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World's Leading Jack-Booted Thug! - by Wayne Hicks (with Henrietta Bowman)</A> http://www.sierratimes.com/archive/starticles/2001/jan/arwh012101.htm World's Leading Jack-Booted Thug! by Wayne Hicks, with Henrietta Bowman - Published: 01.21.01 The death of an Arkansas man may be only the latest in a long line of eliminations performed by a rogue BATF Agent. Carl Ray Wilson, who was sixty years old at the time of his death on January 12th, was a known felon. He had been sentenced to prison twice - once in Oklahoma, and once in Arkansas. He was paroled in 1968. Carl had been known in his younger days as something of an outlaw, "the dynamite man," and was thought of by some as a white supremacist. He was once a suspect in a murder case, although he was never charged due to the fact that he had a realistic and apparently honest alibi. He'd even been accused of being an accomplice in another murder because he had provided a small bottle of explosive to a man, and later learned that the man and a woman who had been with him used it to try to kill a woman. He wound up as a prosecution witness, but was not charged - neither the prosecutors, nor the court believed he was guilty of a willful participation in the crime. But apparently one man did. Very early on Friday, January 12th of this year, BATF Agent Bill Buford led local police and sheriff's deputies to Wilson's rural home. He had obtained a search warrant, apparently authorizing a "no-knock" search of Wilson's property. A "no-knock" search means that officers are authorized to enter the home by surprise or stealth, but must still announce themselves and their lawful intent to execute the warrant. Buford and his team, which included SWAT Team members from the local Sheriff's office entered by stealth. They were already inside the house at 6:30 that morning when Carl Wilson's alarm clock went off. Until that moment, no one inside the home knew they were there. According to Wilson's wife and a niece who was staying with them, shots were fired immediately after an alarm clock rang. Mrs. Wilson, who was sleeping in another room, and the niece ran to Carl's room and were thrown to the floor by the officers, guns shoved forcibly against their heads, while other agents shouted at Wilson - who had been shot seven times - to "Get up!" Mrs. Wilson could only see her husband's arm from where she lay on the floor, and agents repeatedly shouted at her, "Don't look at us!" and "Don't you look around here!" She saw Carl try to raise himself from the bed, fall back, and heard him say weakly, "I can't...." No attempt was made to get medical attention for Carl. The agents stood and watched as he bled to death in his own bed, wearing only his underwear as they joked about what to have for lunch. After Carl had ceased moving and no sign of life could be found, a call was finally made for someone to remove his body. Less than two hours after the raid began, Mrs. Wilson and her niece were alone in the house. There was no "crime scene" tape warning people to stay clear of the area - no attempt had been made to recover the spent shell casings, or any of the dozens of bullets that littered the place. Even the 44 caliber slug that allegedly bounced off the Kevlar vest of a local deputy was left behind for Mrs. Wilson to clean up. Apparently someone decided there would be no need to analyze the crime scene, do ballistics tests or conduct a fatal police shooting incident investigation. As far as the family knows, no photos were taken, and the bed where Carl died lay as it was when his body was removed from it, with a perfect outline of the upper half of a man's body, drawn in blood. Agent Buford made a public statement that same day. In it, he said that Wilson began shooting at his team as they approached the house, and that while he was constrained from revealing the nature of the search, it involved drugs and explosives. He also stated that he was certain that Carl "knew we were officers." All of these statements were apparently false - and Buford would have known that when he made them. Let's take them one by one. First, Buford said Wilson fired at the officers as they approached the house. This is obviously a bald-faced lie because we now know without doubt that Carl died in his bed - he never got near a door or window. In fact, the five shots that were fatal to Carl were not fired at point blank range, from within his bedroom - they were fired through a wall that divided his bedroom from the kitchen, and when Mrs. Wilson came running, officers actually demanded to know why she wasn't in the bed with him. They thought she was, you see. Second: Buford said the search involved drugs. Well, in the first place, drugs had never figured very big in Carl's life. He'd never had a drug charge, nor had any of his friends or family ever known him to be interested. And in the second place, a copy of the warrant was left with members of his family and specifically did NOT mention drugs. In fact, the only thing it mentioned, according to Carl's brother, was a single deer rifle and ammunition for the gun, of which there were only four rounds. The last statement made by Buford, that Carl knew they were law enforcement officers could, just possibly be true. But ask yourself this: If you awoke to the sounds of gunfire in your home, would you ask who was there - or grab the nearest weapon and use it? Carl tried to defend himself and his family. The 44 Magnum handgun that he fired at least once (although the official version says he fired four times) was in an old stereo cabinet that was near the foot of his bed. One of the fatal shots that struck him entered the back of his neck and exited through his shoulder as he scrambled to reach the only means of self-defense in the room, and then struck the lid of the cabinet. In other words, Carl was shot in the back - through a wall. According to Carl's widow and niece, his gun was fired only after the firing began. And anyone who's ever been around a 44 Magnum knows the deep roar that it makes. But he tried to defend his home and family, and according to Arkansas statutes he was completely within his rights since no announcement of the intruders' identities or intentions had been made prior to that moment! A resident of Arkansas finding himself in that situation is perfectly justified in using any force necessary - including deadly force - to repel invaders in his home. Carl did fire at least one shot before he was too badly wounded to do so again because at least one officer was slightly wounded by a bullet that struck his bulletproof vest and shattered, allowing a fragment to strike or graze his arm. It must be a comfort to the people who lived around Carl to know that this dangerous man will never fire a shot again! There are just a couple of problems, though: Carl was a convicted felon, of that there's no doubt. He was sent to prison twice, and the law enforcement officers who arrested him on the numerous times he had to be taken into custody would tell you how violent and resistant to arrest he was - all they had to do was call him on the phone and tell him to come in and he did. Carl was paroled from his last conviction in 1968 and returned to his home in the Mayflower area. He married and then went into construction until an injury forced him to retire. A tragic accident in his home took the life of one of Carl's best friends as a gun discharged unexpectedly, after which Carl sank further and further into a bottle - … until another accident involving his wife brought him back out. And for the last fifteen years of his life, Carl had been a regular attendee at church, spent as much time as he could with his family, and adored his nine-year-old granddaughter. Carl had little time for much else. His family was what was important to him. He was known as a nice guy around the area, although a reformed outlaw, and he spent the two months during which Buford says he was being "investigated" selling Christmas trees and joking to friends about the "guy in cammies in the woods, watchin' me!" And now, Carl Ray Wilson is dead, and his family and friends want to know why. Possible reasons: 19 years ago, Carl sold a small bottle of explosive to a friend of his who wanted to blow a stump out of his yard. When he heard a few days later that a woman had been nearly killed with a homemade bomb using the same type of explosive, he put two and two together and called the prosecutors, saying, "I think I might be in trouble." He became a key witness in the famous Mary Lee Orsini Murder Trial, which became the subject of the book Widow's Web. The senior investigator in that case said repeatedly that he thought Carl had more involvement than he admitted, but neither the court nor the prosecutors could find any credible evidence so he was never charged and the enraged investigator told Carl, "I'm gonna get you yet!" Carl's wife, and many others heard the threat. Bill Buford was that investigator. Could it be, that now that the Clinton/Reno regime has come to an end, Buford is expecting his career to come to an end as well? Perhaps he devised the entire "investigation" into Carl's "drugs and explosives" because he knew that if he had nothing to accuse Carl of, he'd never get a warrant, never get the other officers and agencies to go with him to carry out his threat at last, and murder Carl Ray Wilson? But there may be even more to it than that. Carl may have known something. John Brown, an investigator into the double murder of two boys who may have stumbled across the Mena, Arkensas drug-running operation that has been tied to ex-president Clinton, was a friend of Carl's. And no one is sure whom else Carl might have known. Brown called in the FBI when he discovered that law enforcement officers and government agents may have been involved in the boys' murders Carl was very aware of Clinton's "Dixie Mafia" tales and may well have known where some of the bodies - figuratively speaking, of course - were buried. For whatever reason, Carl is dead, and there are many unanswered questions; unanswered questions that all involve the same man who helped to plan and execute the worst debacle in law enforcement history, the same man who lied to the press in this case. Bill Buford, of the Little Rock Arkansas office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. Bill Buford, the Arkansas ATF Agent who planned and orchestrated the raid on the Branch Davidian Compound in Waco, and may well have done so on the instructions of his "old buddy" Bill Clinton. Bill Buford - the man I nominate for the world's Number One Jack-Booted Thug! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Look for more to come on this story! Wayne Hicks and SierraTimes.Com have staff and researchers looking into more connections between Carl Ray Wilson and the Dixie Mafia, and finding things that may shed new light on Waco, itself! |
