Posts Tagged ‘racist skinhead’
 
June 5, 2012 4

May Not So Merry For White Supremacists

April ended with a shock to the racist world, as promi­nent Ari­zona white suprema­cist and bor­der vig­i­lante J.T. Ready fatally shot four peo­ple before turn­ing his gun on him­self.   White suprema­cists would not be given a chance to catch their breaths, how­ever, as the month of May con­tin­ued to serve them set­back after setback.
Christo­pher Brooks of Amer­i­can Front
On the heels of the Ready murder-suicide came a high pro­file inci­dent in Florida in early May, in which law enforce­ment offi­cers rounded up almost the entire Florida con­tin­gent of the hard­core racist skin­head group Amer­i­can Front on weapons, para­mil­i­tary train­ing, and hate crimes charges.  To date, author­i­ties have made 14 arrests.  Accord­ing to court doc­u­ments, the group allegedly con­ducted para­mil­i­tary train­ing to pre­pare for an “inevitable race war” and dis­cussed pos­si­ble acts of vio­lence rang­ing from shoot­ing at a house to attack­ing an anti-racist group.
This just set the stage for a wave of arrests and set­backs to the white suprema­cist move­ment in May, including:
  • In mid-May, Vir­ginia neo-Nazi Bill White became a fugi­tive, announc­ing that he had “left the coun­try,” though author­i­ties think oth­er­wise.  White, who had been released from prison in April, missed a re-sentencing court hear­ing and pos­si­bly feared he might be sent back to prison.
  • On May 19, anti-racist activists crashed a Chicago-area white suprema­cist event billed as an “eco­nomic sum­mit,” attack­ing atten­dees and send­ing three to the hos­pi­tal.  Police arrested five anti-racists on charges related to the attack.  Adding insult to injury, police also arrested two of the atten­dees of the white suprema­cist event—one for child pornog­ra­phy and the other for unlaw­ful pos­ses­sion of weapons by a felon.
  • On May 30, Joliet res­i­dent Brian Moudry, a long-time Chicago-area white suprema­cist asso­ci­ated with the Cre­ativ­ity Move­ment, was arrested on fed­eral arson and civil rights charges in con­nec­tion with the 2007 arson of an African-American family’s house a few doors down from Moudry’s.
  • Also on May 30, agents from the Wash­ing­ton, D.C., Joint Ter­ror­ism Task Force arrested Vir­ginia white suprema­cist Dou­glas Howard Story for allegedly attempt­ing to obtain a fully auto­matic AK-47.  Story had a track record of on-line com­ments about respond­ing with vio­lence to encoun­ters with police and about how Pres­i­dent Obama might be assassinated.

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May 7, 2012 3

American Front Members Arrested on Hate Crimes, Conspiracy Charges

Patri­cia Faella

Fed­eral, state and local author­i­ties arrested much of the core mem­ber­ship of the Florida con­tin­gent of the white suprema­cist Amer­i­can Front this past week­end on hate crimes and con­spir­acy charges.   The Amer­i­can Front is one of the old­est hard­core racist skin­head groups in the United States, with a mem­ber­ship con­cen­trated pri­mar­ily in north­ern Cal­i­for­nia and cen­tral Florida.


At least seven peo­ple, all from the greater Orlando area in cen­tral Florida, have been arrested; addi­tional arrests may ensue.  Mem­bers picked up so far include Mar­cus Faella, 39; Patri­cia Faella, 36; Mark McGowan, 29; Jen­nifer McGowan, 25; Diane Stevens, 28; Kent McLel­lan, 22; and Paul Jack­son, 25.   The Fael­las have played some­thing of a lead­er­ship role within the Amer­i­can Front since the shoot­ing death of its pre­vi­ous leader, David Lynch, in Cal­i­for­nia in 2011.
Mar­cus Faella


Pros­e­cu­tors have charged the Fael­las and the McGowans with crim­i­nal con­spir­acy and a hate crime.  McGowan and his wife Jen­nifer have report­edly also been charged with ille­gal para­mil­i­tary training—providing firearms or explo­sives train­ing with the inten­tion of com­mit­ting civil dis­or­der. Diane Stevens was also charged with crim­i­nal con­spir­acy and com­mit­ting a hate crime.   Charg­ing details for the oth­ers arrested are not yet avail­able, nor has the nature of the alleged con­spir­acy yet been made public.

A num­ber of Florida Amer­i­can Front mem­bers have been involved in crim­i­nal activ­ity.  It was only in 2010 that McLel­lan was sen­tenced to a year in prison after being con­victed of van­dal­iz­ing a local restau­rant and church with white suprema­cist graf­fiti in 2008.   In May 2010, another Florida Amer­i­can Front mem­ber, Christo­pher Brooks of St. Cloud, pleaded guilty in Vir­ginia for his role in a syn­a­gogue van­dal­ism there in 2009.  That same year, Florida Amer­i­can Front mem­ber Richard Adam Stock­dale served time for bat­tery charges.

The Amer­i­can Front is one of a large num­ber of hate groups with a pres­ence in Florida.  It includes sub­groups such as the Valkyrie Corps for female mem­bers and the Amer­i­can Patriot Brigade for new mem­bers, referred to as “probates.”

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March 15, 2012 0

White Supremacist Arrested for 2005 Arizona Murder

Source:  Mari­copa County Sheriff’s Office
On March 9, 2012, Mari­copa County author­i­ties for­mally “arrested” Toby Ray Gas­pard, a mem­ber of the Vin­lan­ders Social Club (VSC), a vio­lent racist skin­head group, for the 2005 mur­der of another racist skin­head, Cory Simp­son.  The arrest gave notice that detec­tives had finally cracked a mur­der case nearly seven years old.
Simp­son, 31 at the time of his mur­der, had been released from prison nearly a year ear­lier after serv­ing four years on an armed rob­bery charge. He was one of the lead­ers of the Canyon State Skin­heads (CSS), a local racist skin­head crew. The skin­head scene in Ari­zona in 2005 was com­pli­cated, thanks to the rise of the VSC and its growth through adopt­ing mem­bers of local racist skin­head crews, includ­ing mem­bers of the Canyon State Skinheads.   
On Decem­ber 24, 2005, Simp­son attended a party in Mesa for local racist skin­heads, held at Gaspard’s home. Gas­pard was also a high-ranking CSS mem­ber.  The party turned ugly when other skin­heads con­fronted Simp­son. One of them repeat­edly stabbed Simp­son, leav­ing him bleed­ing on his front lawn. Simpson’s wife and another racist skin­head, Christo­pher Gromberg, took Simp­son to a hos­pi­tal, but he had been fatally wounded.
Gas­pard became a sus­pect in the mur­ders. How­ever, wit­nesses, gen­er­ally white suprema­cists who hated the police, were not exactly will­ing to talk.  Some may have also feared retal­i­a­tion, which turned out to be a jus­ti­fi­able fear in April 2006, when Gromberg was shot to death, execution-style, with two shots to the back of the head (in Novem­ber 2011, VSC mem­ber David Bounds was indicted for the mur­der of Gromberg).  
Mesa and Phoenix police (espe­cially Phoenix’s Career Crim­i­nal Squad) did not give up on the case. In 2008, Gas­pard was extra­dited from Okla­homa to Ari­zona to face ques­tions about the Simp­son mur­der (he would later be con­victed on unre­lated weapons charges and given a five year prison sen­tence, insur­ing his future availability). Finally, in Jan­u­ary 2012, an indict­ment was handed down that charged Gas­pard with second-degree mur­der, assist­ing a crim­i­nal syn­di­cate, and mis­con­duct involv­ing weapons.  The for­mal arrest—a trans­fer from state prison to the Mari­copa County Jail—occurred in March. 
ADL assisted Mesa and Phoenix police in the inves­ti­ga­tion from the day of the mur­der onwards.

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