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October 1, 2010
Jonestown man sentenced to 2 years in cyanide hoax
After he was arrested in May, Gary Dale Horton told Williamson County authorities and later the FBI that he knew about a plan to sell about 25 pounds of cyanide to someone who was paranoid and hated the government, according to federal court documents.
Horton said he had obtained the deadly poison last year and that it was being stored in the bed of a black pickup in Leander, the documents said.
FBI agents, who interviewed Horton eight times over a few days, at one point took Horton to retrieve the cyanide but did not find it. When they brought in an FBI polygraph examiner, Horton admitted the whole thing was a hoax, the documents said.
Horton, of Jonestown, later pleaded guilty to one count of false information and hoaxes and on Friday U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks sentenced him to two years in federal prison.
Sparks also ordered Horton to pay $7,778.32 to reimburse Williamson County law enforcement and a fine of $12,600, according to a news release by U.S. Attorney John Murphy.
According to a narrative of Horton’s conduct that accompanied his guilty plea, he made the story up because “his initial attempts to provide information on drugs did not get the attention of …authorities.” Horton also said he planned to use the search for cyanide to escape custody.
Horton told the FBI that “the whole incident had snowballed after he told the initial lies to the local law enforcement,” the documents said. Horton apologized to the federal agents, the documents said.
Williamson County online records show that Horton was charged in May with possession of a controlled substance, a charge that is still pending.
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September 9, 2008
Austin men to fight detention in Minneapolis today
The lawyer for one of two Austin men accused of building Molotov cocktails with the intent of disrupting the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minn., last week said he will ask a judge today to release his client pending trial.
Assistant U.S. attorneys in Minnesota are seeking to have David Guy McKay, 22, and Bradley Neil Crowder, 23, held in jail without bail. U.S. Magistrate Judge Franklin L. Noel in Minneapolis has scheduled a preliminary hearing and detention hearing on both cases for 1:30 p.m. today.
“He strikes me as a nice kid and he strikes me as a kid who everyone is kind of surprised is in the position he is in,” McKay’s lawyer, Jeff DeGree of Minneapolis, said this morning.
DeGree said that McKay’s father, who lives in Midland, has traveled to the Twin Cities and will testify that McKay can live with him pending trial.
Asked if his client is dangerous, DeGree said: “I don’t think so. There’s nothing in his history that suggests that.
“Obviously this situation raises some concern.”
Crowder is represented by the federal public defender’s office in Minneapolis. His lawyer could not be reached.
The men are charged with possessing firearms that were not registered to them in the national firearms registry. The charge is punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
St. Paul police found eight “fully assembled” Molotov cocktails in an apartment where the pair were staying in St. Paul, according to court documents.
Two days before a band of 25-30 people dressed in black and wielding sticks charged out of the apartment and into a protest march heading toward the state capitol, the documents said. They used a tow line to pull a Dumpster and a couch into the street. The men were initially arrested on disorderly conduct charges.
Federal agents had apparently been tracking them.
Their arrest affidavit accused McKay of telling an informant in a conversation recorded by law enforcement that he and Crowder built the Molotov cocktails and that they would be lit and thrown at a parking lot used as a staging area by police and federal agents during the convention.
McKay is quoted in his arrest affidavit as saying to an FBI informant that “it’s worth it if an officer gets burned or maimed.”
DeGree said he has yet to learn many of the facts of the case against his client, who he described as a freelance graphics designer.
“In the larger context, the police and law enforcement all across the board have been real aggressive with their behaviors with regard to the RNC coming to St. Paul,” he said. “And eventually these cases are going to be heard in the courts.”
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