Word: martinez
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Koernke did manage to attract a few friends. One of these was Ramon Martinez, then an upperclassman and now with the U.S. Customs Service in Washington. "The majority opinion was that he was nuts to have around," Martinez says now. "But I saw it differently. I saw a guy with his own way of doing things." Martinez enjoyed Koernke's intellect, his ability to talk at length about history or classical music. He also discerned character and bravery. Once, when the two witnessed what they feared would become a brutal hazing, Martinez watched Koernke prepare to wade in on behalf...
...Martinez was not blind to Koernke's faults. He confirms that Koernke made casual racist remarks and was enthusiastic in extolling the economy and technology of Hitler's Third Reich. Koernke, says Martinez, was a literal interpreter of the Bible's Book of Revelation, with a literal expectation of Armageddon. Occasionally, as Koernke went on and on about some grim fantasy, Martinez feared he "might have some sort of chemical imbalance." But the two stayed friends. Martinez was Koernke's best man when he married Nancy Wise, a home-economics student he had met while peddling chocolate-chip cookies...
...next year or so, by Martinez's account, his friend toiled as a bookbinder, a security guard and a janitor, sometimes working two or three jobs at once. Yet he found time to help Martinez around his home. And in December 1977, Martinez says, he was godfather to Koernke's newborn daughter...
...Ramon Martinez too was becoming more concerned about his friend. Watching Koernke buy uniforms and accessories at gun shows, he says, sometimes made him think Koernke was "outfitting his own squad." Once, he says, Koernke asked him if he would like to take part in some military drills -- with live ammunition. Another time, Martinez dropped by the house to find Koernke with a couple of teenagers. "He was talking tactics to them, fixing them up with gear, like they were soldiers. But they weren't soldiers. I didn't really want to know any of them...
Their dialogue had deteriorated. "There had always been these little hiccups," says Martinez. "I'd get irritated and he'd back off or laugh it off, but more and more, he was consumed with this stuff. He continued to talk about [a nuclear] Armageddon. In fact, he got target-locked on it. He was becoming obsessed with post-[nuclear]-holocaust government intrusion. And then you take the quantum leap from [nuclear war] and Soviet invasion to [present-day] government involvement, left-wing infiltration into the government...