Weapons cache could draw life

MAT-SU — A Wasilla man is in jail facing charges that could bring up to life in prison after federal officials say he amassed an arsenal of firearms despite being a felon.

Gregory Dale Hayes, 53, was charged with one count of being a felon in possession of firearms. Federal officials alleged he possessed 28 firearms in total, including semi-automatic handguns and rifles with high-capacity magazines.

An affidavit from special agent Thomas J. King with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives hints at possibly sinister plans on Hayes’ part and lays out what amounts to a year-long investigation leading to his arrest.

It all began with a traffic stop in Wasilla.

According to King, on Dec. 16, 2008, a Wasilla police officer told him that a week prior he had pulled over a car that Hayes’ girlfriend was driving with Hayes as a passenger. There was a box of ammo on the floorboard. Indeed, the officer was pulling the car over because employees of Sportsman’s Warehouse had told them something fishy was going on between Hayes and his girlfriend when the ammo was purchased.

From there, King lays out his investigation, starting with talking to employees at Sportsman’s Warehouse, continuing through talks with gun store employees and owners in Anchorage, and encompassing multiple interviews of witnesses, some confidential, some not.

According to King, Hayes would buy guns online, have them delivered to gun stores, then have one of two women pick them up — one his current girlfriend, the other his former girlfriend. Sometimes he would go into stores, look around, ask questions, and leave, and one of the women would come in later and make purchases.

The guns were mostly stored at the current girlfriend’s parents house on Hemmer Drive in Settler’s Bay and the investigation seems to rotate around her and Hayes. At her parents’ house, King said, Hayes had installed two gun safes he was loading up with guns.

King said witnesses told him Hayes put the guns there to keep them out of view when his probation officer stopped by to search his house. Having others pick up and buy guns and gun parts for him, King said, was another means Hayes used of hiding his activities from authorities.

Also included in the arsenal at the girlfriend’s parents’ house, which King said he seized during his investigation, were a flak jacket and grenade bodies with fuses attached. There was some talk in King’s affidavit of Hayes looking to purchase silencers for his weapons, or have a silencer built.

According to King, Hayes’ girlfriend was told he was drilling holes in those grenade bodies to fill them with black powder and use them as explosives.

During the course of the investigation, the girlfriend wound up being arrested, sentenced, and sent to prison on a misdemeanor charge. So King interviewed her at Hiland Mountain Correctional Facility. During that interview, King confronted the woman with statements she’d made that Hayes explained the arsenal as simply a “good investment.”

“People don’t ordinarily buy firearms, shoot them, take the time to load them and keep them loaded, buy bullet proof vests, and components for improvised explosive devices, and look into the acquisition of silencers, strictly for investment purposes,” King wrote.

The girlfriend, he said, “hung her head and then replied, ‘I didn’t think he was serious.’”

She then, King wrote, tried to downplay some statements Hayes had made about wanting to put a GPS tracker on his probation officer’s car, track him, and “do something” when he found him.

According to a press release issued after a federal grand jury chose to file charges against Hayes, the penalty for the crime he’s accused could reach life in prison and a $250,000 fine.

Contact Andrew Wellner at andrew.wellner@frontiersman.com or 352-2270.