White Supremacists Slay Parents and 8-Year-Old Kid: “It Takes a Special Type of Monster"

In January 1996, Earlene Peterson went to the Pope County Sheriff’s Office in Arkansas to report her daughter, Nancy Mueller, son-in-law, William, and 8-year-old granddaughter, Sarah, missing. A month later, the family’s vehicle was found 45 minutes away from their Tilly, Arkansas home, hidden in brush and woods. But police had no answers on the family’s disappearance until June 28, 1996, when a couple fishing in a lake 85 miles south hooked in part of a body.

“Once the bodies were discovered … it became apparent that somebody planned and premeditated a murder and carried it out and tried to cover it up, fairly successfully,” said Paula Casey, former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas, on A Plan To Kill, airing Sundays at 7/6c on Oxygen. “Somebody thought about this and planned it out ahead of time.”

The federal and state investigation pointed to the Kehoe family, neighbors of the Mueller family in Arkansas.

“The Kehoe family was basically a crime syndicate,” said Tony Holt, a journalist with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, in A Plan To Kill. “Very much like what you would see in the Italian mob or street gangs. They often have to resort to violence and theft and racketeering.”

It took three years for police and the FBI to piece together what happened to the Mueller family — and why — and get their killers convicted.

“Bill was fighting back. They incapacitated him using the butt of a weapon,” Holt said. “Chevie [Kehoe]’s plan was to not leave any survivors. Chevie insisted that 8-year-old Sarah had to be killed, along with her mother and stepfather.”

Friends and family told police that the Mueller family was planning to go to a Springdale, Arkansas gun show when they disappeared. Bill Mueller sold, traded, and bought guns. The family’s home had been burglarized in February 1995, with guns and cash stolen, but that didn’t deter their business.

When law enforcement searched the lake in June 1996, they found Sarah’s body first.

“The girl’s body, it was badly decomposed,” Holt said. “A plastic bag was wrapped around her head. It was duct taped.”

The medical examiner found blue paint flecks in the duct tape, and a database showed the paint belonged to a blue General Motors vehicle.

On the second day of searching, the Polk County Sheriff’s Office found two more bodies.

“Dangling from one of his wrists was a pair of handcuffs,” Holt said. “The older female had zip ties around her ankles, around her legs. They too had plastic bags around their heads, and rocks were fastened to their bodies, to sink the bodies.”

Two key pieces of evidence were found among the Mueller family’s home belongings: An empty gun case, with a serial number for tracking, and a photograph of Bill and Sarah with two unknown men.

In July 1996, convicted felon Travis Break was arrested with Bill Mueller’s missing gun on him. He identified one of the unknown men in the photograph as the man who sold him the weapon at a gun show. It took law enforcement knocking on doors and showing off the photograph in Arkansas to identify the man as Kirby Kehoe.

“It was discovered Kirby’s been on the FBI’s radar for quite some time,” said Matt Browning, a former FBI Task Force Agent, on A Plan To Kill. “Kirby Kehoe is a man who has taught and who has lived the anti-government movement, racial movement. You name the movement, he’s lived it. He is an extremist, to say the least. Kirby had a criminal record. He is a very violent person.”

Another stolen gun was tracked to Chevie Kehoe, Kirby’s 24-year-old son, and a known white supremacist.

“He’s been connected to crimes ranging in extortion, burglary, gun trafficking, trafficking in other crimes,” Holt said. “It’s a long list.”

On Feb. 15, 1997, while law enforcement tried to locate Chevie Kehoe, he and his brother, Cheyne, were involved in a shootout with state troopers in Ohio. Cheyne stole his brother’s pickup truck and showed up in Washington state five months later and turned himself into officers — and began confessing.

“The most interesting and important thing Cheyne told law enforcement is that Chevie told him that Chevie was involved in the murder of the Muellers with another unnamed male,” Browning said.

The pickup truck was painted white — but had previously been painted blue. Analysis showed Chevie Kehoe’s truck paint as a match to the paint found on the duct tape on the Mueller family.

In March 1998, Gloria Kehoe, Chevie’s mother, came forward to law enforcement and admitted her son had confessed to her the details of the Mueller family slaying. She revealed the executions had been planned for a year — and dated back to the robbery of the Mueller family in February 1995.

Bill Mueller confronted Kirby Kehoe after, suspecting he was involved.

“Gloria says that during this confrontation, Bill was extremely disrespectful to Kirby,” Browning said. “Chevie thought that that disrespect caused the green light to go rob and kill the Muellers.”

“It wasn’t just because Bill Mueller offended him and offended his father, it’s because he discovered that Bill Mueller was in possession of a lot of expensive firearms and gear and ammunition,” Holt added.

Gloria Kehoe named the second man involved in the murders as Daniel Lewis Lee. Lee and Chevie Kehoe knew each other through white supremacy groups, and both planned to try and establish a whites-only nation.

“Chevie and Danny Lee had plotted to rob the Muellers, to kill them, to cover up their tracks and avoid implicating themselves, or Kirby, in the crime,” Casey said.

Gloria Kehoe told law enforcement on Jan. 11, 1996, the Mueller family left for a gun show. She claimed Kehoe and Lee dressed up as law enforcement, entered the Mueller home, and tied and bound them up when they returned.

“Danny was reluctant and essentially refused to kill Sarah. So Chevie did it,” William Long, former FBI agent, said on A Plan To Kill.

In March 1999, Daniel Lewis Lee and Chevie Kehoe went on trial for the triple murder. Cheyne and Gloria Kehoe testified against them. Both were found guilty, and a jury sentenced Chevie Kehoe to life in prison. The jury sentenced Daniel Lewis Lee to death, and he was executed on July 14, 2020.

Watch all-new episodes of A Plan To Kill on Sundays at 7/6c on Oxygen.