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As he drove along the highway, Decker tried to recall the details of the briefing he’d been given in Chicago two hours earlier. Ed McNally, leader of the local chapter of the White Apocalypse, his wife Mary, and his brother-in-law Peter Sampson were all holed up inside their ramshackle white clapboard farmhouse in New Liberty. So were the McNally’s three children: Sarah, Rachael and Rebecca. Ed McNally had a long rap sheet, including arson, armed robbery and tax evasion. He and Peter Sampson had been stockpiling weapons at the McNally farm west of the Quad Cities for months. This, plus recent purchases of various chemical fertilizers that could be leveraged for bomb making, had brought the extended family to the attention of the FBI. But since both acts were legal, there was little the authorities could do.

Then, following a recent high school basketball game, Sarah McNally’s boyfriend, Malcolm Burns, had gotten into a fight with the center from the predominantly African-American rival high school from Rock Island, Illinois — a kid named Evan Hudson. The facts were somewhat sketchy but witnesses later claimed that Burns had called Hudson a “nigger” in the parking lot outside the school after the game.

At first, Hudson had just ignored him. His parents were both Evangelical Christians and, summoning up a reservoir of self-restraint, he had tried to walk away. But Burns hadn’t let it go. He had followed Hudson toward the bus the rival team was boarding and before the boy could get inside, had pushed him from behind, called him a “mud pussy,” and kicked him when he slipped on the icy pavement to the ground. A fight ensued. Ironically, it wasn’t even Hudson who responded to the assault. It was his fellow teammates. They streamed out of the bus and tore into Burns and his friends. The mêlée was brief but brutal. Several of the youths were badly injured, on both sides of the altercation. Then, just as it seemed to be winding down, Ed McNally pulled up outside the schoolyard in his battered gold Ford pickup.

McNally had come to pick up his daughter from the game. When he saw what was happening in the parking lot, saw his daughter Sarah in the midst of the thrashing arms and kicks and punches being thrown around her, he jumped out of his truck with a tire iron he kept under the front seat, and weighed into the crowd of teenagers.

It was just bad luck the coach from the rival team, a tall ex-Marine named Aaron Turner, happened to be black. He was in the midst of trying to pull the fighting boys apart when McNally struck him from behind. Turner went down, rolled, and then sprang back to his feet. He tried to reason with McNally but the man seemed absolutely deaf to his entreaties. So he had struck the farmer with a right cross that shook McNally to the core. If Turner had followed up right then, if he had taken the advantage, perhaps it would have ended at that moment. But the coach had simply raised his hands and said, “I don’t want to hurt you, mister. Just take it easy.”

The words only seemed to make McNally angrier. He side-stepped to the right, threw a jab and swung the tire iron at Coach Turner’s head. Turner stepped back but he wasn’t quite fast enough. The end of the tire iron caught him on the mouth and drove his head back with a loud thwack. Blood spurted from his face. Two teeth went flying. He raised his hands in self-defense but McNally swung the tire iron once again and brought it down on Turner’s collarbone. It snapped like a Popsicle stick. Turner screamed as he collapsed. McNally kicked him in the face, and kept on kicking him until the combined weight of the boys from the rival high school finally managed to drag him from the bleeding man. McNally backed away. He shouted at his daughter Sarah to get back into the truck. Then he swung the tire iron threateningly at the crowd and laughed. “Fucking coons,” he said. “You ain’t worth my sweat.” With that he turned and walked away. Everyone was in a state of shock. A few of the boys knelt down to help Coach Turner. The rest simply stared dumbfounded as McNally started up his pickup truck and drove nonchalantly out of the parking lot. He never even turned around.

The following day, at approximately 8:30 AM, two local New Liberty policemen — Sergeant Jim Crowley and Officer Alvin Cox — drove out to the McNally farm. They were there to serve McNally a warrant for assault but Mary McNally refused to let them in the farmhouse. Her husband and brother were not in, she claimed. They were in Moline, at a meeting. They wouldn’t be home until late. Rather than force the issue, the local policemen decided to wait.

Eventually, about forty minutes later, McNally and Sampson were spotted driving along the country road back toward the farmhouse in McNally’s battered gold Ford pickup. They slowed down when they saw the police cruiser outside the farm’s main gate. But instead of pulling over when Sergeant Crowley tried to flag them down, they picked up speed and swung around a tractor lane, entering the property from the side. Then they jumped out and ran into the farmhouse, carrying what were later described as “suspicious-looking objects under their arms, possibly automatic weapons, wrapped loosely in plaid blankets.”

Once again, the police approached the house, this time with their guns drawn. When they had come to within a hundred feet of the front porch, McNally appeared at the door with a shotgun in his arms. He asked them what they wanted, and they told him they were there to serve him with a warrant for his assault on Aaron Turner. McNally laughed. The police told him to put the shotgun down and, without a fuss, McNally complied. Then, as they drew closer to the house, a shot rang out from the window of the bedroom on the second floor. Sergeant Crowley went down, a bullet through his forehead. He was dead before he even hit the ground.

The second policeman, Officer Alvin Cox, retreated in a shower of bullets and barely made it back behind his car. He immediately put in a call for reinforcements. Within twenty minutes, another New Liberty police car, two state police cruisers, three local Eldridge and four Bettendorf police cars — including the Bettendorf Chief of Police, Paul “Popeye” Landry, and Sergeant Pat Higgins — had converged onto the scene. Two hours later, an FBI SWAT team had completely surrounded the farmhouse.

After three hours of fruitless negotiations, during which the police had begged McNally to send his children out from the farmhouse, they intercepted a call from McNally to a man named Jordan Fletcher, the Grand Master of the White Apocalypse, based in a small town twenty miles southwest of Sioux City. Fletcher had immediately reprimanded McNally for calling him, especially on a landline. He told him to call back on his cell phone and to use “the book.” Then he hung up. The head of the FBI SWAT team, Don Morgan, had immediately called his office in Chicago and requested a device to pick up cell phone transmissions and a cryptanalyst. Within two hours, at approximately 4:20 PM, as the sun was beginning to set, John Decker Jr. left I-80 and drove up Rural Route 30 toward the McNally farm in New Liberty.