Richard Myers, 32
AMERICAN FRONT/CONFEDERATE HAMMERSKINS
In 1990, when he was only 17, Richard "Richie" Myers was named the Florida state leader of the American Front (AF), a nationwide white power skinhead gang that was started in the mid-1980s in San Francisco. The five founders included David Lynch, who later moved to Port St. Lucie, Fla., to become AF's Eastern States Commander, and Bob Heick, aka "Nazi Bob," one of the skinheads involved in the infamous brawl on the set of The Geraldo Rivera Show in November 1988.
Lynch and Myers were the driving force behind a thriving racist skinhead scene in Florida in 1990, as the American Front systematically absorbed local crews statewide and engaged in blood feuds with anti-racist skinheads.
When Myers discovered in October 1990 that AF's North Florida "director of regional operations" was secretly Jewish, he laid a trap at a skinhead party house in Daytona Beach rented by Fran Mercuri. (Mercuri was then Florida chairman for Tom Metzger's neo-Nazi organization, White Aryan Resistance, which worked hand-in-glove with American Front.) Myers ordered the North Florida officer, John Daly, to attend a mandatory officers meeting at the beach house. After Daly arrived, Myers and six other AF skinheads pummeled and kicked him while one shouted, "Die, Jew boy, die!" They then attempted to drown him in the surf.
Daly's attackers later testified that they watched Daly's body begin to float out with the tide, then left, excitedly discussing plans to get their spider web tattoos, indicating they had killed an enemy of the skinhead movement. But Daly was not quite dead, and after they had gone, he dragged himself ashore and later drove to a hospital, where he reported the attack to police.
Myers was arrested and charged with attempted first-degree murder, conspiracy to commit aggravated battery, and aggravated battery under Florida's then-new hate crimes law, which enhances sentences for violent crimes motivated by racial or religious bigotry.
During his trial, when Myers was asked to raise his right hand, he instead threw up a Hitler salute. Tried as an adult, Myers was convicted in 1991 and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Not long after his release, Myers soon re-immersed himself in skinhead activity. He attended a St. Patrick's Day hate rock festival organized by the Confederate Hammerskins in March 2002, and now appears to be leading the Florida Hammerskins chapter. He is also once again associating with David Lynch, who crawled out of the woodwork last year, apparently to relaunch American Front. Earlier this year, two Salt Lake City skinheads in their early 20s pleaded guilty to randomly attacking a black man as part of an American Front initiation.
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