I’ve been invited to be a part of a panel discussion at Bismarck State College’s symposium, Humanities Mixtape: Rewinding the 1980s, later this month.
Along with others on the panel, I’ll discuss how the media landscape has changed since the ‘80s, and also discuss the Gordon Kahl incident of 1983.
I’m honored to be a part of the discussion. And it has stirred some memories for me, especially about Kahl and the US Marshals who died in that shootout.
The Gordon Kahl Case
It happened on a Sunday. I was in the office Sunday evening, working on stories for Monday morning, as well as filing the week’s news and archiving audio. In those days, Prairie Public had a police scanner (most newsrooms had one), to listen for anything that we considered “hard news.” And that’s when I heard something about US Marshals and shots fired.
I don’t remember where the message came from, but I decided to call the US Marshals’ office in Fargo. To my astonishment, someone answered. He said he couldn’t talk about what happened, and he was choked up. I thanked him for answering the call.
A little while later, I was informed of a news conference with then-Governor Allen Olson, to be held at 10pm. We were given some information about that incident, but I do not recall if the name “Gordon Kahl” had been mentioned.
But some details were confirmed – for example, the incident happened in Medina, and two marshals had been killed by gunfire.
The next day, the FBI became involved. The investigation soon focused on Kahl’s home in Heaton. It received a lot of national attention. But Kahl had left, and was on the run.
Some time later, I was out to dinner with a friend, when my pager went off. I called the office, and Steve Wennblom – the afternoon anchor/reporter at the time – said there were reports that Kahl was found in Mountain Home, Arkansas. I and my friend (Chris Maddy, then the news director at KNOX in Grand Forks), went to the station, and started working on that story. We interrupted our Friday night classical program several times with updates. We were there until there was confirmation that Kahl was dead.
By the way, our station manager at the time, Edi Falk, came in to see what was going on. She was surprised to see three reporters (including one she didn’t know) working the phones and typing furiously.
The Kahl incident still remains fresh in my mind. We learned a lot of things, about the farm crisis, the term “posse comitatus,” and tax protestors.
There’s more – but that’ll be discussed at the BSC seminar.