CONCORD, N.H. - A couple convicted of tax evasion who threatened violence if authorities approached them were arrested peacefully at their rural Plainfield home after holing up at the fortress-like compound for months, U.S. Marshals said.
One big question remained: How did authorities manage to take Ed and Elaine Brown into custody without the showdown they had promised?
U.S. Marshal Stephen Monier, who said repeatedly he would seek a peaceful surrender, planned to explain Friday morning in a news conference at the federal courthouse in Concord.
Ed Brown had warned authorities the authorities wouldn't take him alive: "We either walk out of here free or we die," he said earlier this year.
The Browns, who were turned over to the custody of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, were convicted on federal tax charges in January and refused to turn themselves in to authorities when they were sentenced in April to five years and three months in prison.
They were convicted of scheming to avoid federal income taxes by hiding $1.9 million of income between 1996 and 2003.
Ed Brown, 65, and his wife, 67, have claimed 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.
"We had no indication that the Browns intended to voluntarily surrender, so we had to move forward with an operation that promised the safest possible outcome. That day was today," Monier said in a news release Thursday.
Expert observers had praised the authorities' hands-off approach, but patience wore thin for 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.
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