Blending his personal brand of Mormon theology with an absolute refusal to pay taxes or "do business" with the billions of other people on this planet, Cooper has sent judges, cops, ex-governors, bureaucrats, his church and his wife and kids scurrying for cover.
Cooper's not the only antigovernment protester in Arizona, but he may be the most dogged and influential courthouse pest.
Unlike the usual grim-faced rebels who circle the wagons when revenooers approach and either picket or get dragged off to jail, Cooper has used honey, not vinegar, to win friends and influence people.
Ignited by tax bills he says he won't pay and fueled by an obsession over a divorce he won't accept, he peddles his paper rebellion to various clusters of disgruntled Arizonans. He wins praise from "patriots" who pray for a "Christian nation" and gets respect for his tactics against Big Brother.
And now that Virgil Cooper's a virus, he just keeps spreading.
It's odd. He's a well-spoken, mild- mannered, middle-aged farm boy from Phoenix who laces his conversation with self-effacing grins and chuckles.
Virgil Cooper is memorable because his ideas clash with his personality. He's a jalapeno pepper in a bowl of oatmeal.
His demeanor brings to mind Howard Sprague, the town clerk of Mayberry. But one government official calls him the Heinrich Himmler of Arizona's far-right fringe.
Crowds of people have listened to Cooper. He has a measure of fame in some circles. Most people, however, don't know or don't want to know the origin and depth of his frustration, envy and racial views. Those are topics Virgil Cooper usually doesn't talk about.
Cooper would rather talk about the Constitution. He insists he's his own man, fighting government to claim his Anglo-Saxon heritage as a "sovereign state citizen" and "natural individual."
A tireless researcher, he pours his knowledge into liens, judgments, orders and other documents that he and other "patriots" have filed from a court that doesn't exist to "alien jurisdictions" like Superior Court, the IRS, the INS, the DOR, the MVD and every other alphabet agency.
Although he tries to sentence judges to jail and floods the government with paperwork, Virgil Cooper's goal is to make the government forget him.
He says he likes it when people call him a "nonentity." "Yes, that's right," he told one bureaucrat last August. "What I want is when the state puts my name in the computer, I want the screen to come up blank."
At age 47, he's drifting farther and farther from his previous life. He's lost his relationships with his wife and their seven children. He hasn't even seen his first grandchild, who's nearly a year old and lives in Mesa. A Mormon high priest, he has sunk into deep trouble with his church.
Increasingly isolated, Virgil Cooper says he really can't understand why people would call him a misfit.
In fact, he denies he's a rebel. "Years ago, back in the days when I was a mainstream Republican, I had friends of mine who would come to me and discuss the John Birch Society," he recalls. "I thought they were radical wackos. I never joined. I never got involved with them. They seemed like extremists to me. Heh-heh-heh-heh."
If there were a machine that could measure political extremism, Virgil Cooper would make it sizzle and smoke.
MENTION VIRGIL COOPER to certain lawyers and bureaucrats around Phoenix, and you hear groans. "Even as we speak," says Assistant Attorney General Michael Prost, who has prosecuted a civil case against Cooper, "he's probably suing me for a thousand grains of silver."
Cooper and his allies, acting out of what they call an "Article III Justice Court"--a court that exists only in their minds--have issued liens, fines and jail sentences.
The targets of these "court orders" have included a host of judges from Superior Court and Municipal Court, various lawyers, Phoenix police chief Ruben Ortega and several police officers. He demands payment of "fines" in silver because the green stuff the rest of us use isn't really money.
Virgil knows documents.
After huddling with deadbeat dads or selected legislators like Senators Wayne Stump and Jerry Gillespie, he buries his head in volumes of administrative law, trying to dig up ways they all can fight the "system" more effectively. He cracks law books that no one else ever reads. Then he emerges from libraries to file documents and share new techniques with his friends.
Cooper sends copies of his detailed pleadings to congressmen, jailed antigovernment rebels, his ex-wife and the Attorney General of the United States. While denying that any government agency has jurisdiction over him, he waits at agency counters for the chance to have "nice visits" with government workers, politely ask for hearings and get his documents time-stamped.
Cooper was little-known to anyone when he first started to file his documents in 1987. But Maricopa County workers recorded his official- looking documents as "liens" or "civil judgments," and that attracted attention. Judges and other targets of Cooper's "orders" started howling that their credit rating or ability to sell property might be jeopardized if title companies stumbled onto the "liens" while doing routine checks of records in the County's Recorder's Office. Pretty soon, Cooper's subsequent filings were stamped "miscellaneous records," making it unlikely that these fake papers could cause legal trouble for their victims.
But the confusion is understandable. Cooper's voluminous filings look official. He's not a lawyer--in fact, he loathes lawyers--but he knows how to crank out the legalese and Latin. Lots of Latin. Ad nauseam.
He has his own seal, a modified version of the State of Arizona's with his year of birth and the words "VIRGIL KESTERSON COOPER, SOVEREIGN SUI JURIS." He affixes his signature and a thumbprint to the seal to the hundreds of documents he's filed. He leaves the same indelible impression on many of the people he meets.
Government agencies know who he is; he claims to have filed no tax returns of any kind since 1982. But he thinks that people who owe taxes and don't pay them should be prosecuted. On the other hand, the taxman has no jurisdiction over him, because he has chosen to assert his "sovereignty."
"I'm asking for a special rule," says Cooper. "I'm not a taxpayer, I'm not a resident, you don't have jurisdiction. Heh-heh-heh-heh."
He's asking for the same "liberty" from his church. Cooper has preached to Mormon brethren about "fleeing Babylon," which is the corporate, commercial world as we know it. A couple of weeks ago, he says, a stake president (one of his higher-ups) called him "apostate," which is just about the harshest word used to describe someone who has fallen from the faith.
He admits he's in hot water with the church, which he says has instructed him to pay his taxes, pay his child support and accept his divorce.
His eldest daughter thinks Dad should be excommunicated and jailed for violating the law. But Virgil Cooper talks about suing his church. He says he's stunned that, "because of my political activities, they're labeling me `unclean.'" WHAT IS VIRGIL COOPER up to? This is the way he sees it:
The Founding Fathers, directly inspired by God, set up a republic in which "we-the-people" replaced King George III as the rulers of the country. Then, the Fourteenth Amendment came along in 1868 and turned everything upside down. While most people see the Fourteenth Amendment as making citizens of former slaves and giving them full rights, Virgil Cooper sees something far more sinister at work: this "equal protection" made us all creatures of the state.
The Fourteenth Amendment was the excuse government needed to put we-the-people under its thumb. The Roman civil law that King George III had transformed into "admiralty jurisdiction" over Colonial America was transformed by bad guys to give the federal government unbridled power over the states and, in effect, directly over we-the-people. Under the Constitution, the "United States" was supposed to be only the District of Columbia and a few possessions. The Fourteenth Amendment, however, made all citizens federal subjects.
In the 1930s, "Luciferian genius" Felix Frankfurter helped sanctify this federal power, first as an author of New Deal legislation and then as a U.S. Supreme Court justice. The Social Security Act of 1935 was a major blow to liberty. Then, in the early Forties, around the time Virgil Cooper was born, the payroll-withholding tax was begun and the taxman really gotcha.
And that's how our present "national socialism" form of government came into being. As Cooper explains it: "Nationalism was that you can own something, but it will be strictly regulated. The `socialism' is the state. Everybody is subservient to the state. The concerns of the state are more important than the individual. That's socialism. And we've merged those together, so we have national socialism. Heh-heh-heh-heh."
It has come to this in 1990: As long as an American holds any "contract" with the state--this means a marriage license, driver's license, business license, auto tags, social security number, citizenship papers and a host of other connections--that person is under the government's thumb. That is called an "artificial person."
But you can assert your "sovereign state citizenship" by volunteering out of all contracts with the government. Virgil preaches if you qualify as a "pre-Fourteenth Amendment" American, you can reclaim your liberty. If you're still "in commerce," you're regulated by the government and are ruled by a power-hungry, tyrannical court system that has "no judicial power." If you're a sovereign state citizen, you can operate out of an "Article III Justice Court" under the English common law cherished by our Founding Fathers.
Which leads to Virgil Cooper's "Ten Questions," the acid test of whether you are disengaging from government control. Cooper, while trying to rescind his driver's license, vehicle registration and proof of insurance, answered these questions asked last August by Alberto Gutier, deputy administrator of the Motor Vehicle Division of the Arizona Department of Transportation:
"Are you a citizen of the United States?"
"No, I am not."
"Are you a resident of Arizona?"
"No, I am not. I was born in Phoenix. I have lived in Maricopa County all my life, but I am not a resident. I do not reside."
"Are you registered to vote?"
"No, I am not."
"Do you have a driver's license?"
"No, I do not."
"Do you have any motor vehicles registered in Arizona?"
"No, I do not."
"Are you employed?"
"No, I am not. I am not employed. I am not unemployed. I am not self-employed. I am not gainfully employed. In fact, I am not employable. But I work. Besides, Arizona is a right-to-work state."
"Do you pay federal and state resident income taxes in Arizona?"
"No, I do not."
"Do you pay property taxes in Arizona?"
"No, I do not."
"Do you have a marriage license?"
"No, I do not."
"Do you have children enrolled in public school?"
"No, I do not. My children are home-taught."
Gutier recalls thinking to himself, "Oops. Something strange here," as he read Cooper the questions.
"I thought most kooks acted strange. Not this guy," says Gutier. "He knows his stuff. He could recite this stuff chapter and verse. He's very polite. Well-dressed. Proper. Then he starts talking."
Gutier thought he was just doing the guy a favor by quizzing him on standard screening questions for would-be residents. He didn't know that Virgil Cooper was going to use the responses to prove he was dropping out of the system. These days, Cooper distributes like candy his transcript of the questioning by Gutier, hoping to inspire others to follow his lead.
Gutier still doesn't pretend to understand the intricacies of Virgil Cooper's thinking, but he does know something about strange political figures. While Gutier was Evan Mecham's personnel director back in 1987, he was ordered to sweep the governor's offices for laser beams and wiretaps. He says he thought that was paranoid bull at the time and reminds people that he found nothing.
"When it comes to freedom--freedom from a foreign power--I'm an ultraconservative," says Gutier, who is a Cuban emigre. "But when it comes to social issues, I'm middle- of-the-road to the other side. I was in the King march. Some of my Mecham friends kind of look at me funny."
Now, he's trying to figure out how he got tangled up with the likes of Virgil Cooper. "Where do these guys come from?" Gutier wonders. "How can we be so lucky?"
THERE SEEMS TO BE a parallel universe here.
Virgil Cooper still drives a vehicle, but he insists that he's a "traveler," not a "motorist" licensed by the state. He doesn't live in your Arizona. He's a "Preamble-Article IV Section 2 State Citizen" who lives at "Section 21 T2N R3E Gila & Salt River Baseline Meridian in the County of Maricopa, Republic of Arizona." Zip code? Forget it. However, he does have a post office box.
If he were receiving a paycheck, he would be "doing commerce" with the government and that would threaten his liberty. So he acknowledges that he borrows money from relatives and lives with them. Sometimes he doesn't pay them back. Does he have a checking account? No, that would be a "Babylonian attachment." Does he pay child support? "I will not acquiesce to the police power of the state," he says, "I will not pay one penny of that child support. Not one penny!" No chuckle there.
He declares his independence from bureaucracy, but he regularly goes to meetings of the obscure Governor's Regulatory Review Council (a panel aptly pronounced "gurk"), which approves rules and regs dreamed up by state bureaucrats. His purpose? Learn to fight the government on its own turf.
While he sues cops, he refuses to even give them his name when they stop him for having no license, tags or insurance. Virgil Cooper recalls with delight the first time he got stopped by the cops and refused to tell them anything. It happened on Bell Road, and the cops finally left after failing to pry anything out of him. "As they were leaving," Cooper recalls, grinning, "one of the officers turned and said to me, `Bye, Mr. No-Name.' Heh-heh-heh-heh."
JOANN COOPER FILED for divorce in early 1987, after 26 years of marriage. It's been final for some time, but not to Virgil. Fighting the "evil" of divorce is the driving force of his life. He points out in numerous documents that their marriage was eternally sealed in 1961 in the LDS Temple in Mesa. Past the point of recognizing the authority of any civil law, he's tried to rescind his children's birth certificates and his marriage license. He even got his father to sign a paper formally "withdrawing" permission for Virgil to marry back in 1961.
"May I remind you that Mrs. Cooper (Luella JoAnn Cooper) is still my Wife even though she presently is in a state of open rebellion against her husband . . . " Virgil Cooper argued in an April 1988 filing to Superior Court, a year after she left him. "This is a Nation under God. Christ is its King. This is a Christian Nation. WE THE PEOPLE are the Christian descendants of Anglo- Saxon stock. . . . WE THE PEOPLE are the Masters and are MDRVabove the Constitution and the governments created below it. I am the husband and father. I am the head and leader of my family. It is my God-given Natural Right and Patriarchal Duty to guide my family and teach my children. . . . De facto `citizen-subjects' whose citizenship and residency is privileged under the 14th Amendment cannot raise these arguments."
He contends that JoAnn cannot do anything without his consent. And he always adds that he "forgives" her.
That is a typical Virgil Cooper document.
And this is a typical Virgil Cooper ploy: During the divorce case, he officially "fired" JoAnn's lawyer, Hyman Brazlin. That didn't work. So he slapped an "Article III" lien on him and sentenced him to jail. That didn't work either. Brazlin recalls with astonishment the blizzard of paperwork that Virgil Cooper dumped on him.
"I've been in practice for 28 years, and he stands out in my mind--and I've probably handled 5,000 cases," says Brazlin. "He created his own pleadings, his own municipality, his own country. My wife and I still talk about him!"
To Virgil Cooper, there's only one thing worse than divorce. And that's a marriage license. He says the civil marriage contract is the classic nefarious scheme by the government to hook us into the system.
But public schools are almost as bad; he calls that system a "plague of the Communist Manifesto." Sandy Cooper, who's eleven, recently won a spelling bee at Desert Shadows Elementary in the Paradise Valley School District. That seems to be proof that the Cooper kids, who are in JoAnn Cooper's custody, are not "home-taught" and actually do attend public school, whether their father wants to recognize it or not.
And speaking of recognition: Dad has tried to have lunch with Sandy, but she has refused to see him.
"VIRGIL COOPER SEEMS to me to be very sincere, articulate and certainly very intelligent," says Wayne Stump, chairman of the Arizona Senate's Government Committee. Stump, a Republican chiropractor who is famous in Arizona for voting no to government while serving in it, sympathizes with anyone who's "finding out the truth" about the Fourteenth Amendment, which he says "makes subjects out of us."
"It's frustrating to see us marching down the road to socialism," says the state senator. So he acts as a self-described "clearinghouse" for Virgil Cooper and other people who are challenging the system. "I get mail from all over the country," Stump says. "I'm in sympathy with their quest."
This is a perfect environment for Virgil Cooper's infectious personality.
Stump and Cooper both say they exchange information with each other and a gaggle of others. "Lots of people think that just because I pass on information about this stuff, that I'm somehow advocating it," Stump says. "I'm not. I'm interested." Stump and Cooper also exchange ideas and information with Dave Clark Jr., one of Arizona's most intransigent antigovernment citizens. Clark's crew, whom the media have labeled the Arizona Patriots, stages regular protest marches at the county courthouse, at which Clark's sister, Carol Keppler, hands out leaflets complaining that the United States is ruled by the "Zionist Occupation Government." She also writes stories for national right-wing newspapers about the quest for liberty by Arizona's white Christians.
Carol Keppler is one of Virgil Cooper's biggest fans, calling him "a wonderful researcher and a beautiful man."
Virgil Cooper is finding himself in some heady company these days, and there's a lot of cross-pollination going on.
He distributes copies of his documents to Clark and to Clark Keppler, Carol's son. All of them claim the existence of an "Article III Justice Court." Dave Clark Jr. and his father were doing this long before Cooper, but Virgil seems to be the only one of the Arizona bunch who mixes Mormon theology into his filings.
"Folks like Mr. Cooper and Mr. Clark are looking for the truth," says Wayne Stump. It's mutual. Making his rounds of government offices, Virgil Cooper will drop by the Senate for a chat with Stump and state Senator Jerry Gillespie, a conservative Republican from Mesa who specializes in hammering at state bureaucrats who wade into family fights and child-abuse cases.
"Senator Gillespie has called me in late evenings as he's describing some of the stuff in Child Protective Services," says Virgil Cooper. "He'll say, `In administrative law, I'm starting from ground zero. Tell me a few things.'" This networking runs both ways.
A 1987 "to whom it may concern" letter by Stump, on Senate stationery, pops up in papers filed by Virgil Cooper. The letter outlines the general argument against the Fourteenth Amendment and gives a blessing to those "preamble citizens" who claim they aren't under anybody's jurisdiction.
But even Wayne Stump, not exactly known for his moderate views, says he has to draw the line in some areas. "I'm not sure we should check out of the system," says Stump, who's part of the system. And that stuff about "all men" being created equal? He disagrees with Virgil Cooper that it means white males only. "I think `all men' means Homo sapiens," explains Stump.
Stump, however, praises Virgil Cooper as "very levelheaded and not reactionary," adding, "Cooper is as far advanced as anyone I've seen."
"ALL THIS BALLYHOO about whether this is a Christian nation is irrelevant," says Virgil Cooper. "It's inherent. It's not arguable. It's a common-law Christian Constitutional republic. The Anglo-Saxon is we-the-people."
Cooper is reluctant to talk about his views on race. "You're talking about an area that's kind of touchy," he says. "I think people who are quick to use terms like `racist' have inferiority complexes."
The truth of the matter, the way he sees it, is that America is supposed to be a republic. "It was never dreamed that this country would degenerate into a democracy--all this stuff about a `pluralistic society,' a `melting pot,'" says Cooper. "Some people see this as a purist, losing viewpoint. I don't think so."
Virgil Cooper believes he has the right to claim his sovereignty because of his heritage as a descendant of Western European white people. No one else but those people has the right to emerge from the subjugation of the Fourteenth Amendment. "It is our country. It is my country," he says. "Some people hear that and start yelling, `Anarchy!' Heh-heh-heh-heh."
Don't people like blacks and Jews have the right to chart their destiny in this country?
"Jews not, and blacks certainly not. It's not a racist philosophy. It's fundamental. It's the right to govern."
So where does this leave, say, blacks?
"They could create a state by treaty and let them go there--like Indian reservations. I've laid this out to some black people. And they see what I'm saying. They have to search out a territorial jurisdiction where they can be we-the-people. I think slavery was an evil. But I think blacks would be far better off collecting themselves together and building a civilization. Maybe they can do that with help from us."
What if you're a black or a Jew and you want to keep living in this country?
"You're a stranger."
LAST SEPTEMBER, Virgil Cooper heard that Senator Jerry Gillespie was going to address the Arizona Libertarian party's monthly meeting at the China Doll at Seventh Avenue and Osborn.
Cooper smiles frequently as he tells the story: "So I went over there, and one lady there who knows me wanted the list of questions Alberto Gutier gave me. So I sat down and wrote those ten questions out. She went over and explained it to a couple of people there, and pretty soon they came over and wanted to ask me about them. We ended up with about six people. They closed the restaurant about ten o'clock, we went out to the parking lot and went at it and I think we finished our discussion at 1:15. Heh-heh-heh-heh."
He loves to take a late-night Constitutional. "One of the guys said, `I've read the Fourteenth Amendment. It doesn't say that.' He rummaged around in his trunk and finally found a little pocket edition of the Constitution. He read it and I said, `Okay, let's go through it word for word. It sounds okay to anybody who just reads through it.' So we had a long discussion about it.
"It turned out that a couple of them were officers and they wanted me to be their next speaker. Heh-heh-heh-heh."
Virgil Cooper crinkles into a grin as he recalls the prospect of speaking at a Libertarian monthly meeting: "I decided to ignore the fact that they're atheists."
Libertarian chief Ken Van Doren, who's also running for the job of Tempe mayor, says Cooper's theories on the Constitution seemed to make a good impression on his group, who also believe the court system has subverted the constitutional rights of Americans.
"I like Virgil," says Van Doren, "and I agree with quite a bit of what he says. He's basically correct, but there are a couple of things that bother me. There seems to be a male supremacist overtone--a male white supremacist overtone. . . . This notion that white men should rule--I take exception to that and I'm a white man."
Van Doren puts Cooper in the "Freemen" category, referring to the group of people who believe they have to save the Constitution from socialism. W. Cleon Skousen, founder of the Freemen Institute (now called the National Center for Constitutional Studies) has collected a strong following of admirers, among them ex-governor Evan Mecham.
"The Freemen and Libertarians have a lot of common ground," says Van Doren. "But [the Freemen] get wrapped up in this cloak--this strong Christian thrust--to the exclusion of other races and creeds."
Van Doren adds, "On the one hand, they say they're free. But if they took over, you get the feeling they would be telling you which church to go to."
Of Virgil Cooper, Van Doren says, "I guess we as Libertarians can work with him only so far. We can accept A, B, C, and D. But when it comes to E, F, G, H . . . "
In general, he says, the reaction of the Libertarians on that October night was: "Gee, how could this guy be so right about some things and so wrong about others?"
He knows that Virgil Cooper and Dave Clark deny that they're part of an organized group, but Van Doren lumps them together and says of Cooper, "Among his group . . . , he is looked at with respect and definitely is one of their leaders. Virgil is probably one of the most articulate of that breed."
Virgil, for his part, has some contempt for Libertarians. "They're not digging into this stuff," he says. "They're just pulling their hair and wringing their hands and saying, `Oh, aren't things in terrible shape?' And nobody's doing anything about it. Heh-heh-heh-heh."
He hopes the Libertarians "clean up their act and go in and answer the Ten Questions and come through the same process I did."
Cooper adds, "I hope that in not too many more months I'll have completed that process--kind of blazed the trail."
VIRGIL COOPER'S glory days in the County Recorder's Office are probably over. When he started filing liens and civil judgments in 1987, that's how they were entered into the system--as liens and judgments.
"The records looked exactly like court orders," recalls Steve Bell, the office's operations manager. But when B. Michael Dann, presiding judge of Superior Court, saw one, he "started jumping up and down," says Bell. "Then others started checking. `Why, I've got one, too!'"
Expunging the Article III Justice Court records would not only be illegal, but impossible, too, says Bell. After all, title companies and credit bureaus purchase microfilm of recordings, since 99 percent of them revolve around the movement of land. You can't clip individual frames from rolls of film--especially if there are lots of frames to clip. And there were.
Since the Recorder's Office began stamping papers from Cooper, Clark and other rebels as "miscellaneous records," the flood of paperwork from Article III Justice Court has dwindled. Now the clerks are instructed to call the county attorney as soon as they see an Article III document. The state Attorney General's Office filed suit to try to stamp out the virus.
The suit itself is a remarkable document: It puts Evan Mecham and Frank X. Gordon Jr., the Supreme Court justice who helped oust him, on the same side.
Bell hasn't seen a Virgil document in months. But he remembers the old days.
"He strikes me as very intelligent, and he's against type," Bell says of Cooper. "I would expect somebody like that to have a fourteen-inch beard, a ponytail, carrying an M-16, chewing tobacco and just grunting in monosyllables."
No, that's not Virgil Cooper.
"Here's a man well-dressed, articulate, well-groomed," says Bell. "And . . . he's absolutely out on a limb. It's a little scary.
"He'll bend your ear all afternoon. I try to treat him like everyone else, but once I get started, I'm done for the day. So, if I'm tied up with him for four hours, I can't get anything else done. Then, he's accomplished his goal. He's out to completely bring the government to a standstill."
Bell adds, "He's very, very unique in all this. At first you think he's doing research. Then, you realize he believes in it. Then, you realize he really wants to accomplish something."
If Cooper and his ilk have their way, says Bell, "we would see black uniforms with lightning bolts on them. It raises the hair on the back of my neck. . . . He'd be the Himmler of this group."
Virgil Cooper denies he's a racist, but he calls the mixing of races "a terrible, terrible abomination."
IT'S POSSIBLE THAT Virgil Kesterson Cooper doesn't know how to stop what he's currently doing. But why did he start it?
Born in 1942 into pioneer stock--Mormon on his father's side and Mayflower on his mother's--Virgil Cooper grew up on a little farm with a younger brother and two older sisters. They lived near 27th Avenue and Camelback.
"We threw clods at each other out in the fields while we were hoeing," says his brother, Val Cooper. "We had a very normal childhood."
Val, who lives in Cave Creek and runs a mail-order business, remembers that Kester, as his brother was known then, was "always the studious type."
But family came first. At age nineteen, after graduating from Washington High School, Virgil married JoAnn Waago of Tucson. She was eighteen; both had to get their parents' written permission to marry.
Virgil wanted a new life. For him, a "normal childhood" hadn't been so wonderful. He remembers his father as a stern taskmaster.
"Yes, that's true," says Virgil. "He's a rather distant person. I've tried to be different. I tried to treat my children differently. That's why the divorce has really stirred a lot of emotions in me.
"I'm fairly close to my uncles and aunts. My dad's kind of the misfit of the family. He has very loving brothers and sisters--a real family. But he has a very difficult time communicating. And he always had a superficial knowledge of Mormonism."
Just as Virgil's mom had converted to the Mormon faith, so did JoAnn. She and Virgil started having children. Strip away the bitterness between them, and they both agree that they and the children had some very good years.
A paternalistic and devout person, Virgil was a loving father, according to both him and JoAnn. "He really did love us when we were growing up," says Dana Cooper Reay, at 27 the eldest child. And he made sure the kids participated in church, she adds.
Virgil had gone to Phoenix College for two years and then Arizona State University for a few more, but he never got his degree. Early in the marriage, he jumped from job to job, recalling that he was never happy with "office politics" and always wanted to do things on his own. In his thirties, he took the plunge. He started selling computer time to various companies, because many businesses back then didn't have their own computer systems. Salesmanship was his key. He'd set up time-sharing deals, and the money would roll in. He was making $70,000 to $80,000 annually for a while. The family bought a big house near 64th Street and Pershing in Scottsdale. They traveled all over the United States, camping and adventuring. He and his family were active in the church. Many of the Coopers' neighbors were highly successful businessmen of their faith.
Then, his industry hit the skids. Companies started buying their own computers, and he lost some major clients. It happened so quickly that it caught Virgil by surprise, he admits.
There were arguments over money. Virgil still continued to travel. JoAnn says he always spoke of the "big deal tomorrow." Virgil says the pressure to keep up the family's lifestyle was intense.
"My mother wasn't materialistic at all, [but] my wife said, `You can earn $100,000 like everybody else,'" says Cooper. And he was resentful.
"She refuses to accept that there was a changing of the computer environment," he says of JoAnn. "It was my fault. I was blamed."
One thing that galled him was Mormon hotelier Bill Marriott, who would visit Virgil's church ward when he came to Phoenix. "Everybody idolized Bill Marriott when he came to town," says Virgil. "Sure, he's got almost a billion dollars. My wife idolizes him. When the kids got a little older, she really wanted to move into the high-income ranks."
Virgil always had held conservative views. "I was raised in a church where common-law is our heritage," he says. "We were taught the common-law wrapped around everything, and the Constitution was God-given."
And his list of political heroes is heavily laced with Latter-day Saints, among them founder Joseph Smith, current President Ezra Taft Benson and former long-time church administrator J. Reuben Clark Jr. Benson, who was Secretary of Agriculture under Dwight Eisenhower, has been outspoken in his warnings that America was headed toward godless socialism. Virgil likes to quote Benson as having once said that the Constitution "isn't going to be saved in Washington, D.C. We're going to have to do it."
JoAnn Cooper points out that Benson "was a Bircher, but he's cooled it--and he pays his taxes."
Dana figures her father is grabbing at straws by latching onto Mormon doctrine to justify his actions.
"There are doctrines in church that certain individuals grasp and twist to their own beliefs," she says. "Even among church leadership, there are differing opinions. . . . There's been an evolution in the church, reflecting change in society--though I think the church lags behind, being more conservative."
But Mormon doctrine is not the issue, Dana says.
"It's a control thing with him," she says of her dad. "It's really frustrating for him that he's lost control of his family. My father was always very patriarchal, a strong father figure, and I don't think that came from the church. His father ruled with an iron fist."
IN 1981, VIRGIL recalls, he was talking to his accountant about his taxes. Business was shaky. The accountant suggested a restructuring. "With this corporation stuff, the reporting requirements are horrendous," says Virgil. He decided not to do it. In the meantime, he picked up a copy of Irwin Schiff's How to Stop Paying Income Taxes, a popular book at the time. Then he read Schiff's "expose" on what a racket social security was. It rankled Virgil Cooper because, as a self- employed businessman, he had to shell out a lot of his income into social security.
"In 1982," JoAnn recalls, "he came to me and announced that he was not going to file another tax return. My reaction was: `Lots of luck.'"
From then on, the Cooper household grew gloomier and gloomier. Virgil recalls: "She had this big paranoid vision of a big white truck with the letters IRS backed up to the house and everything being taken--down to the bricks of the foundation."
JoAnn Cooper says the IRS cloud was a real worry to her.
"It was just that one book, that Irwin Schiff book, that got him started," JoAnn says. "It was downhill all the way."
Val Cooper says he agrees with his brother about the evils of the income tax, but he thinks Virgil "kind of ran it off the deep end." He adds, "We were always brought up to do your own thinking, but if it doesn't work out, you bite the dirt."
Val mildly rebukes Virgil for "not providing a suitable living for his family." "I loaned him some money one time," says Val, "and he neglected to pay me back. He's letting his family take the brunt of his endeavors."
Virgil and JoAnn constantly fought, but they rarely devoted time to actually talking about their finances. "My father was not one to let Mom discuss the finances," says Dana. JoAnn says she didn't learn until after she sued Virgil for divorce that he had borrowed thousands of dollars from his relatives to keep things going.
"You and I are talking," Virgil says to a reporter, "but she and I could never have these discussions."
Their arguments grew physical. In one incident, according to Dana, son Norman pulled a shotgun on dad to make him stop choking mom.
The way Virgil recalls the incident, Norm busted through a door with a rifle to stop the fight. "But she was hitting me," he says. "I wasn't hitting her. The dad always gets blamed--because of a political viewpoint. The dad always gets the dirt."
Dana describes the atmosphere as "depressing." When her dad would start talking politics, she recalls, "the younger kids "would just roll their eyes and say, `That's Dad.' They didn't understand the severity of it. When he launches into this stuff, he gets this gleam in his eye and this grin on his face and this little laugh. He looks possessed."
After Dana moved out of the house to go to Mesa Community College, she says, her mom would call her every day, "depressed and crying." Her sister Carla would talk about "a dark cloud in this house, emanating from Dad."
Finally, one day in early 1987, JoAnn filed for divorce, after 26 years of marriage.
Virgil admits he was stunned. He blames his wife's "severe mental problems" and the "evil" concept of divorce. Looking back, he says, "I've told her over and over in my pleadings that I forgive her. I love my children. In fact, I love her. She's still my wife."
JoAnn says, "He didn't think I was going to divorce him. He felt I was a trapped, barefoot and pregnant wife--especially since we had a quote-unquote eternal marriage in the temple."
Norm, the oldest son of Virgil and JoAnn, is wrapping up Mormon missionary work in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He'll be going to Brigham Young University. His older sister Carla was a flight attendant for America West and a missionary in Santiago, Chile. She's already at BYU. Both got scholarships from their ward. Dana is married and a mom. The four other kids still live with JoAnn. And she says Virgil's the big loser: "Five of his children won't have anything to do with him, one's retarded and the other is too young to know what's going on."
The only child Virgil Cooper sees these days is his youngest, Cameron, whose baptism should be taking place any day now, since he turned eight years old on January 26.
Normally, in LDS families, the father performs the baptism. But Virgil Cooper says church officials have told him they won't let him perform the ceremony until he gets his problems with the church straightened out. He says his bishop has suspended him from his teaching duties as a high priest for the same reason. Virgil says they want him to accept the fact of his divorce, pay his taxes and start paying child support.
This astonishes Virgil Cooper. "They let inactive Mormons hostile to the faith baptize their sons," he says. "Until I took this political position, I was just another member. My wife is in open rebellion, and I'm challenging Babylon, for pete's sake! I challenge this stuff, and I'm an outcast and a renegade? I don't believe it."
Late last week, Virgil Cooper was preparing to file writs of habeas corpus in another attempt to "free" his wife and children. He says he's been spending time recently in talks with "fathers' rights" supporters. He says he's meeting with church officials about his status. He's incensed that his church "is a good corporate citizen of Arizona" and that many of its leaders are "high-flying businessmen." He wonders whether he'll have to sue his church.
He also has just received a letter from the state Department of Revenue. "They're trying to call me a `taxpayer,'" he says. "Heh-heh-heh-heh."
Virgil Cooper's still got the bug. "I'm not going to be fainthearted," he says. "I think the Constitution will be saved."
"What I want is when the state puts my name in the computer, I want the screen to come up blank."
Cooper has preached to the brethren about how to "flee Babylon," which is the corporate, commercial world as we know it.
"I'm not a taxpayer, I'm not a resident, you don't have jurisdiction. Heh-heh-heh-heh."
"I thought most kooks acted strange. Not this guy."
"WE THE PEOPLE are the Masters and are above the Constitution and the governments created below it."
"Folks like Mr. Cooper and Mr. Clark are looking for the truth," says Wayne Stump.
"I think `all men' means Homo sapiens."
"It was never dreamed that this country would degenerate into a democracy."
"I decided to ignore the fact that they're atheists."
Strip away the bitterness, and they both agree they had some very good years.
JoAnn says he always spoke of the "big deal tomorrow."
"We were taught the common-law wrapped around everything, and the Constitution was God-given."
Dana figures her father is grabbing at straws by latching onto Mormon doctrine to justify his actions.
"We were always brought up to do your own thinking, but if it doesn't work out, you bite the dirt."
"The dad always gets blamed--because of a political viewpoint."
He wonders whether he'll have to sue his church to keep his rights.
