Floatplanes stand in the midst of King Salmon's natural beauty. (Image by Charlie Kindel.)

Paul Rockwood Jr. and Nadia Rockwood were essential parts of their rural community in King Salmon, Alaska. He was the local weatherman and she was a stay-at-home mom who sang in the local choir and acted in community plays. They were beloved by their neighbors, who were crestfallen when the couple announced they and their four-year-old son were moving to her native England. But before the Rockwoods could leave the state, they were arrested by FBI agents. The pair had secretly been drafting a list of U.S. assassination targets, who they felt were enemies of Islam.

Their neighbors who adored them were left stunned. The Rockwoods weren’t members of a sleeper cell, pretending to be well-adjusted Americans. They seemed to genuinely enjoy their small-town life but gradually grew a homicidal bent as Paul, who had converted to Islam in the early 2000s, came under the sway of extremist websites. The Los Angles Times has a story about the town in the aftermath of the arrests. An excerpt:

“This week, Paul and Nadia Rockwood pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Anchorage to one count of willfully making false statements to the FBI; in Paul Rockwood’s case, it was a statement about domestic terrorism.

The plea agreements state that Rockwood, 35, had become an adherent of extremist Islam who had prepared a list of assassination targets, including U.S. service members. And, though no plot to carry out the killings was revealed, he had researched methods of execution, including guns and explosives, the agreements say.

Federal charging papers said his wife, 36, who is five months pregnant with the couple’s second child, lied to investigators when she denied knowing that an envelope she took to Anchorage in April at her husband’s request contained a list of 15 intended targets. (None were in Alaska.) She told FBI agents that she thought the envelope contained a letter or a book. She gave it to an unidentified individual who her husband believed shared his radical beliefs, the FBI said.

The plea agreements the couple signed said Paul Rockwood converted to Islam in late 2001 or early 2002 while living in Virginia and became a follower of radical U.S.-born Muslim cleric Anwar Awlaki, now believed to be living in Yemen.

‘This included a personal conviction that it was his religious responsibility to exact revenge by death on anyone who desecrated Islam,’ his agreement said.

Here in King Salmon, where the biggest thing is the annual red salmon run–it happens to be the biggest one in the world — this has the air of a poorly written movie.

‘If all terrorists were this harmless, we’d all be living in a much less complicated world,’ said Rebecca Hamon, who lived in Camarillo before moving 12 years ago to King Salmon, on the Alaska Peninsula, 280 miles southwest of Anchorage.

‘We’ve all been in shock,’ said Mary Swain, who was friends with Nadia and baked the birthday cake for the Rockwoods’ son’s party last year. ‘I mean, kids would go over to her house all the time where she was teaching them ballet. She always went to library time, she went to story time…Her mom would come over here from England and stay with her for a month at a time, and people got to be friends with her too.'”