Tennessee woman to prison for part in plot to kidnap sheriff

MEMPHIS, Tenn. — The Tennessee woman who conspired to kidnap a Furnas County, Nebraska sheriff and a Tennessee county judge last year has been sentenced to 60 months in federal prison.

Patricia Parsons, a 50-year-old mechanical engineer from Brighton, Tenn., was sentenced on Dec. 1, following her plea of guilty in September 2017 to aiding and abetting solicitation to kidnap Furnas County Sheriff Kurt Kapperman and Tipton County Judge Joseph Walker III.

Sheriff Kapperman became a target for Pat Parsons on Jan. 12, 2017, after Kapperman and other law enforcement officers arrested her husband, Mike Parsons, a felon fleeing prosecution in Tennessee with plans to fly his plane to British Columbia, Canada, and stopping en route at the Arapahoe, Neb., airport.

Pat Parsons and her co-conspirator, a woman living in Canada, hired a bounty hunter through an FBI confidential source in New Orleans to kidnap the sheriff and judge and to break Mike Parsons out of jail.

Mike Parsons was in the Furnas County jail in Beaver City or in the Phelps County jail in Holdrege at the time that Parsons and the Canadian woman began plotting to break him out of jail. Sheriff Kapperman said that he felt his staff would be safer without Parsons in their detention center, and Parsons was transferred to the diagnostic and evaluation center of the Nebraska penitentiary system in Lincoln. Parsons was extradited back to Tipton County, on March 28.

According to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Western District of Tennessee, facts revealed during Pat Parsons’ plea hearing in September 2017 indicated that from February 2017 through May 2017, Parsons conspired with Suzanne Holland (AKA Zsuzsanna Hegedus), a self-appointed “Chief Justice of the Universal Supreme Court of the Tsilhqot’in Nation” in British Columbia, to kidnap Sheriff Kapperman and Judge Walker and to take them to Canada to face “criminal charges” there.

The final negotiated price for the kidnapping contract was $250,000, including an initial payment of $5,000. However, in lieu of that initial payment, parties agreed upon the trade of the Parsonses’ Corvette with “some problems,” and later, instead of the Corvette, a 1991 Ford Ranger pickup.

In announcing Patricia Parsons’ sentence Dec. 1, United States Attorney D. Michael Dunavant, Memphis, said, “The U.S. Attorney’s Office takes any threats against law enforcement, the courts and public officials very seriously. The defendant’s disturbing conduct in this potentially violent case strikes at the very heart of our justice system, and we are pleased that she has been held accountable for her role in this unusual kidnapping attempt.”

A bit of background

In January 2017, law enforcement officials tracked Mike Parsons, a felon wanted in Tennessee, and his cell phone to the airport five miles north of Arapahoe.

On Jan. 10, Michael Parsons was to have appeared in state court in Tipton County, Tenn., facing charges of two counts of being a felon in possession of a firearm. He did not show up for court, and he apparently removed his ankle monitor (he said it “fell off”) and flew off in his plane. According to The Leader newspaper in Covington, Tenn., Parsons is a former member of the Civil Air Patrol and does not hold a pilot’s license because that would indicate a contract with the government.

Furnas County Sheriff Kurt Kapperman said, last year at the time of Parson’s flight to Nebraska, that FBI agents had alerted his office that Parsons may be in the Arapahoe area, and that he was a felon wanted on the failure to appear charge and firearms charges. Parsons’ record includes theft, burglary, aggravated kidnapping and aggravated assault.

Kapperman was among officers involved in Mike Parsons’ arrest after he was found Jan. 12 inside a locked office at the Arapahoe airport.

Following Mike Parsons’ arrest, another individual (identified in early court records as “S.H.”)demanded Parsons’ release from jail, indicating she was “The Chief Justice of the Universal Court of the Tsilhqot’in Nation” in British Columbia. Parsons claimed he was an ambassador and associate chief justice of the “Country of Chilcotin.”

A bounty hunter

On February 16, 2017, FBI New Orleans received information that Suzanne Holland was attempting to hire a bounty hunter to kidnap Sheriff Kurt Kapperman of Furnas County, Nebraska, and Judge Joseph Walker of Tipton County, Tennessee, and to break Mike Parsons out of jail. Holland contacted an FBI confidential source in New Orleans, La, and solicited the source to execute what she claimed to be duly-issued “arrest warrants” for the sheriff and the judge issued by the Tsilhqot’in Nation. Holland emailed “arrest warrants” to the source along with an “order to release Michael Parsons from jail.”

Further investigation revealed that Holland’s loyalties are to a sovereign citizen group located on an Indian reservation in British Columbia.

Between February and March 2017, Holland, Parsons and the confidential source worked on duties and payments. On Feb. 17, Holland provided a telephone number for the source to facilitate further discussions, and FBI Memphis determined that the phone number was Patricia Parsons’.

On March 3, 2017, Holland requested that the source accept a Corvette in lieu of the $5,000 down payment. The Corvette was owned by the Parsonses and located on Patricia Parsons’ property in Brighton, Tenn. In telephone conversations, Patricia Parsons advised that the Corvette had some problems but it was still worth about $7,000.

Over time and in a number of phone calls, the source explained to Parsons what the overall operation would include selling the Corvette to help fund the operation; breaking Mike Parsons out of jail; kidnapping the Tennessee judge (who was scheduled to preside over her husband’s impending trial) and the Nebraska sheriff; using the Parsonses’ plane to transport the abducted individuals to appear before Holland in Canada; and using 30 operatives divided into two teams to accomplish these objectives.

The FBI at the door

At one point, in a phone call Pat Parsons indicated that she was fine with the source taking the Corvette and using the plane, “As long as the FBI don’t come knockin’ at my door again.” The source explained that the operatives would need to go to Canada because, “Once we kidnap a judge and a sheriff, our heads are gonna be on the choppin’ block … and once we do what we gotta do, we can never come back.”

After these discussions, Parsons agreed to meet one of the operatives to complete the transaction.

Chevy or Ford

On March 6, 2017, an undercover FBI employee posing as an associate of the source went to Brighton, Tenn., to get the Chevy Corvette. However, the Corvette was inaccessible and Parsons offered a 1991 Ford Ranger pickup as the down payment instead. Parsons could not find the title to the Ranger, but she signed a note transferring ownership of the vehicle and gave the associate the keys to the pickup.

Between March 11 and March 15, 2017, the associate made three telephone calls to Parsons in order to gain information about Judge Walker, who presides over courts in Tipton, Lauderdale, Hardeman and Fayette counties.

U.S. Attorney Dunavant said that at no time did Pat Parsons attempt to notify any authorities of the impending plot to kidnap a sheriff and judge and free Mr. Parsons from jail.

Arapahoe connection

An Arapahoe man, who ran into Mike Parsons at the Arapahoe airport, became part of the Parsonses’ and Holland’s story because it appears he learned of the kidnap plans and also did not tell law enforcement.

Fifty-five-year-old Anthony Todd Weverka of Arapahoe has agreed to resolve federal criminal charges pending against him by entering into an agreement with Acting United States Attorney Robert C. Stuart’s office in Omaha.

The official charge against Weverka is misprision of felony (the deliberate concealment of one’s knowledge of a felony or treasonable act), alleging that Weverka knew of the existence of felony offenses by Mike and Pat Parsons, and the plans to kidnap Sheriff Kapperman, and that he provided assistance to those planning the abduction.

It was further alleged in the federal indictment that Weverka made false statements to the sheriff when he did make a partial disclosure of what he knew.

By entering into a pretrial diversion agreement, Weverka agreed to certain terms and conditions that, if satisfied, would result in the dismissal of the charges pending against him.

The length of Weverka’s term of probation is 18 months and the agreement requires him to complete 50 hours of community service.

Involved in this case were Tennessee law officers, Sheriff Kapperman’s Furnas County Sheriff’s Office, the Nebraska State Patrol and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, as well as the FBI and its Joint Terrorism Task Force.