(7 of 10)
In 1983, Martinez says, his friend called him for what turned out to be the last time. "He was basically asking me about taking up arms against the government. 'Hypothetically, they've come to get my guns. Will I defend myself?' I'd been in law enforcement at that time about five years, and the question was so off the wall. I mean, you should be talking about probable cause, about why they would come to take my firearms from me. But the scenario being painted was, all of a sudden, the government turns into a fascist government. They're gonna come and get us. This was what he was suggesting, and I wasn't prepared to get in a discussion with him. So I brushed him off. That conversation really bugged the hell out of me. I remember thinking, This guy is way out there. He's not just eccentric anymore. It was like, Wake up, Ramon, this guy is a nut roll." Martinez never talked to Koernke again.
This spared Koernke from having to explain his 1984 arrest for carrying a concealed weapon (he reportedly received a suspended sentence) or his 1986 arrest for felonious assault. According to a police report, three complainants, who admitted to having tried repeatedly to pass Koernke's van, alleged that he "bolted from the van ... pointing a handgun at them with both hands [and said] 'If you want problems, I'll give it to you. Stay off the road.'" The resulting search of Koernke's van turned up a gas mask, a (legal) 12-gauge shotgun with 10 shells, K rations, two military shovels and a canteen. He convinced a judge that he had been acting in self-defense.
Within a few years, Koernke found more than enough new friends and admirers to replace any who might have become disenchanted with him. His life as a public figure began with a series of calls to radio programs. Ted Heusel, the host of a long-running Ann Arbor talk show, remembers that Koernke would call several times a week, anonymously. "He never spoke mean about anything, and he never spoke unpatriotic. He was very literate, [and] it was always very short. You never had to hang up on him."
Then in 1991, says Nancy, she and Mark attended a rally in Birch Run, Michigan, for the presidential campaign of America First Populist Party candidate and right-wing avatar James ("Bo") Gritz. The featured speaker was to be Gritz's vice-presidential running mate, Cyril Minett, but he failed to show. Participants, taking shelter from a pouring rain, began talking politics. Koernke started running through his theories and soon, says Nancy, "he was asked, you know, 'Get up there and talk.' So they pretty much pushed him up there, and he just kind of fell into it and started talking."
And people listened. Joyce Moore, an enthusiastic Michigan Patriot, was impressed by his encyclopaedic knowledge of obscure, but troubling legislation. "People asked me where I got my information from, and I told them I got it from Mark and checked it out myself, and they should do the same," she says.