmen. Yori also was wounded.
     Gordon Kahl stole a deputy's car and, after dropping his wounded son off at Dr. Martin's clinic, disappeared.
     The next day 100 lawmen, equipped with an armored personnel carrier and tear gas, stormed the Kahl farm. They didn't find Gordon Kahl, but, to the outrage of neighbors, managed to blow away his dog and gas his house.
     In the ensuing months Mr. Kahl became a folk hero. T-shirts bearing the legend, Gordon Kahl Is My Tax Consultant and caps stating Go Gordie Go! appeared.
     Then authorities published a 16-page letter from Kahl, containing a chilling account of the shootings, remorseless, full of ethnic slurs. They hoped it would further discredit him and prompt someone to turn him in.
     It did not.
     Also appearing in that letter was this sentence: "I would have liked nothing other than to be left alone so I could enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, which our forefathers willed to us."
     The end came on June 3, 1983, when FBI special agent James Blasingame, Sheriff Gene Matthews and two other law officers approached the home of Leonard and Norma Ginter near Smithville, AR. The Ginters, outside, told them Kahl was in the house.
     The door opened. Kahl shot Matthews and Matthews shot Kahl. Matthews staggered outside, to die later. The police lobbed in tear gas. There was an explosion and fire
     The 63-year-old Gordon Wendell Kahl could later be identified only by dental records and old scars. On June 10, 1983, funeral services were held at the Bowden Seventh Day Adventist Church near Heaton, ND. Gordon Kahl was buried in the family plot near Fessenden. ND.