PLAINFIELD, N.H. - To avoid serving prison sentences for tax evasion, Ed Brown and his wife, Elaine, have locked themselves off from the world on their own terms.

The Browns raised the specter of the first case, the 1992 shootout at an Idaho property called Ruby Ridge, by holding a news conference Monday with Randy Weaver, whose wife and child were killed there along with a deputy U.S. marshal.

The Browns were sentenced in absentia to 63-month prison sentences in April, after being convicted of conspiring to evade taxes on nearly $1.9 million in Elaine Brown‘s income and of plotting to disguise large financial transactions. Expert observers praise the authorities‘ hands-off approach, but patience is wearing thin for Plainfield‘s 2,400 residents.

Town selectmen recently asked Monier to stop the influx of militiamen and other anti-government groups to the Browns' home and to bring the couple to justice. It‘s a sentiment echoed throughout the town. The town south of bustling Lebanon has a "live-and-let-live" reputation that no one wants linked to the Browns, Taylor said.

The Browns‘ home on an isolated dirt road includes a turret that offers a 360-degree view of the property and a driveway that is sometimes barricaded with sport utility vehicles. While saying repeatedly that he has no interest in harming the Browns or their supporters, Monier has not said what he does plan to do.

But Ed Brown and many residents believe it was a botched raid that apparently had to be called off when someone walking a dog stumbled onto federal agents in camouflage near the home. Weaver's news conference with the couple only added to local frustrations.

"That must've been a first. We've never really seen convicted felons just be able to hold press conferences," Halleran said. "There has to be a restriction of access to and from their property. If people can continue to visit them, to bring them supplies, with diesel fuel and food, they can stay there for a long time."

Brown neighbor David Grobe, a former patient of Elaine Brown, just wants the dirt road to be silent again. He said satellite news trucks parked at a softball field for Monday's news conference at the same time residents wanted to play. "This used to be a very quiet street," he said.

Sitting in lawn chairs around the Browns' long gravel driveway, the couple's supporters rail against Freemasons, the Illuminati, the Federal Reserve, the Vatican and the mainstream media.

Some defend the Browns' claim — repeatedly rejected by courts — that no law authorizes the federal income tax and that the 1913 constitutional amendment permitting it was never properly ratified. "The income tax can take more than the Mafia can with a machine gun. Believe me," said Alfred Liseo of Meriden, Conn.

"The Mafia doesn't have popular support," interrupted Bill Walker. "The government has support of millions of ignorant people who have the wool pulled over their eyes. They think they need to pay. They don't."