In the quiet, rural community of Tilly, Arkansas, William Mueller, a 52-year-old Male, was known as a licensed gun dealer and a skilled electrician. He and his wife, Nancy Ann Mueller, 28, had built a life together with her young daughter, Sarah Elizabeth Powell, age 8. William, a military veteran who often wore his Army jacket, was well-liked in the close-knit community, where he and his family were active members.
He was preparing for an upcoming gun show on January 11, 1996, a day that would end in an unimaginable tragedy for the family.
That evening, when the Mueller family returned to their isolated home, they walked into an ambush. Two men, Chevie O'Brien Kehoe and his accomplice Daniel Lewis Lee, had broken in and were lying in wait. Dressed in jackets falsely identifying them as federal agents, the intruders quickly overpowered the family. Their motive was robbery; Kehoe knew William Mueller from the gun show circuit and had, in fact, robbed his home with his father the previous year. This time, Kehoe returned to steal a large collection of firearms, ammunition, and a significant amount of cash Mueller kept at the house, and to eliminate any witnesses.
The violence that followed was brutal. Kehoe and Lee used a stun gun or cattle prod to torture the family, including young Sarah, to force them to reveal the location of the valuables. After gathering an estimated $50,000 in cash and coins, along with hundreds of firearms, the two men murdered the entire family. They placed plastic bags over the heads of William, Nancy, and Sarah, sealing them with duct tape and causing them to suffocate. According to later testimony, Lee was unwilling to kill the 8-year-old girl, so Kehoe murdered her himself.
To conceal their crime, Kehoe and Lee drove the bodies to the Illinois Bayou, part of Lake Dardanelle, about 45 miles away. They weighed the victims down with rocks, binding them with handcuffs and zip ties, before throwing them into the water. For five months, the family was considered missing. Their abandoned Jeep and empty trailer were found a month after their disappearance, hidden and covered with brush, with Nancy's purse still inside. The horrific truth was not revealed until late June 1996, when fishermen discovered the three bodies in the water.
The investigation launched by local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies eventually led them to Chevie Kehoe. A crucial break came when the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) began tracing the serial numbers of the stolen guns, which Mueller had meticulously registered. The weapons started appearing at gun shows, sold by Kehoe and his father, Kirby. The case solidified when Kehoe's mother, Gloria, fearing for her own life, contacted ATF agents and provided invaluable information, revealing that both Kehoe and Lee had confessed the murders to her. Her testimony, along with that of Kehoe's brother Cheyne, was critical in the subsequent trial.
The murders were part of a larger, violent crime spree committed by Kehoe, a self-proclaimed white supremacist who founded a militia called the Aryan People's Republic. The robberies and killings were intended to fund his plot to establish a whites-only nation in the Pacific Northwest. In 1999, following a two-month federal trial in Little Rock, a jury convicted Kehoe of numerous crimes, including three counts of murder in aid of racketeering. While the prosecution sought the death penalty, the jury sentenced Chevie O'Brien Kehoe to three consecutive life sentences in prison without the possibility of parole. His accomplice, Daniel Lewis Lee, was sentenced to death and was executed on July 14, 2020.
