In the quiet, unincorporated community of Tilly, Arkansas, nestled deep in the Ozark Mountains, eight-year-old Sarah Elizabeth Powell lived with her mother, Nancy Mueller, and her stepfather, William Mueller. Nancy, 28, had deep family roots in Pope County, and William, 52, a licensed firearms dealer, was known in their close-knit community. By all accounts, William loved Sarah as his own daughter, and together they were an ordinary, happy family.
Their peaceful life was shattered on January 11, 1996, a day that ended with a crime of unimaginable brutality.
That evening, when the family returned to their 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 to look like federal agents, they quickly overpowered the family. The motive was robbery, part of a larger, twisted plan by Kehoe, a self-proclaimed white supremacist, to fund the establishment of a whites-only nation in the Pacific Northwest. Kehoe had previously robbed the Mueller home in 1995 and returned believing there was a large cache of cash, guns, and ammunition.
The intruders subjected the family to hours of terror. They used a stun gun or an electric cattle prod to torture William, Nancy, and young Sarah, demanding to know where valuables were hidden. After they had gathered an estimated $50,000 in cash and coins, along with a large number of firearms and ammunition, the assailants turned to eliminating the witnesses. They incapacitated each family member, placed plastic bags over their heads, and sealed them with duct tape, causing them to suffocate. According to later testimony, Lee was unwilling to kill the child, so Kehoe himself murdered Sarah to ensure there were no witnesses to their crimes.
For months, the family was simply considered missing. Their Jeep and empty trailer were found abandoned and hidden in the woods about a month later, but there was no sign of William, Nancy, or Sarah. The horrifying truth was not revealed until late June 1996, when their bodies were discovered in Lake Dardanelle, near Russellville, Arkansas. A fisherman snagged his line on what turned out to be their remains. The killers had weighed the bodies down with rocks, binding them with duct tape and zip ties, before throwing them into the Illinois Bayou.
The discovery launched a massive investigation involving local, state, and federal law enforcement. The break in the case came from a shootout in Ohio in February 1997 involving Kehoe and his brother, which led investigators to connect Kehoe to the stolen Mueller firearms. Ultimately, Kehoe's own mother, Gloria, and his brother, Cheyne, testified against him, providing crucial details about his confession to the murders. This testimony, along with other evidence, led to the arrests of Kehoe and Lee.
In 1999, both men were tried in federal court and convicted on multiple charges, including three counts of murder in aid of racketeering. The jury sentenced Chevie O'Brien Kehoe, the ringleader, to three consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole. Daniel Lewis Lee was sentenced to death. The disparity in the sentences was a point of contention for years, even for some involved in the prosecution.
The family of Nancy and Sarah, including Sarah's grandmother, Earlene Peterson, publicly opposed Lee's execution. They stated that carrying out the death sentence would only bring them more pain and that it was not what Nancy would have wanted. Despite their pleas for clemency, and after numerous legal challenges, Daniel Lewis Lee was executed by lethal injection on July 14, 2020. Chevie Kehoe remains incarcerated, serving his life sentence.
