‘This ordeal is over’

And then there were none.

The last remaining occupier, David Fry, finally walked out of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters just before 11 a.m. Thursday and was arrested by FBI agents.

The three other remaining occupiers, Sean and Sandy Anderson and Jeff Banta, already had surrendered about 9:45 a.m. and were met by the Rev. Franklin Graham III, one of Billy Graham’s sons and the president and CEO of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, and Nevada assemblywoman and occupation sympathizer Michele Fiore.

“I’m walking toward (law enforcement) right now,” Fry, who had threatened suicide less than a half-hour earlier, could be heard saying on a YouTube channel broadcasting the end of what started on Jan. 2.

For more than an hour, Fry screamed and yelled at FBI negotiators and bantered back and forth as tens of thousands listened on the YouTube channel of Gavin Seim, a Washington state man who describes himself on his website as a “public speaker, activist and abolitionist.”

Seim also had KrisAnne Hall — a constitutional attorney, radio show host and tea party activist from Florida — on the line, as well as Fiore and Graham, intermittently.

There were references to the Constitution and government overreach and Fry saying he would die for his cause just as Christ had died for his.

It was a strange end to a stranger-than-fiction story that captivated, and also outraged, many across the nation during the 41-day takeover that saw one occupier killed and 16 arrested.

“So relieved this ordeal is over,” Gov. Kate Brown tweeted. “Many thanks to law enforcement who brought the Harney County occupation to a close. Now, let’s focus efforts on helping this community recover, including the Burns Paiute Tribe.”

The FBI released a statement saying that 27-year-old Fry, of Blanchester, Ohio; Sean Anderson, 47, and Sandy Anderson, 48, of Riggins, Idaho; and Banta, 46, of Yerington, Nev., will face arraignment before a U.S. magistrate judge in Portland on Friday.

All four were indicted by a federal grand jury on Feb. 3, along with 12 others who were arrested previously.

The others are Dylan Anderson, 34, of Provo, Utah; Ammon Bundy, 40, of Emmett, Idaho; Ryan Bundy, 43, of Bunkerville, Nev.; Brian Cavalier, 44, of Bunkerville, Nev.; Shawna Cox, 59, of Kanab, Utah; Duane Ehmer, 45, of Irrigon; Kenneth Medenbach, 62, of Crescent; Joseph O’Shaughnessy, 45, of Cottonwood, Ariz.; Jason Patrick, 43, of Bonaire, Ga; Ryan Payne, 32, of Anaconda, Mont.; Jon Ritzheimer, 32, of Peoria, Ariz.; and Peter Santilli, 50, of Cincinnati.

All 16 face federal felony charges of conspiracy to impede officers of the United States from discharging their official duties through the use of force, intimidation or threats.

The Associated Press reported Thursday that federal prosecutors said nine more people from six states have been charged in connection with the Malheur occupation, bringing the total to 25.

Also, the father of Ammon and Ryan Bundy, Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, was arrested Wednesday night by FBI agents after he arrived at Portland International Airport, apparently en route to the refuge. Charges of conspiracy, assault on a federal officer, obstruction, weapon and other crimes stem from his role at the center of an April 2014 armed standoff with federal officials near his ranch in Nevada.

A criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas also charges Cliven Bundy, 69, with extortion and aiding and abetting.

Ammon Bundy, who is represented by Eugene attorney Mike Arnold, led the occupation, which began as a protest against the return to prison of two Harney County ranchers: Dwight Hammond, 74, and his son, Steve Hammond, 46, on federal arson charges. But the protest grew into a larger one about ranchers’ rights and the decades-long fight over the federal government’s ownership of vast tracts of Western land.

The occupation also began to attract more anti-government insurgents such as Fry, a skinny, bespectacled and troubled young man who online had befriended occupation spokesman Robert “LaVoy” Finicum, the only group member to die during the takeover.

Ammon and Ryan Bundy were arrested on Jan. 26, along with several others, about 20 miles north of Burns as they were making their way to John Day for a community meeting to explain more about the occupation.

Finicum, an Arizona rancher with 11 children, was shot and killed the day before his 55th birthday by Oregon State Police troopers during that traffic stop. The FBI, which provided a 26-minute aerial video of the traffic stop and Finicum’s shooting, said he was going for a gun after he fled from the initial stop and his truck slid into a snowbank in front of a police roadblock.

The arrest of the Bundys and the death of Finicum resulted in most of the remaining occupiers leaving the refuge — until just the final four remained. Despite calls from Ammon Bundy himself for them to leave, that “the fight is now in the courts,” Fry, Banta and the Andersons hunkered down for more than two weeks.

They filed reports on Fry’s YouTube channel, DefendYourBase, making anti-government statements and saying they’d rather be killed then give up.

The FBI and Oregon State Police blocked off all access to the refuge, but initially did not force their removal. However, their patience grew thin by Wednesday when one of the four who remained was spotted about 4:30 p.m. driving an all-terrain vehicle outside a barricade established by the occupiers. Agents attempted to approach the driver, but he sped away and returned to the camp, the FBI said.

Agents then moved in, placing themselves at barricades ahead of and behind the area where the occupiers were camping.

Much of what happened afterward Wednesday was broadcast by Seim on YouTube. Conversations between him and the remaining four, as well as their phone conversations with Fiore as she and others began driving with Arnold from Portland to a Bend hotel room in the middle of the night, conveyed the mood.

Fry could be heard screaming in the background while Fiore tried to calm the four as the FBI called for them to walk out and surrender.

“They are going to kill us,” Sandy Anderson told Fiore.

“No, they’re not,” Fiore said.

By 9:30 p.m. Wednesday, Fiore had persuaded the Andersons to surrender Thursday morning if she could be there with Franklin Graham, who apparently had been in the area for about a week, trying to defuse the situation.

At that point it was uncertain what Banta and Fry would do.

With Seim back broadcasting on YouTube on Thursday morning, talking about how “it would be nice if patriots didn’t have to go through this for liberty” and piping in the phone comments from Graham — “Y’all just do everything they told you to do and everything’s going to turn out good” — the Andersons and Banta came out rather easily.

But Fry drove the tension sky-high when, after first walking out with Banta, he retreated, apparently to one of the buildings at the refuge headquarters, where he then said he was in bed “enjoying my blanket right now.”

Fry alternated between asking for a pizza and complaining that the FBI wouldn’t deliver him any marijuana during the past two weeks to saying he was suddenly feeling suicidal and “actually pointing a gun at my head.”

Twenty minutes before he finally came out, Fry could be heard telling an FBI negotiator that, “Until you guys address my grievances, you’re going to have to kill me or watch me kill myself.”

It did not look good.

But then Fry said: “If everybody says ‘Hallelujah!’ I’ll come out.”

And as he emerged, shouts from exasperated law enforcement officers saying just that could be heard in the background.

“We got to walk with them and hug them and pray with them,” Fiore said by cellphone Thursday afternoon as she and Arnold and others were traveling from Burns back to Portland. There, she planned to fly back to Nevada on Friday after meeting with Ammon Bundy.

Described in a Washington Post profile that ran Thursday as “the gun-toting, calendar-posing politician who negotiated the Oregon occupiers’ surrender,” Fiore, a staunch Republican, said her goal now was to help Arnold and other attorneys free the Bundys and the others.

“You’re talking about civil disobedience, you’re talking about free speech and a lot of First Amendment rights that people should not be in prison for,” she said, the cellphone reception going in and out.

“We have an incarceration problem. The penalties are not fitting the crimes.

“Do I think they should be incarcerated? Absolutely not,” she said of the 16 occupiers who are now behind bars. “They have jobs, they have families, they have lives.”