Latest Developments and Trends in Extremism & Terrorism
 
February 28, 2012 0

White Supremacist Dennis Mahon Found Guilty in 2004 Bombing

Share the story:
White Aryan Resistence logo
A jury in Ari­zona found Den­nis Mahon, 61, a long­time white suprema­cist and anti-Semite, guilty in the 2004 mail bomb­ing that severely injured Don Logan, an African-American who was direc­tor of Scottsdale’s Diver­sity and Dia­logue Office at the time. The jury, how­ever, stopped short of call­ing the inci­dent a hate crime.
The jury found Den­nis Mahon guilty on three charges: con­spir­acy to dam­age build­ings and prop­erty by means of explo­sives, mali­cious dam­age of a build­ing by means of explo­sives, and dis­tri­b­u­tion of infor­ma­tion related to explo­sives. Also charged in the case was Mahon’s twin brother Daniel, but the jury found Daniel not guilty of the one charge against him: con­spir­acy to dam­age build­ings and properties.
Police orig­i­nally arrested the Mahon broth­ers in June 2009. The arrests fol­lowed a lengthy inves­ti­ga­tion of the mail bomb­ing, which occurred on Feb­ru­ary 26, 2004, when a box addressed to Logan exploded when he tried to open it at his Scotts­dale office.

Both broth­ers have a long his­tory of involve­ment in the white suprema­cist move­ment. Den­nis Mahon held lead­er­ship posi­tions within var­i­ous white suprema­cist groups in the Mid­west in the 1980s and 1990s, includ­ing the Ku Klux Klan and White Aryan Resis­tance (WAR), a now-defunct group led by well-known racist Tom Met­zger. Met­zger has long advo­cated “lone wolf” activ­ity. Accord­ing to the lone wolf model, indi­vid­u­als and small cells engage in activ­ity that leave behind the fewest clues for law enforce­ment author­i­ties, decreas­ing the chances that activists will end up get­ting caught. 

Den­nis Mahon report­edly moved to Ari­zona from the Mid­west in 2001 to estab­lish WAR’s pres­ence in the area. His brother Daniel joined him in Arizona.

Daniel Mahon was also an active white suprema­cist. In May 1999, accord­ing to court papers, Amer­i­can Air­lines fired him after he vio­lated writ­ten work rules that “pro­hib­ited threat­en­ing and intim­i­dat­ing behav­ior toward other employ­ees and con­duct detri­men­tal to other employ­ees and Amer­i­can Air­lines.” Mahon was under inves­ti­ga­tion by the com­pany for his activ­i­ties related to his par­tic­i­pa­tion in a “Cau­casian Employee Resource Group.”

ADL pro­vided assis­tance to inves­ti­ga­tors through­out the lengthy case.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,