FORT SMITH -- The U.S. Marshals Museum's mission to tell the agency's 225-year story will be enhanced with items from events such as Ruby Ridge and Wounded Knee and from tax protester Gordon Kahl, who was killed in Arkansas.
The artifacts were part of a shipment of 120 items loaned to the museum from the U.S. Marshals Service from various operations of the 1970s and 1980s, the museum announced in a news release Monday.
The shipment will provide more flexibility for the development of exhibit designs, said Neil DeSousa, assistant director for tactical operations with the Marshals Service.
The shipment brings the museum's total collection to nearly 500 items from the Marshals Service and other sources.
"Items like these make up the rich history of the Marshals Service and will be key components to telling the story to the guests of the museum," museum President and CEO Patrick Weeks said.
The future U.S. Marshals Museum will be a national museum located on the banks of the Arkansas River near downtown Fort Smith. The estimated 50,000-square-foot museum will have three permanent exhibit galleries, a temporary exhibit gallery, the Samuel M. Sicard Hall of Honor and a National Learning Center.
Included in the consignment are items from events surrounding the fatal shooting of Deputy Marshal Bill Degan in August 1992 while attempting to arrest a fugitive in a remote area of northern Idaho known as Ruby Ridge.
At Wounded Knee, S.D., Marshal Lloyd Grimm of Nebraska was seriously wounded after followers of the American Indian Movement seized the town in February 1973 and held it for 71 days, the longest civil disorder in the Marshals Service's history.
Two members of the Marshals Service, North Dakota Marshal Kenneth H. Muir and Deputy Marshal Robert J. Cheshire, were killed in February 1983 trying to arrest Kahl and his followers outside Medina, N.D., for violating his probation on a tax evasion conviction.
Kahl was killed in a gunfight with law enforcement in Lawrence County in June 1983.
State Desk on 08/16/2016