In what is already a tense election year, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) federal charges against a Fremont County couple for their plans to build a “white supremacist” school in rural Fremont County near Cotopaxi have been upheld. Chad Keith, 42, who until at least 2021 was a resident of Colorado Springs, has been sentenced to 27 months in federal prison for the possession of firearms by a prohibited person.
While possessing firearms was the sole subject of the criminal charges, possessing firearms was not the only extremist activity in our neighboring county, as discussed in the court case against Keith.
Keith served time previously after being convicted of having an unregistered explosive device in 2003. He received a four-year prison sentence, making him ineligible to legally possess the firearms authorities found across his two properties. Then in 2021, CBS News reported that Keith was charged with possessing firearms prohibited by a person with a previous federal weapons conviction.
In this latest case, Keith was arrested by the Fremont County Sheriff’s Office in April, 2023 for driving without a license and being a fugitive of justice. He was indicted in May, 2023 after the FBI seized 11 guns on his 2.6-acre property in Fremont County.
At the time he was ordered to be held without bond, because, as was reported by The Denver Post “, he was considered “a flight risk and a community threat.” He pleaded guilty to the charges in October, 2023.
The extremist beliefs and actions of Chad Keith and his wife Rebecca Duncan, 58, go back at least as far as 2001 in Colorado. Each time Keith has been allowed out he has continued his white supremacist activities.
But Duncan, whose case on similar charges is pending, says that she and her husband are not white supremacists. Instead, she says he would describe himself as a “national socialist*.” She said that allegations by an FBI informant about Keith starting a white-only community on his rural property in Cotopaxi are false.
But according to the charging complaint, Keith is a “self-avowed Nazi” who planned to create a school that taught children white supremacist ideology. The school would also give children weapons training.
The plans were discovered by an FBI investigator assigned to a Joint Terrorism Task Force. The informant revealed Keith’s plans for operating a “white private community” school for teenagers, on a 2.6-acre property he owns near Cotopaxi. The school’s agenda would include “hardcore weapons training” and an “anti-Semitic curriculum.”
An FBI photo obtained during their investigation shows Chad Keith handling a firearm, according to the FBI criminal complaint.
The FBI reports that in their raid they seized a small arsenal of several weapons. These include:
- A .300 Magnum bolt action rifle with no serial number,
- A Mossberg 500 12-gauge shotgun,
- A Savage model 93 R17 17HMR caliber,
- A Glock 21 .45 caliber, a scoped bolt action rifle with a hand-engraved serial number,
- Winchester model 62A, .22 caliber,
- A Century Arms C308 Sporter,
- Two Rugers — a Ruger 10/22 .22 long rifle and a Ruger Super Redhawk .44 magnum,
- A Mossberg 590 12-gauge shotgun and
- A Century Arms WASR-10 7.62x39mm caliber.
The 13-page federal arrest warrant described Keith’s property as being off the grid, with several underground bunkers. The federal warrant includes the fact that one of the bunkers reportedly can withstand an electromagnetic blast. The property includes a 10,000-gallon water cistern and a 462-foot-deep well. Keith also bought two properties adjacent to his to utilize for his “anti-Semitic curriculum.”
According to court documents, Keith’s wife Duncan was previously convicted on felony theft charges in 2006, also making her legally ineligible to own firearms. But she was allegedly in possession of a pistol and a revolver along with ammunition.
For a YouTube video regarding his arrest: https://youtu.be/xlJ9LoCzTTo
Hard-core Weapons Training and Nazi Ideology
According to the FBI informant, Keith reportedly said he wanted to do “hard-core weapons training” because they were shooting guns on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land.
The FBI informant recorded Keith with both audio and video devices. Keith allegedly “described himself as both a “National Socialist” and a “Nazi.” Keith told the informant that he had “serious f—king concerns” for which he would “absolutely” die.
The Associated Press has reported that Keith has a longer history of extremism than was first known. In 1999 when he was a senior at a high school in Coushatta, Louisiana, Keith reportedly planted a bomb in a school bathroom. The bomb went off, but no one was injured. Four additional bombs were found in the school.
Anti-Defamation League Mountain States Regional Director Scott Levin released a statement following Keith’s arrest calling the white supremacist’s beliefs “deeply concerning” and “dangerous.”
“We are grateful to law enforcement for taking this case seriously and for taking steps to prevent potential future violence. The individual’s alleged antisemitic and white supremacist beliefs – and alarming apparent plans of action – are deeply concerning,” wrote Levin. “Adherence to dangerous, antisemitic and white supremacist ideologies, combined with weapons, is an all-too-frequent deadly combination.”
According to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Colorado statement, FBI investigators found a flyer inside Keith’s Colorado Springs house. It included a graphic of the Jewish Star of David overlaid like a bull’s-eye with pictures of politicians, among items related to White nationalism and Nazism.
According to the FBI complaint, Keith was seen handling firearms on the Cotopaxi property. In the complaint, the informant described visiting Keith’s property, where the informant, Keith and others brought guns to go shooting on nearby federal Bureau of Land Management property.
The 2023 arrest and the 2024 conviction have been a long time coming. As reported by The Gazette, a spokesperson with the Fremont County Sheriff’s Office said that the office first passed along complaints of automatic gunfire coming from the property to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms in 2020.
But Keith’s white supremacist plans for the property aren’t as well-documented, and were not part of the charges. According to Duncan’s comments, they intended to teach “survivalist” skills and turn the property into a recreation and Airbnb.
The Gazette reported this week that: “David Coote who, according to property tax records, owned the Cotopaxi property prior to Keith and sold it to him in 2019, said he knew Keith to be “blunt” about his beliefs. He said that he and several neighbors attended a meeting at Keith’s property where he was attempting to recruit “like-minded” neighbors to support his ideology and efforts to create a school.”
But Cotte is reported to have noted “I don’t think he would hurt anybody.”
Right.
Editor’s note: *By definition, the National Socialist Movement (NSM) is a far-right, Neo-Nazi, white supremacist hate-based organization based in the United States. It is a part of the Nationalist Front. The party claims to be the “largest and most active” National Socialist organization in the United States. It is classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, the Nazi Party came to power in Germany in 1933 and governed by totalitarian methods until 1945. Anti-Semitism was fundamental to the party’s ideology and led to the Holocaust, the systematic, state-sponsored killing of six million Jews.
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