September 16, 1994 and After: Missouri Highway Patrol Officer Shot by White Supremacist

Police Corporal Bobbie J. Harper, in the kitchen of his McDonald County, Missouri, home, is shot in the chest by an unidentified sniper. The injuries from the wound force Harper to take early retirement. Colonel Fred Mills, chief of the Missouri Highway Patrol, later says he believes Harper is shot in retaliation for an incident three months earlier, when Harper and other officers arrested Robert N. Joos on charges of “simulating legal process” for serving “people’s court” papers. Joos attempted to fight off the officers and was charged with resisting arrest and weapons charges. Highway Patrol investigator Miles Parks visits Joos’s farmhouse after the Harper shooting. Parks is “greeted” by a man with a rifle who identifies himself as “James Wilson” of Arkansas, an “ambassador” from the Citizens for the Kingdom of Christ. Parks later says, “He explained the hierarchy of his church and that they had trained assassins.” Missouri officers later determine that “Wilson” is actually Timothy Coombs of Witt Springs, who is well known to local authorities for going on hunger strikes while in jail for refusing to recognize the government’s power to issue a driver’s license. Coombs had recently shot a neighbor’s horse; the slug and shell casings found at his home match those of the SKS rifle used to shoot Harper. However, by the time officers learn this, Coombs has disappeared. Police believe that Coombs retreated into a network of white supremacist sympathizers living in the remote hill country on the Missouri-Arkansas border. [New York Times, 7/5/1995]