Hatewatch Tweets
Hatewatch is managed by the staff of the Intelligence Report, an investigative magazine published by the Alabama-based civil rights group Southern Poverty Law Center.
Trial Opens for White Supremacist Twins Accused in Arizona Bombing
White supremacist twins Dennis and Daniel Mahon went on trial today in Phoenix, charged with mailing a package bomb in 2004 that exploded and injured a black man who was a city official in Scottsdale.
The 61-year-old longtime racists were arrested in 2009 after a five-year undercover investigation involving an attractive female informant who put a Confederate flag in her window and ultimately befriended the Mahons.
The informant for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives also gave two sexually provocative pictures to the Mahons in a successful attempt to win their trust and attention. In one of the pictures, the ATF informant wore a white bikini top with a grenade hanging between her breasts as she posed in front of a Nazi swastika.
As the friendship flourished, the woman’s conversations with the Mahons were secretly recorded, providing federal investigators with a possible road map to unsolved bombings, court records disclose.
In conversations with the woman, Dennis Mahon showed her how to make bombs and bragged about bombing a Jewish community center, an abortion clinic, an Internal Revenue Service building and an immigration facility. He also talked to the informant about the Scottsdale bombing, claiming he didn’t do it but that he assisted white police officers who did. His claims about the other bombings have not been corroborated, but likely have provided leads for federal investigators, according to various media accounts.
The Mahons are both charged with conspiracy to damage buildings and property by means of explosive. Dennis Mahon also is charged with malicious damage of a building by means of explosive and distribution of information related to explosives.
The investigation also snared Robert Joos Jr., an antigovernment zealot and pastor of a church of “apocalyptic Christians.” He is serving a 78-month federal prison sentence after being convicted in January 2010 in Springfield, Mo., of being a felon in possession of firearms and a felon in possession of explosives.
The Mahons also have past ties to Thomas Metzger and his white supremacist White Aryan Resistance (WAR). While his name surfaced in the Scottsdale bombing investigation, Metzger has not been charged criminally.
The undercover investigation began after a cardboard box was sent to the Scottsdale Office of Diversity and Dialogue, addressed to the office’s director, Donald Logan. When Logan opened the box on Feb. 26, 2004, it exploded, severely burning his arms and damaging his fingers. His assistant, Renita Linyard, was seriously injured, and another employee, Jacque Bell, suffered minor injuries.
While discussing the Scottsdale bombing, Dennis Mahon said he “just wanted to teach (Logan) a lesson the first time.”
Dennis Mahon also is accused of making a call to the diversity office in September 2003 and saying, “the white Aryan resistance is growing in Scottsdale. There’s a few white people who are standing up.”
In pretrial motions, Mahon’s defense attorney, Milagros Cisneros, argued that Mahon was merely boasting in an attempt to impress the woman who had infatuated him.
Cisneros and other defense attorneys unsuccessfully attempted to get the criminal charges dismissed on the grounds that use of the seductive informant amounted to outrageous government conduct, entrapment and coercion. The judge denied those motions after federal prosecutors said the government informant never kissed or had sex with either brother.
Before moving to Arizona, the Mahons lived in Tulsa, Okla., in the 1990s, and Dennis Mahon was a Ku Klux Klan grand dragon in Oklahoma.
Dennis Mahon’s name also surfaced during a grand jury investigation of the Oklahoma City federal building bombing on April 19, 1995, that killed 168 people. Dennis Mahon became a person of interest after a woman claimed she overheard him and a German national discussing bombing federal buildings months before the deadly bombing of the Murrah Building.
Opening statements in the Mahon brothers’ trial are scheduled Thursday, and the trial is expected to last two months.
on January 10th, 2012 at 8:09 pm
You stay classy, Mahon brothers!
on January 10th, 2012 at 8:20 pm
Also, I find it simply delicious that the brothers are being represented (judging by the name) by an Hispanic!
on January 10th, 2012 at 9:34 pm
when was the last successful white supremacist bombing?
on January 10th, 2012 at 10:50 pm
I am infuriated with the white supremacists of today! I am anti-racist, anti-bigoted, anti-fascist, and anti-hierarchical as a philosophical anarchist punk rocker in Michigan. Is there ever going to be enough of a crack down on these Neo-Nazis to bring the numbers down to keep them from doing things like this? Is there ever going to be better punishment to keep them from getting out of prisons, and a way to keep them from recruiting from within them? We have to do more to put an end to their actions and socializing. They are terrorists!
on January 11th, 2012 at 8:25 am
How can one be so stupid and still be able to make a bomb without having it blow up in their own face? The FBI should have an all female force of WN informants; it’s so easy to trap these perma-virgins by showing them a pretty face.
“In pretrial motions, Mahon’s defense attorney, Milagros Cisneros, argued that Mahon was merely boasting in an attempt to impress the woman who had infatuated him.
Cisneros and other defense attorneys unsuccessfully attempted to get the criminal charges dismissed on the grounds that use of the seductive informant amounted to outrageous government conduct, entrapment and coercion. The judge denied those motions after federal prosecutors said the government informant never kissed or had sex with either brother.”
Pathetic. Incredibly pathetic.
on January 11th, 2012 at 10:51 am
These boys should be careful who they associate themselves with, knowing anyone can be an FBI informant.
on January 11th, 2012 at 11:34 am
If people like this would stop hurting and killing people, they would not have to be afraid of informants.
on January 11th, 2012 at 2:03 pm
The abhorrent and despicable white supremacist movement, is the most infilitrated organization/gangs by the law enforcement. This is why they have trust issues among their own kind. You simply cannot trust the next skinhead with racist tats and symbols standing next to you, because he could be an “informant”. That’s how it is in the WN movement.
on January 13th, 2012 at 5:37 pm
It would not be illegal to send anyone a letter stating, “The White Aryan Resistance is growing. There’s a few white people who are standing up.”
on January 14th, 2012 at 4:25 pm
Of course not, Don. But sending a letter containing an explosive device is a *slightly* different matter.
on January 8th, 2013 at 10:23 pm
Can’t we all just get a long! No one has control over being White or Black. We are all just born in our ethnicities by RANDOM SELECTION. Everyshade is beautiful and ugly depending on the individual. We don’t distiquish clothing this way so why ppl? Seems silly.