By Michael McLaughlin
October 8, 2011
Sheriff's deputies are
closing in on suspects from a troublemaking Amish splinter group in Ohio who
have broken into homes and cut off the beards and hair of other Amish men.
Authorities tell HuffPost
Crime they are planning to arrest at least four men who are followers of Sam
Mullet, a bishop who Jefferson County Sheriff Fred Abdalla said has clashed
with other Amish leaders for years.
At least three attacks in
rural eastern Ohio since September prompted the victims ~ all Amish ~ to look
outside their traditionalist community to seek help from local police.
In one nighttime raid in
Carroll County, a group of men knocked on a door, pulled a man out by the beard
and tried to chop off his facial hair, the Wheeling Intelligencer
reports.
In Holmes County, a posse
allegedly broke into a home, lopping off the hair and whiskers of everyone
inside, including a 13-year-old-girl and 74-year-old man. There were no serious
injuries, according to police.
"Who knows where
it's going to end?" Abdalla said to The Huffington Post. "That's why
we have to make these arrests."
Holmes and Carroll County
sheriff's officials didn't return calls from HuffPost.
The unnamed suspects
could be charged with kidnapping, assault, burglary and trespassing, the
sheriff said.
Police say Mullet is not
a suspect, but he is said to exert influence over the approximately 18 families
that live near him in the village of Bergholz. The attackers in Carroll County
allegedly identified themselves as the "Bergholz clan" to the
victims. One person that deputies plan to arrest is a son of Mullet, Abadalla
said.
The victims of the
tonsorial onslaughts include two Amish bishops. Abdalla believes that Mullet is
a ringleader who ordered his followers to launch the attacks against his
potential rivals.
"Those people don't
make a move out there without his orders," Abdalla told The Huffington
Post. "He calls all the shots."
Sam Mullet, godfather of Amish Crime
The Amish community in
Jefferson County is small, numbering around 100 individuals, Abdalla said, but
is much larger in the neighboring areas.
In Trumbull County last
month, men and women allegedly invaded a home and returned to Jefferson County
with the freshly cut locks as proof that they carried out Mullet's commands,
according to The Intelligencer. The victims said their sons and
son-in-law were the culprits, but refused to file a complaint, the Associated Press
reports.
Amish do not shave or cut
their hair, believing that it's forbidden by the Bible, said Donald Kraybill,
an expert who studies the religious minority at Elizabethtown College. To
forcibly lob off their locks is a direct insult to their identity, Kraybill
said.
"This is very odd
and clearly outlier behavior," he wrote to HuffPost. "Amish-on-Amish
violences is extremely rare. ... These appear to be malicious assaults on
symbols of Amish identity by a wacko little group."
The Huffington Post could
not contact Mullet. Bryan Felmet, an attorney who represented Mullet four years
ago, said he's no longer a client.
The hair-cutting banditry
is the latest form of tumult that Sheriff Abdalla attributes to Mullet's
colony. During a custody dispute in 2007 between Mullet's daughter Wilma Troyer
and her husband, armed deputies stormed a
schoolhouse to seize Troyer's daughters.
At a
subsequent hearing, Abdalla claimed that Mullet had threatened his life and
that sexual abuse in the Amish
community had been covered up.
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