Daniel James Murray, Man Sought For Threatening Obama, Arrested

SALT LAKE CITY — Authorities have arrested a man who allegedly told bank tellers while cleaning out his savings account in Utah that he was on a mission to kill President Barack Obama.

The Secret Service said Daniel James Murray, 36, was arrested Friday outside a casino in Laughlin, Nev., a gambling town 100 miles from Las Vegas on the Nevada-Arizona line.

He was charged Thursday in Salt Lake City with a federal count of conveying threats while talking to tellers last month at Zions First National Bank in St. George, Utah.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Barbara Bearnson said Murray was in federal custody in Nevada and likely will get a court date there Monday. Neither Bearnson nor the Secret Service would discuss whether Murray was considered to be a serious threat.

Charging documents say Murray, originally from Rexford, N.Y., is the registered owner of eight guns.

He was described by his father and former neighbors in Rexford as troubled but not dangerous, known for strolling down a street wearing a cape while talking to himself.

"He's sick. He's been sick for about 10 years," Michael Murray, his father, told the Times Union of Albany, N.Y.

In charging documents filed Thursday, the Secret Service said Daniel Murray made bizarre statements while opening _ and then closing within two weeks _ an $85,000 savings account.

First, he demanded to know if Zions First National Bank was solvent, saying, "I'm sure if citizens happen to lose their money, they will rise up and we could see killing and deaths," bank tellers told a Secret Service agent.

On May 27, as a teller counted out bills no larger than $50, Murray delivered a rambling discourse on the probability of economic and social disorder, ending with "We are on a mission to kill the president of the United States," a bank employee told the Secret Service.

The next day, Murray withdrew the remaining $72,000 and closed his account.

In Washington, Secret Service spokesman Malcolm Wiley said Murray offered no resistance when he was arrested at 7 p.m. Friday on a warrant in the parking lot of the Riverside Hotel and Casino in Laughlin, Nev. Wiley wouldn't offer any further details. It wasn't clear if Murray had a lawyer.

___

Associated Press writer Kathleen Hennessey in Las Vegas contributed to this report.

Comments

[rf dude]

Ate too much paste in 2nd grade...
--

[BlueStateMensch]

We can ALL thank the NRA for the laxity of the g.u.n laws & the loose requirements regarding background checks for the fact that this guy was able to REGISTER EIGHT firearms.

NO laws were broken.... because there is no TEETH in any of the laws that this "Lobby of Lunatics" holds sway over.

Also...

A few years back... Morris Dees & the Southern Poverty Law Center sued the White Aryan Resistance for inciting violence that resulted in the death of a African American man.

They WON.. ostensibly putting "W.A.R." out of business. If anything EVER happens to the President (or any of the OTHERS that are the focus of the hate-speech vomited out of the mouths of Limmbaugh, Hannnity, Blech, Savage.. or any other media demagogue... they CAN be held accountable for their hateful rhetoric... & they can be SILENCED because of it.

[digdeeper]

wanna bet?
Don't get me wrong, I'm on your side.

[Miles Harris]

I used to work with a guy who also to talked to himself and he also owned many guns. I knew a lot about his crazy past and how his family really seemed to screw up his life. I was surprised that he came out pretty normal from what I heard he grew up in. I also used to shoot guns with this person. I found out this past year that this guy had taken his one of his guns and put a bullet into the back of his friends head. After he shot him, he then proceeded to the another bedroom and shot that guys girlfriend. He then calmly went into the kitchen and called 911. The point of this true story is that you really dont know someone is capable of doing. Looking back, all the warning signs become really obvious.

[Betrayed]

IF it's true, it's an exception.
In any case, it does NOT sound like you lost much sleep over it.

Liberal Plant.

[basenji]

This explains the timing and motivation. Need I say more?

"She said there were religious items on the property, including a cross in the back yard that glowed in the dark, and that a car parked there had a personalized license plate that said Chosen 1. "

http://www.sltrib.com/news/ci_12530784

[Betrayed]

You are strikingly simple.

[JPFranklin]

Please elaborate.

[Mollabaji]

And, you guys call Muslims "fanatic"?

[Privatepractice]

He is exactly the type that can be programmed to do horrific things then the mental health issue would be used as a defense. What the authorities need to investigate is who sent him the check for the $85K to do the job! That should be interesting!

[clsmithj]

FISSION MAILED

[ZimboChick]

lol dditto.lso.

[timewaster2dcore]

Genius!! It takes suineg to make sense of it too.

[Norge]

Doubtful that he would harm any. He would not advertise it if he was a serious threat. Probably delusional and suffering from one or other psy. chemical imbalance of the brain.
Probably most afraid of losing his savings in these troubled economic times and is the reason he withdrew all of it and was just giving the teller a reason and excuse for withdrawing all of his money.

8 guns. Well, for Americans that is as American as apple pie.

[Betrayed]

Well said, Norge.
Couldn't agree more.

[psbintl]

Wrong!

His behavior is indicative of paranoid schizophrenia! Untreated people with this disorder can be very dangerous!

[Betrayed]

Are you a mental health professional, psbintl?

[Norge]

psbintl,

You need to read a bit more http://www.bcss.org before you post such terms.

Norge

[Rangerguy2000]

a sick man had freakin 72 grand in his account .... gosh!!! where did he get all that money?

[FormerReaganite]

Goll-ly! Are the kooks coming out of the wood work or what?

[Cat-Lover]

I will never understand anyone's wanting to kill an elected official. In a democracy, we can vote them in and we can vote them out and, "this too shall pass...."

[Eriq]

I'm struck by how many crazy people live in the Mormon/right-wing states.

[quadman]

This guy was from New York...

[fishingriver]

"He's been sick for ten years" said his father. He is 36 now, that would mean he was 26 when his father noticed he was ill. Sounds like an unattended schizophrenic. He could be very dangerous. I look for more details of his mental illness to surface.

[Betrayed]

Yes, let's round up the mentally ill.

Grab your brother, sister, or neighbor.

Everyone climb on board!

[JPFranklin]

The man roamed the streets wearing a cape talking to himself and no one bothered to get him help, that's messed up. The mentally ill don't need "rounded up", but they do need help. To ignore them is absolute negligence.

[LRae]

Betrayed,

Be Better.

Let's NOT arm the mentally ill with anything more lethal than a cape.

Yes we can!

You KNOW we should.

Later,

LRae

[talkitreal]

I cann B.S -- this is the family trying to get him off with an insanity defense. This man is evil, and had he gone undetected, he could have harmed President Obama, or Michelle, or even one of the children. We must never forget that in the past U.S Presidents have been killed by hateful, evil himan beings.

[TjayeInLA]

I want to know how this loony tune managed to have $72K in the bank and I'm sane and don't.

The injustice.

[lobear00]

Maybe the RNC is funneling money, that is what their good at.

[mikala]

Amen to that!

[lordjin]

hilarious. That's exactly what i was thinking. And that's 82k total that neither you nor I, neither of us walking down the street wearing a cape talking to ourselves (I know i don't, i'm assuming you don't either), have in our bank accounts...

[jrmarsh]

Where can get my cape?

[Jeb Blount]

More reason Huffington Post's decision to remove Max Blumenthal's israel videos from the site is wrong. There is a lot of hatred against Obama from a narrow range of groups. We're not talking about political differences, but true deep hatred, racism of the purest sence, that could easily spring to violence. The racism of many young Israelis -- full of the n word, talk about watermelon etc. -- is just as important as the racism of Arab bigots. Put the video back up. Cheers, Jeb

[jesseandrews]

keep dreaming, I remember in the 70s they said that the GOP was dead and in the 90s and early 2000s they said the same about the dems. It is politics and will cycle again.

[unhhockey]

Someone said that about the Whigs as well.

[HyperInfluential]

Yep. That final meeting must have been so sad, poor guys. They must've been like, let's do this again next year...and then nobody ever got around to setting a date, and well...they all got too old to travel anyway...and that was that.

[hjfraser2002]

30 year swing., but the extremism gets less every time.

[unhhockey]

Oddly though in the last 30 years it got more extreme for the goopers. Maybe that's why they're in exile.

[jesseandrews]

Lucky for us that the far rightwing loons and far leftwing loons are the minority of both parties.

[Eriq]

Actually, you're absolutely wrong. Extremism is growing around the world, and here in the U.S., too. Forty years ago... just take a look at the conservatives. The general tenor of the world and of our society was certainly different, but the right wing wasn't half as moralistic and oppressive as it now is. And go back to the 1930s, when the left in this country was considered something rather interesting to consider,

No, the truth is, extremism is much worse from the right now.

[Betrayed]

I don't care much for these times, but they will change.
The ebb and the flow.

[HyperInfluential]

This time we have YouTube. Game over, man. Y'all done macaca'ed yourselves right into the history books.

[JPFranklin]

Hooray for the intertubes!!