Blotter: Updates On Extremism And The Law
JULY 20
The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined neo-Nazi Dennis Mahon’s request to reverse his 2012 conviction for mailing a letter bomb that injured a black city official and two others at the Scottsdale, Ariz., Office of Diversity and Dialogue in 2004. Mahon, who with his twin brother Dennis had ties to the White Aryan Resistance, will be 93 years old when his sentence ends in 2044.
JULY 24
A Marion, N.C., man who allegedly wore a Nazi uniform while conducting “military training” for hours on end in a wooded area near his parents’ home was arrested on charges of being a felon in possession of a firearm and ordered held without bond. Mark Schmidt, 49, allegedly told an informant he planned to kill people at work and “have a shooting with the ‘pigs’ and/or ‘feds.’” Officials said they were contemplating bringing additional charges.
AUG. 20
A Lincoln County, Neb., jury found longtime white supremacist Rudy Stanko guilty of theft by deception. Stanko, who in the early 1990s was briefly named as the heir apparent to the then-leader of the neo-Nazi World Church of the Creator and who once served time for intentionally selling tainted meat to public schools, had advanced $200 to Geral Pinault to build a website for his Nebraska Beef Company. After researching Stanko, Pinault decided to return the $200 in the form of a money order, which Stanko kept even though he’d also canceled his $200 check.
AUG. 28
A Rome, Ga., federal judge sentenced three Georgia پ members to 12 years each in prison, after they pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to use weapons of mass destruction. Terry Eugene Peace, Brian Edward Cannon and Corey Robert Williamson plotted to start an “active revolution against the government” by targeting law enforcement agencies and sabotaging power grids, transfer stations and water treatment facilities. The threesome hoped to spark a declaration of martial law and a subsequent uprising by likeminded militiamen.
SEPT. 2
A Kansas City federal judge handed down a 20-year sentence to an avionics technician who tried to explode a car bomb at Wichita’s Dwight D. Eisenhower National Airport. Terry Lee Loewen, 60, who in June pleaded guilty to a single count of attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction, told an undercover agent he was waiting for a “green light” from Allah to carry out a suicide attack. He said he was inspired by Al Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki.
OCT. 9
A long-haul trucker and former seminarian at the anti- Semitic Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX), a “radical traditionalist” Catholic religious order, was arrested in Menomonie, Wis., and extradited to Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, to face felony charges of raping two underage boys. Kevin G. Sloniker, 30, reportedly admitted to molesting a total of nine boys and is suspected of sexually abusing at least eight more. In 2005, Sloniker was reportedly expelled from an SSPX seminary for being mentally unstable after he tried to circumcise himself.
NOV. 5
A Lexington, S.C., judge sentenced August Byron Kreis III, 61, a former ʱԲԲԾ leader in white supremacist groups including the Ku Klux Klan, the Posse Comitatus and the Aryan Nations, to 50 years in prison for one count of criminal sexual conduct involving an child and two of committing lewd acts on a child. “I will always hate the Jew,” an unrepentant Kreis, who once proposed an anti-Jewish alliance between Al Qaeda and the Aryan Nations, said at sentencing.
NOV. 10
A judge in Johnson County, Kan., sentenced former Ku Klux Klan leader and White Patriot Party founder Frazier Glenn Miller Jr. to death for murdering three people at two Overland Park Jewish centers in April 2014. Miller, 75, said he shot his victims — all of whom were Christian — because he wanted to kill Jews before he died. In a related case, John Mark Reidle of Aurora, Mo., faces up to 10 years when he is sentenced for acting as a straw buyer for the weapon Miller used.
NOV. 12
An Akron, Ohio, man was arrested after allegedly using social media to call for support of the Islamic State in September. Terrence J. McNeil, 25, was also accused of posting the addresses of dozens of military personnel on a Tumblr account, telling readers to “[k]ill them in their own lands, behead them in their own homes, stab them to death as they walk their streets thinking that they are safe.”