The man accused of driving a pickup truck full of Molotov cocktails and other deadly weapons to the nation’s capital lives in a brick farmhouse in upstate Alabama.
Lonnie Coffman had no criminal record. No apparent social media accounts. And no city official or police officer in the area had contacted him.
“I don’t know him, I never heard of him and I never heard of anyone who knew him,” said Ken Winkles, mayor of the city of Falkville, with 1,300 residents, where Coffman’s correspondence is delivered.
More than 50 people were arrested on federal charges in the days after a crowd of pro-Trump supporters broke into the Capitol on January 6.
Coffman’s face was not among those who went viral, and it is not even clear whether he broke into the building. But he stands out for the large number of weapons he brought to Washington.
The 70-year-old man from Alabama with no known criminal history or extremist connections represents the worst nightmare for the police, experts say – an apparently lone wolf who operated completely under the radar.
“These are the people who keep the police awake at night,” said Clint Van Zandt, a former FBI criminal profiler and analyst at NBC News. “I used to go to bed thinking, ‘Did I do everything I could? Did I look for that? Did I look for that? ‘But what do you look for in a guy like that? “
The rise of right-wing groups like the Proud Boys and Three Percenters became a focus of federal officials in the era of President Donald Trump. The existence of people like Coffman, lonely types who accumulate large collections of weapons and who may be motivated to act on calls to overthrow the government, poses an even greater challenge to law enforcement.
“When you don’t tell anyone what you’re doing and do it yourself in a complete void, the only way to find him is, how this guy was found, we’re very lucky and we run into you,” said Van Zandt, who was among a team of researchers who worked to identify “Unabomber”, Ted Kaczynski.
Police officers found Coffman’s truck after authorities received reports of possible explosive devices in the vicinity of the National Republican Club and the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee.
While sweeping the area with police canines, two Capitol officers spotted what appeared to be a gun handle in the right front passenger seat of a red GMC Sierra pickup, federal prosecutors said.
The vehicle was parked in downtown Washington, just a few blocks from the Capitol.
The officers searched the truck and found it was equipped for war. Among the weapons found inside and on the truck’s body were: three rifles, including an assault rifle; hundreds of rounds of ammunition; several machetes; smoke camouflage devices; a stun gun; a crossbow with screws; and 11 molotov cocktails in the form of preserved jars with gasoline inside and a hole in the top.
Officers quickly determined by searching the vehicle’s record that the truck was registered to Lonnie L. Coffman of Falkville, Alabama, prosecutors said.
Images from surveillance cameras retrieved later in the day showed Coffman parking the vehicle around 9:15 am. Prosecutors said he left five minutes later and headed straight for the Capitol with a crowd of people. A Trump rally was set to start nearby at 11 am
When Coffman returned to the vehicle at around 6:30 pm, he was stopped by police who controlled the security cordon and was found in possession of two pistols, according to federal prosecutors.
Asked about the contents of the jars, Coffman told police officers that they contained “melted styrofoam and gasoline”, according to a detention memo from the Department of Justice. The products created an explosive mixture that has the effect of napalm, because it packs the flammable liquid to better adhere to the objects it reaches when detonating, says the memo.
Jim Cavanaugh, a former special agent for the Office of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said the homemade devices were designed to act like miniature hand grenades.
“It’s not really going to bring down a building,” said Cavanaugh, who is an analyst with NBC News. “It is more like a weapon that, if someone were at a demonstration, they would throw it at the police. And whatever hits, because of the Styrofoam, keeps burning. “
“If he had all the work to manufacture and transport them, he probably intended to use them,” added Cavanaugh.
Cavanaugh, who led the ATF field divisions in Birmingham, Alabama, and Nashville, Tennessee, said it was no surprise to him that someone from the hills of Alabama was found with such an arsenal. He said the region is full of people who do not trust the government and have an affinity for weapons.
“This guy is not unusual for me,” said Cavanaugh. “What is unusual is the target: the Capitol. We would see people making bombs all the time, but they wanted to kill their boyfriend or the person who cheated on them or occasionally wanted to attack an important figure. “
Coffman lived along a country road in the shadow of Lacon Mountain. The heavily forested area is a no-man’s-land between Falkville and Cullman, the home of 16,000 people in Cullman County.
Winkles, the mayor of Falkville, said people in his city were not surprised to learn that someone from that area was arrested in Washington with a large stockpile of weapons.
“There are a lot of problems in these mountains south of us,” said Winkles. “There are drugs. There are all kinds of things out there. These people just do what they want, or at least think they can. “
Coffman and his then wife bought the 1,000 square foot home on 3 acres for $ 20,150 in April 2010, records show. The house is at the top of a long driveway with a “no trespassing” sign beside it and some logs in place, preventing any vehicle from reaching the house.
A federal agent was photographed talking to a woman outside the house on Thursday.
During his time there, records show that Coffman qualified for three tax breaks: a homestead exemption, a handicap exemption, and one for the elderly.
Public records offer a narrow view of Coffman’s life.
He married his wife in March 1971 and eight years later he started working for Nicholson File Co., a manufacturer of machine-made files, circular saw blades, accessories for power tools and hand saws.
He filed for labor damages in 2002, claiming that he had carpal tunnel syndrome in both hands that required surgery. He also had a hernia after struggling on consecutive days in July 2002.
Court papers say the wound occurred when he was trying to “remove a piece of data that was stuck in a fixture” and was aggravated the next day “by lifting a file hook weighing approximately 60 pounds”.
At the time of the accident, Coffman earned an average weekly salary of $ 629.05. He ended up receiving a one-time $ 20,000 settlement – which, after lawyers’ fees, split into a $ 14.01 weekly benefit for the rest of his life.
The only other Coffman lawsuit that NBC News could find in Morgan or Cullman counties was his divorce, which ended in September 2019.
Mike Swafford, the public information officer at the Morgan County Sheriff’s Office, said his department has no records of any contact with Coffman.
“We answered 80,000 calls last year in a county that has about 100,000 inhabitants,” he said. “For someone to have no interaction with us – neither a dispute with a neighbor, nor a traffic stop – it is unusual.”
Chad Whaley, director of communications for the Cullman County Sheriff’s Office, said he also did not negotiate with Coffman.
“It is very common here for people to have many weapons, arms stores,” he said. “And we’re not going to think about most people, unless you combine that with strange behavior. This guy may never have been heard or seen, but he was just another member of the community and mixed up. “
The only publicly available indication that something may be wrong in Coffman’s life was an inventory document showing that he gave his ex-wife and sister a power of attorney in June 2020, according to documents obtained by NBC News.
It is unclear what motivated the decision, but a court hearing last week offered a potential clue.
Coffman’s lawyer told a judge that he is taking several mental illness medications, according to Reuters.
Neither his ex-wife nor his sister responded to messages left in the numbers listed. His lawyer did not respond to requests for comment.
Coffman’s statements to the police after his arrest and some writings found inside his truck indicate that he was in financial difficulty and fixated on right-wing opinions.
After being stopped by the police, Coffman told police that he was living with his truck in the Washington, DC area, around last week, according to his arrest memo.
In addition to the weapons, the police found a handwritten note with a quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln. “We, the people, are the legitimate lords of Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who perverted the Constitution,” he said.
The note went on to identify Democratic MP Andre Carson of Indiana as “one of the two Muslims in the House of Representatives” and to declare sgtreport.com, which recently posted an interview with someone saying the military is about to carry a “purge” communist “, as” good guys “.
Another set of handwritten messages was found on the back of a magazine. In an ad for Motel 6, there were scribbles of alleged phone numbers for “Conservative Talk Show Host Mark Levin”, “Shaun Hannity” and “Senator Ted Cruz”.
Coffman was indicted on 17 different gun charges. The Alabama man pleaded not guilty and was detained without bail.
Van Zandt, the retired FBI analyst, said it was essential for the police to understand what Coffman planned to do with all of his weapons and what was motivating him in order to identify others like him.
He pointed out that the expulsion of people with radical views from popular social platforms, which has increased in recent weeks, deprives researchers of a crucial tool for tracking people who can move along the continuum from ideation to action.
“We know that there will be guys out there who will not be happy for the next four years with the Biden government,” said Van Zandt. “The authorities really have a lot of work to identify Ted Kaczynski-type individuals who are sitting there planning to make a difference in the world.”