Aryan Republican Army

During the mid-1990s, the Aryan Republican Army (ARA), a six-member paramilitary cell, robbed 22 banks in the Midwest, intending to use the money to fund a white supremacist overthrow of the U.S. government.

During the ARA's short life, authorities were unaware that the thieves who had committed a slew of small-scale bank robberies in Iowa, Missouri, Ohio, and other Midwestern states had any motive other than stealing money, nor had they ever heard of the small white supremacist cell called the Aryan Republican Army. The press referred to the robbers at the “Midwest Bank Bandits.”

The ARA's robberies were elaborately orchestrated—the group used the 1991 surf film Point Break as a template. Each heist was planned to take less than 90 seconds. One member guarded the lobby, calling out the elapsed time, while the others rifled money from the tellers’ drawers. As in the movie, the robbers often wore plastic Nixon or Regan masks. They were notorious for these antics, and for their taunting of federal agents—their getaway cars were registered to FBI agents, for example. For a Christmas 1994 robbery in Ohio, one member wore a Santa Claus suit. In an April 1995 robbery in Iowa, the ARA left investigators an Easter basket holding a gold-painted pipe bomb.

The ARA focused its attacks on small-town banks and rarely stole more than $10,000 at a time, but the six were industrious, almost reaching the record of 25 banks robbed, which had been set by the legendary Jesse James. Many of their tactics were similar to those of The Order, an infamous white supremacist group of the 1980s.

The ARA had two main members, Richard “Wild Bill” Guthrie Jr. and Peter Kevin Langan. On January 19, 1996, Guthrie and Langan were charged with nearly two-dozen bank robberies. The two men, with the help of a handful of ARA “soldiers,” stole more than $250,000 in just over two years. Guthrie, who was arrested in late 1996 after a high-speed chase outside of Cincinnati, entered an early guilty plea. He committed suicide in his Kentucky jail cell in July 1997, a week after promising to provide federal authorities information about other groups seeking to overthrow the government. Guthrie implicated Langan, who was arrested in 1996 and convicted in two separate federal trials in 1997; he was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole. Scott Stedeford, a white-power rock musician, was convicted on three bank robbery charges and six conspiracy charges in November 1996; he was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Kevin McCarthy turned state's evidence and led authorities to Michael Brescia, who spent two years in jail for his role in the robberies. In March 1998, Mark Thomas, a prominent neo-Nazi leader from Pennsylvania, pled guilty to plotting seven bank robberies. Within two years, the ARA was finished.

The ARA flourished in the antigovernment climate following the events in Ruby Ridge and Waco in the early 1990s, and some believe that Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber, [Page 69]had connections to the ARA. In addition, Brescia was once thought to be the missing “John Doe 2” suspect in the Oklahoma City bombing. Authorities have since discarded both suppositions.

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