Confessed serial killer Israel Keyes committed suicide in an Alaska jail cell last weekend by slitting his wrist with a disposable razor and strangling himself with a sheet tied between his neck and extended foot, authorities say.

Before killing himself, the 34-year-old man, who was exposed to Christian Identity white supremacy beliefs and a survivalist lifestyle as a teenager, confessed to killing an Anchorage barista, a Vermont couple and five others he coyly didn’t identify. ( continue to full post… )

A confessed serial killer and bank robber who took his own life in an Alaska jail cell on Sunday was exposed to the racist and anti-Semitic beliefs of Christian Identity theology during his childhood in a rural corner of Washington state, Hatewatch has learned.

Israel Keyes, 34, now linked to at least eight murders throughout the United States in the past 11 years, was a childhood friend and neighbor in Stevens County, Wash., of terrorists Chevie and Cheyne Kehoe — two racist brothers now serving lengthy prison sentences for murder and attempted murder. ( continue to full post… )

By Friday, jurors are expected to begin weighing the evidence against a Texas murder suspect allegedly linked to Kingdom Identity Ministries, a racist, anti-Semitic group that opposes mixing of the races. Defendant Mark Simmons of Buda told an investigating officer that the victim, his friend  Steven Woelfel, deserved to die because he had a Mexican girlfriend, according to testimony in the Hays County trial.

Simmons contended that after years of the U.S. government spying on him, he was in a paranoid mental state at the time of the killing, according to the San Marcos Mercury. He testified that he accidentally shot the 55-year-old Woelfel in his friend’s home in April 2010 and let the body sit for a week before setting a fire that burned it beyond recognition. In addition to murder, he’s charged with arson and tampering with evidence. ( continue to full post… )

Six members of a racist motorcycle gang in Florida face drug and bomb-related charges following a three-year undercover investigation, federal and state authorities announced Friday.

The suspects are affiliated with the Outlaws motorcycle club and the 1^st SS Kavallerie Brigade Motorcycle Division, a racist gang formed by former Aryan Nations leader August Kreis III, according to the Orange County Sheriff’s Office in Orlando.

“One of the goals of the organization was to blow up buildings and houses, as well as individuals associated with rival organizations,” sheriff’s spokesman Jeff Williamson told Hatewatch. ( continue to full post… )

Long-time racist August B. Kreis III says he’s stepping down as leader of a splinter faction of the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations, just weeks after being convicted of federal fraud-related charges.

Kreis, who’s reported to be suffering from diabetes-related health problems, doesn’t give a specific reason for quitting in his Internet posting, but says his successor is Pastor Drew Bostwick, who has lived in Iowa and been active in the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement. ( continue to full post… )

Peter John “Pete” Peters, a Christian Identity minister whose messages of hate and white supremacy inspired four decades of extremists, including murderers, has died at his home in LaPorte, Colo., authorities confirmed Friday. He was 64.

Peters was the pastor of the LaPorte Church of Christ and had an Internet and radio

ministry called “Scriptures for America.” He died of renal failure on July 7.

From the pulpit and in his newsletters and radio broadcasts, Peters propounded his white supremacist views, claiming to have Biblical proof that whites are God’s “chosen people” and people of color are inferior and soulless. He also denounced Jews and gays, saying at one point that homosexuals should be executed.

In more recent years, Peters attempted to shed the “Identity” label, admitting it had a connotation problem, but his white supremacy message with a religious underpinning remained much the same. He also denounced use of the term “Judeo-Christian,’’ saying it correctly should be just “Christian.” ( continue to full post… )

Longtime racist and Christian Identity leader August Byron Kreis III, who now leads a splinter faction of the neo-Nazi Aryan Nations, faces three felonies for allegedly cheating the U.S. government he despises so much.

Arresting Kreis and getting him to U.S. District Court is the next challenge facing federal authorities. Kreis says he won’t surrender voluntarily.

Kreis, a virulent 56-year-old who applauded the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, is named in a three-count federal indictment just returned in Columbia, S.C. A current resident of South Fulton, Tenn., he is charged with two counts of filing fraudulent statements to obtain veterans benefits, once in August 2006 and again in February 2008, federal court documents show. The third count accuses him of embezzling, stealing and converting to his own use more than $1,000 belonging to the United States. ( continue to full post… )

Update: The subject of this story, the man formerly known as Vince Bertollini, comments below that the article is a “typical Jew ploy,” among other things.

Recently released after several years in federal prison, Richard Vincent Bertollini has moved across the country and changed his name in order to make “a fresh start.” But the energetic propagandist of yesteryear is still peddling his same brand of vitriolic hatred directed at Jews and the U.S. government.

Bertollini — an ordained minister of the neo-Nazi group Aryan Nations, formerly based in North Idaho — now calls himself “Vince Bert,” Hatewatch has learned. The would-be stealth racist, aiming to shed his Idaho reputation and remain under the radar, recently moved to Albuquerque from Santa Fe, N.M., where he maintains a post office box.

Prison hasn’t changed his thinking much. In a recent Internet posting, the former confidant and key financial supporter of the late Aryan Nations leader Richard Butler calls for a “revolution” and the “shedding of blood” in the United States. Bertollini re-started his Internet hate ministry and book publishing operation in the Southwest just days after being released from prison last year after serving a sentence on a federal firearms charge.

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