Early this morning, a man was killed and a woman injured in a shooting in Citrus Heights, Calif., a suburb of Sacramento. Law enforcement authorities said the man, who was shot in the head and torso, was found dead inside the home. The woman, who was shot in the leg, was taken to a local hospital for treatment. Local media reports said that two children were believed by law enforcement to have been inside the home at the time of the shooting.

Law enforcement sources have confirmed to Hatewatch that the man who was shot was David Lynch, 40, and his death is being treated as a homicide.

Lynch was a clever and charismatic racist skinhead organizer whose history of racist activism dates back to the late 1980s, when he became the eastern states coordinator for American Front, a nationwide skinhead coalition modeled after Britain’s racist National Front. After American Front’s power waned in the mid-1990s, Lynch lived for a time in Canada, then relocated to Sacramento, where he gradually assumed control of the Sacto Skins, one of the oldest skinhead gangs in the country. ( continue to full post… )

Two men charged with attempting to kill police officers in Hemet, Calif., used what prosecutors are calling a white power “guerrilla warfare manual” to guide a nine-month campaign of terror and violence against the police department, its buildings and vehicles.

The anonymously written “White Resistance Manual” was posted on the website WhiteHonor.org and contained do-it-yourself guides that Nicholas John Smit and Steven Hansen used to build such guerrilla-styled weapons as zip guns and “Panji boards” – spiked boards rigged with trip wires, according to Daniel DeLimon, a prosecutor with the district attorney in Riverside, Calif. “It’s basically a guerrilla warfare manual instructing people on different types of weapons, on creating weapons, on police investigations, basically how to conduct covert urban operations,” DeLimon told HateWatch in a telephone interview.

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On July 4, 1998, two women invited anti-racist skinhead pals, Lin “Spit” Newborn, 25, and Dan Shersty, 21, to a late-night party in the desert outside of Las Vegas. But there was no party: Newborn and Shersty were shot to death in what police and prosecutors called a planned execution by the leader of a rival, neo-Nazi racist skinhead group.

One man, John Edward “Polar Bear” Butler, identified as a leader of the Independent Nazi Skins, was convicted of murder and sentenced to death (the sentence was later reduced to four life terms). But investigators were never able to amass enough evidence to bring charges against Butler’s girlfriend at the time, Melissa Hack, who they believed was one of the women (the other has not been identified) who lured the victims to their deaths that night.

That is, until now.  According to the Las Vegas Review Journal, federal cold-case investigators have charged Hack with one count of making a false statement in connection with the 1998 case, and are pursuing new evidence against her.

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Poor Ron Edwards. Even racist skinheads don’t want to hang out with the former Klan leader.

Edwards — the Imperial Klans of America (IKA) founder who defended himself against a successful lawsuit filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center — was arrested last week on federal drug charges, including methamphetamine distribution.

That was too much for the Supreme White Alliance (SWA), a skinhead group that had been assisting the IKA with its annual hate rock gathering, Nordic Fest. Less than a week before this year’s Nordic Fest — planned for Memorial Day weekend at Edwards’ compound in Dawson Springs, Ky. — the SWA announced it would no longer be involved with the event. “The Supreme White Alliance drops it’s [sic] support of the Imperial Klans of America, Ron Edwards, and Nordic Fest due to current events,” SWA Vice President Richard Kidd, a former IKA member, wrote on Sunday. “Even though innocent until proven guilty, in order to preserve our reputation as a club for our members, the SWA has always been a drug free club and always will be. This is not intended to disrespect Ron Edwards or the IKA, but we will not be affiliated with them until all legal charges have been dropped.”  ( continue to full post… )

Three soldiers are among a group of skinheads accused of severely beating a homeless man with baseball bats and pipes in Cincinnati.

Police have charged two Iraq war veterans, Pvt. Riley Feller, 24, and Spc. Travis Condor, 25, with the felony assault of 52-year-old John Johnson at a homeless encampment earlier this month, according to news accounts. Feller is with the 16^th Cavalry Regiment at Fort Knox in Kentucky, while Condor is a member of the 82^nd Airborne Division stationed at Fort Bragg in North Carolina.

Michael Hesson, 24, who is not in the military, was arraigned Tuesday on the same charge. Authorities are looking for an unidentified fourth man, also believed to be a soldier. Johnson was treated overnight at a hospital for a head wound and other injuries suffered in the April 10 attack. ( continue to full post… )

The former leader of a violent racist skinhead group will serve nearly 3½ years in federal prison on a racketeering charge.

Jeremy Robinson, 37, was sentenced on Oct. 15 after pleading guilty to a felony charge of interstate transportation in aid of a racketeering enterprise, according to court documents. Though Robinson did not deal drugs, he tried to help his cousin distribute a large amount of marijuana. In court documents, Robinson acknowledged renting a car for another man to bring marijuana from Texas to Indiana. The man, a courier in the cousin’s large-scale drug business, picked up the load but failed to get far before he was pulled over by Texas police, who found 90 pounds of marijuana in the trunk. Robinson also let his cousin use his tattoo shop in Valparaiso, Ind., to receive shipments of marijuana from Texas.

Robinson was a founder of the now-defunct Outlaw Hammerskins, the group whose challenge in 1999 to the nationwide dominance of Hammerskin Nation signaled the beginning of the end of any unified skinhead movement. The Outlaw Hammerskins emerged after the Dallas-based leadership of Hammerskin Nation ordered an Indiana chapter of Northern Hammerskins to remove the “colors” (insignia) of a wayward member. Several Northern Indiana Hammerskins proceeded to beat the offender with a pool cue and threatened to burn off his Hammerskin tattoos with a blowtorch. The Dallas leaders ordered them to turn in their patches. A dozen or so of the Indiana crew left the Hammerskins to form their own renegade group, the Outlaw Hammerskins. ( continue to full post… )

Here’s a new one, even by Hatewatch’s jaded standards: According to newspaper and television news accounts of this week’s Southern California law enforcement dragnet of the Inland Empire Skinheads, two female gang members were placed under arrest in hospital maternity wards. They were having labor induced to ensure their babies were born on April 20 — the 120th birthday of Adolf Hitler.

Nice parenting. Right from the get go.

Less shocking is the news of yet another major bust of a violent racist skinhead gang in the Inland Empire region, which the Intelligence Report first identified as a hotbed of white-power gangs activity in fall of 2005. As we reported then:

The Inland Empire used to be a sparsely populated, rural area of ranches, vineyards and farms, where whites were the clear and dominant majority.

All that has changed.

Driven from Los Angeles and San Diego by soaring housing prices, middle- and working-class black, Hispanic and Asian families have migrated to the Inland Empire in massive numbers, drawn by a surplus of comparatively affordable, big homes in sprawling, suburban-style developments. … Whites are now a minority in the Inland Empire.

These seismic changes in the region’s racial make-up have corresponded with a steady rise in hate crimes, including a particularly vicious spike in racially motivated violence and harassment…

According to law enforcement authorities, the Inland Empire Skinheads are responsible for murders, drug trafficking, witness intimidation, home invasion robberies and random, racially motivated assaults committed by prospective members. First documented by Riverside, Calif., police in 2002, investigators now estimate the gang has 30 members and roughly 70 associates, including many high school students. ( continue to full post… )

The Los Angeles Times is reporting that prosecutors decided to add a hate crime enhancement to the premeditated murder charge against 14-year-old Brandon McInerney, who allegedly gunned down gay junior high school classmate Lawrence “Larry” King, 15, after investigators discovered a “trove” of neo-Nazi literature and drawings in McInerney’s bedroom.

According to a court document filed by Senior District Attorney Maeve Fox earlier this week, the materials seized from McInerney’s room included white supremacist literature and drawings concerning “a racist skinhead philosophy of the variety espoused by Tom Metzger, David Lane and others.”

McInerney is awaiting trial as an adult for the Feb. 12 murder of King, who was shot in the head in a classroom full of students at E.O. Green Junior High School. McInerney fled the scene after the shooting and was apprehended a few blocks away.  Witnesses said that King, who had recently revealed that he was gay and started to wear make-up and jewelry, had a verbal confrontation with McInerney regarding King’s sexual orientation the day before the killing.

McInerney’s public defender explained that his client had the items only because he was researching a term paper on Adolf Hitler.

The accused killer turned 14, the legal cutoff for charging a juvenile as an adult in California, less than a month before the murder. He could face 50 years to life if convicted, plus one to three years for the hate crime enhancement.

Even by the twisted standards of the neo-Nazi underworld, Hardy Lloyd is one sick individual. The 30-year-old skinhead, who describes himself as the “doctor of all hate,” was kicked out of the ultra-violent World Church of the Creator in 2003 after he was involuntarily committed to a mental hospital. “I do not believe killing is wrong,” Lloyd wrote in 2004. “Our new religion must be the worship of death and murder.”

Later that year, Lloyd (right) was arrested for murder after he killed his girlfriend. The victim, 41-year-old Lori Hann, was a divorced legal secretary who met Lloyd through an Internet dating service. Lloyd admitted shooting Hann in the face during an argument over another woman, but claimed that she’d threatened him with a handgun minutes earlier and that he fired in self-defense.

Prosecutors argued that Hann was gunned down in the street while running for help (she’d pulled over her car and gotten out in front of a stranger’s house with Lloyd in the passenger seat), and pointed out that Hann was unarmed when Lloyd shot her (Hann’s handgun was found in her vehicle). Nevertheless, a jury in November 2006 acquitted Lloyd of first-degree murder and voluntary manslaughter, finding him guilty only of carrying a firearm without a license.

Narrowly escaping a murder conviction has done nothing to dampen Lloyd’s enthusiasm for celebrating violence, including mass murder, on his “Universal Fascism” website, on which he encourages fascists of all colors to unite and kill Jews. But in recent weeks he’s sunken to a new sadistic low by taunting Hann’s loved ones and bragging about ending her life by posting lyrics to his own sadistic versions of hit pop songs and gangsta rap singles.

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The New York Times’ Sunday fashion insert doesn’t normally cross paths with Hatewatch. But a headline in the Sunday, Sept. 16, edition caught our attention:  “Skinheads are Moshing Their Way Into the Style Mainstream.”

According to the brief magazine article, big-name designers like Dior Homme and Heidi Slimane are bringing skinhead style back to the runway. For a movement now largely known for its racist violence, that’s quite a comeback.

Skinhead researcher and Portland [Ore.] State University professor Randy Blazak says that while he hasn’t seen a pair of Doc Martens boots in over three years, skinhead style as a mainstream fashion fad isn’t anything new. As a matter of fact, racist skinheads are often angered to see their style co-opted, whether by anti-racist skinheads or trend-seeking teenagers. “It undermines their message when that style is diffused to the mainstream,” said Blazak. ( continue to full post… )