Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 9, 1995 TAG: 9508090060
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: KATHY LOAN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
He's not a militia man, his lawyer said Tuesday. Yet he found himself among five people charged with firearm violations after a federal investigation of the Blue Ridge Hunt Club in Pulaski County.
Frith, 42, of Montgomery County, pleaded guilty Tuesday to conspiring to violate federal firearm laws. He will be sentenced later.
Frith was "anything but a militia member - just a good old country boy," said his lawyer, Jimmy Turk.
He attended one meeting of the Blue Ridge Hunt Club, a self-described citizens militia started by leader James Roy Mullins to support gun rights and to fight a possible government war on citizens.
The club met just three times last summer before the arrests of several members. Vice President Raeford Nelson Thompson - a government informant - was wearing a recording device all along.
Under the plea agreement, Frith admitted he conspired to violate federal gun laws by participating in the "straw purchase" of a weapon.
Frith told Judge Jackson Kiser that federal agents "were very, very harsh and intentionally frightened my mother under the guise [of giving them] a reason to get into her house."
Special Agent Scott Fairburn of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms saw it a different way.
He at a convenience store.
"I catered to his every need," Fairburn said.
The phone calls were made last August, Fairburn testified, when he called several times over a five-hour period as he tried to find Frith to serve a subpoena on him.
Fairburn agreed with Turk that one of the reasons the hunt club wanted Frith as a member was because he had access to a copying machine.
Fairburn said the straw weapon purchase that is the basis of the conspiracy charge happened when Frith was unable to buy a weapon on his own. A glitch in the state police computer led authorities mistakenly to believe Frith was a convicted felon.
In April 1994, Frith had a neighbor do the paperwork and buy the weapon for him. In two other cases that weren't prosecuted, Frith's mother and brother made the purchases.
Two semiautomatic rifles and one 9mm semiautomatic pistol were bought for Frith, Assistant U.S. Attorney Don Wolthuis said after court.
"Technically speaking, all he had to do was clear up his record ... Dennis knew he wasn't a convicted felon," Turk said after court. "He just didn't know how to go about getting it cleared up."
Those guns were purchased from Paul David Peterson, who along with Mullins pleaded guilty in February to firearm charges. Mullins was sentenced to five years in prison. Peterson's sentencing was delayed because he agreed to testify for the government.
Today, a jury is scheduled to begin hearing the case against Paul Greene, a Blacksburg gun dealer charged with selling a damaged gun to club members who turned it into a machine gun. Greene is accused of failing to properly document the transaction.
by CNB