Robert Mathews was born in Marfa, Texas, 16th January 1955, the last of three boys born to Johnny and Una Mathews. His father, of Scottish descent, was mayor of the town and president of the Chamber of Commerce, and a businessman and leader in the local Methodist church. His mother was the town’s den mother.
His family moved to Phoenix, Arizona when he was 5 years old. An average student in grade school, he was interested in history and politics. At age eleven, he joined the John Birch Society. While still in high school, he was baptized into the Mormon faith.
He became a staunch anti-communist and active in the Young Republicans.
He formed the Sons of Liberty, an anti-communist militia whose members were primarily Mormons and survivalists. At its peak, it had approximately 30 members. After filling out his employer’s W-4 Form claiming 10 dependents (reportedly as an act of tax resistance), he was arrested, tried and placed on probation for six months.
After a falling out between the Mormon and non-Mormon members, the Sons of Liberty became moribund and Mathews withdrew from it. After probation ended in 1974, he decided to relocate to Metaline Falls, Washington. Matthews and his father purchased 60 wooded acres, which became their new home and a provided the family with a fresh start. Two years later, Matthews married Debbie McGarrity. He began to raise Scottish Galloway cattle. The couple adopted a son in 1981. Mathews later became a practising polygamist, and had a daughter with a woman named Zillah Craig.
Matthews began to read history and politics. One in particular, Which Way Western Man? by William Gayley Simpson, profoundly affected him. Matthews agreed with its claim of dangers facing the white race, and in 1982 he began an effort to attract white families to the Pacific Northwest, which he called the “White American Bastion.” He visited Richard Butler’s Aryan Nations a few times and he began to draw a circle of friends around him who held similar beliefs. In 1983 Matthews gave a short speech at a National Alliance convention, which was a report on his efforts around the White American Bastion and a call to action.
It received the only standing ovation of the convention.
In late September of that year, at a barracks he had constructed on his property in Metaline, Matthews founded (with eight other men) the group that would come to be known as The Order, which he called the Silent Brotherhood. They included his friend and neighbor, and a group from Aryan Nations: Dan Bauer, Randy Duey, Denver Parmeter, and Bruce Pierce; David Lane, Richie Kemp and Bill Soderquist (who later testified against the bruder), recent recruits, rounded out the group. None had ever committed a violent crime before or had done prison time.
The nine founding members of the group swore an oath that began:
“I, as a free Aryan man, hereby swear an unrelenting oath upon the green graves of our sires, upon the children in the wombs of our wives, upon the throne of God almighty, sacred is His name, to join together in holy union with those brothers in this circle and to declare forthright that from this moment on I have no fear of death, no fear of foe; that I have a sacred duty to do whatever is necessary to deliver our people from the Jew and bring total victory to the Aryan race…”
A motto on the Order’s crest reads “Brüder schweigen”. This means “Brothers remain silent” in German.
The first order of business, according to Mathews’ plan, was to obtain funds for the white resistance movement, and they carried off their first robbery (of a porn shop in Spokane) which netted them $369.10. They agreed that it was not worth the risks they had taken and so turned their attention to robbing armored cars and counterfeiting. They printed up some phony $50 notes and 28 year old Pierce was quickly arrested after passing a few. In order to raise Pierce’s bail, Matthews, acting alone, robbed a bank just north of Seattle. He stole almost $26,000. Some of The Order’s members, along with a new recruit, Gary Yarborough, carried out more robberies and burglaries, which netted them over $43,000. A subsequent robbery yielded several hundred thousand dollars.
Another recruit, Tom Martinez, was caught and charged for passing more counterfeit currency.
Then in July, 1984, they finally used a dozen men to rob a Brinks’ truck of $3,800,000. The robbers distributed some of the stolen money to various other organizations and people in need (some say that certain Farmers were given another opportunity at life). Mathews and the other members of the Order were eventually given up by Martinez, who had come under pressure after his counterfeiting arrest. After he revealed information regarding Mathews’s activities to the FBI, Mathews and several others were eventually surrounded in a small cabin south of Coupeville, Washington on Whidbey Island by over 500 agents on December 8, 1984. (Various sources state numbers of law enforcement agents between 60 and 500.)
Mathews refused to come out after an intense exchange of gunfire.
The FBI then fired several M-79 Starburst flares inside the house,starting off a box of hand grenades,Causing an explosion and killing Mathews.
Eventually over 75 people in eight trials were convicted of crimes connected to The Order. Charges ranged from racketeering, conspiracy, counterfeiting, transporting stolen money and armored car robbery. Ten people connected to the case, including Butler, Lane and Pierce, were tried for sedition but were acquitted by the jury.
Robert J. Mathews and his comrades have contributed much to the realization of a Territorial Homeland for our people, and have sacrificed what they could for the ‘existence of our people, and a future for White children’ in whose name, they were willing to give their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred Honour.
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