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The Blotter: Fall 2009

Updates on Extremism and the Law

March 6
Four members of the Nevada Lawmen Group for Public Awareness, an antigovernment "sovereign citizens" group, were arrested in Las Vegas on charges of money laundering, tax evasion and illegal weapons possession, capping a three-year probe by the Nevada Joint Terrorism Task Force. Among those arrested were retired FBI agent Jay Lindsey and Samuel Davis, who allegedly orchestrated the laundering of $1.3 million that he believed was loot from bank heists.

March 19
Seven reputed members of the United Aryan Soldiers were indicted for conspiring to commit home invasion robberies and for selling drugs, guns and ammunition in Omaha, Neb. The defendants were arrested at the conclusion of "Operation Red Swastika," a lengthy federal undercover investigation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Authorities seized 10 firearms, more than 5,000 rounds of ammunition, and an unspecified amount of methamphetamine.

March 20
Aryan Circle enforcer Bryan "Bone" Aiken was sentenced to four years for his role in an August 2007 shootout in North Richland Hills, Tex., that erupted when Aiken and three other gunmen showed up at the home of a high-ranking AC member who was rumored to be leaving the gang. Investigators said Aiken was under orders to kill the gang leader, who was injured in the exchange of gunfire but survived.

April 2
Atlantic City Skins member Walter Dille was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the racially motivated December 2005 random murder of a 44-year-old black woman in the parking lot of a movie theater in Hamilton Township, N.J. At his sentencing hearing, Dille laughed out loud when one of the victim's family members read a letter from her parents expressing the hope that Dille's case would deter others from becoming skinheads.

April 28
Billy Lynn Brosowske, whom prison officials have identified as an affiliate of the Nazi Low Riders, a white supremacist skinhead gang, was sentenced to nearly six years in prison for a Jan. 10 racially motivated assault in Eugene, Ore., in which Brosowske bit off the top of an ear of a man of Puerto Rican descent.

April 29
William Mark Mize, a longtime Ku Klux Klan member, was put to death by lethal injection for a 1994 murder in Oconee County, Ga. At the time of the killing, Mize, an electrician, was trying to start a white supremacist group called the National Vastilian Aryan Party. A jury found that Mize became so enraged with a prospective member who failed to follow orders to burn down a purported crack house that he killed the recruit with a shotgun blast.

May 6
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied the final state-level appeal of condemned white supremacist Tracy Layne Beatty, a member of the prison-based Aryan Circle gang who was sentenced to death for killing his mother in Smith County, Tex., in 2003. The court ordered that Beatty be executed on Aug. 13.

May 12
Soldiers of Aryan Culture member Trevor Powell, 28, pleaded no contest to attempted aggravated murder for stabbing a man in Provo, Utah. Powell was sentenced to five years to life, to run concurrently with another five-to-life sentence handed down for his recent conviction for a 2001 aggravated robbery.

May 13
Robert King, 29, and Jeremy Davis, 28, both members of Soldiers of Aryan Culture, were arrested and charged with six counts of aggravated kidnapping, aggravated robbery, aggravated burglary and attempted homicide for their alleged roles in a home invasion robbery in Salt Lake City. A third SAC member was shot to death with his own gun during the attack by one of the intended victims.

May 13
A federal judge in Chicago set August 11 as the opening day for American National Socialist Workers Party commander Bill White to stand trial for using his website to incite violence against the foreman of a federal jury that convicted another neo-Nazi leader of attempting to solicit the murder of a federal judge.

May 19
Dale Barton, a member of the white supremacist gang European Kindred, was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison for an April burglary in Clackamas County, Ore. The victim caught Barton in the act and told him he should go to church to repent. Barton said he did, found Jesus, and took a plea deal.