The Blotter, Spring 2007
Oct. 14 - John Ditullio, a member of the so-called Teak Street Nazis group that terrorized neighbors in a New Port Richey, Fla., trailer park, was indicted for slashing neighbor Patricia Wells and murdering a friend of her son.
Oct. 14
Twenty-year-old John Ditullio, a member of the so-called Teak Street Nazis group that terrorized neighbors in a New Port Richey, Fla., trailer park, was indicted for badly slashing neighbor Patricia Wells and murdering a friend of her son's, Kristofer King, 17. Ditullio, who will represent himself in the capital case, blamed fellow neo-Nazis, but authorities say they found King's blood on his shoe.
Oct. 30
Dennis Craig, the leader of the racist skinhead 2-1 FATAL gang, was sentenced to 25 years for a 2005 arson that destroyed three Indianapolis homes. Prosecutors said Craig, 31, mistakenly thought a black family was moving into one of them.
Nov. 2
Salt Lake City police detained Sons of Aryan Culture gang member Doyle Smith as a "person of interest" in the Oct. 27 murder of fellow white supremacist Raymond McGaughy. McGaughy was found dead outside a home where police say he and Christine Ruth Armstrong held a woman captive 10 days earlier. McGaughy and two other men allegedly raped the woman repeatedly until she escaped.
Nov. 3
Hardy Lloyd, the one-time Pittsburgh leader of the neo-Nazi World Church of the Creator, was acquitted of the 2004 murder of a former girlfriend by a jury that found he had acted in self-defense. The jury convicted Lloyd on a misdemeanor weapons charge and sentenced him to three years probation and time already served.
Nov. 7
A task force of local and federal officials arrested racist skinhead Thomas Gibison in Newark, Del., and charged him with the random 1989 murder of Aaron Wood, a 34-year-old black man. Officials say Gibison, then 17, was trying to boost his stature among white supremacists and later got a tattoo to commemorate the killing.
Nov. 8
An eight-month investigation, sparked by a newspaper account of machine guns owned by a local militia, culminated in the arrest of Fayetteville, Ark., resident Hollis "Wayne" Fincher. The 60-year-old lieutenant commander of the Militia of Washington County was charged with possessing unregistered machine guns.
Nov. 14
James "Evil" Harrison was convicted of first-degree murder after stabbing a man he didn't know 158 times to earn tattoos and membership in what police described only as an Aryan gang. Prosecutors say Daniel Miller, 58, was murdered in 2002 in his Las Vegas home on orders from a white supremacist acquaintance of Harrison's.
Nov. 28
A federal judge in Jackson, Tenn., sentenced long-time neo-Nazi Demetrius "Van" Crocker to 30 years in prison for trying to acquire nerve gas and explosives to attack government buildings. Crocker told undercover agents of his desire to use a nuclear "dirty" bomb against Congress and poison against blacks in Jackson.
Dec. 12
Anti-abortion extremist Clayton Lee Waagner was sentenced to 33 years by a federal court in Harrisburg, Pa., after pleading guilty to carjacking, bank robbery and weapons offenses in four states. Waagner was already serving a lengthy sentence for mailing fake anthrax to 550 abortion clinics and related targets.
Dec. 14
More than 300 federal and local law enforcement officers swept through Orange County, Calif., arresting 57 alleged members of Public Enemy Number 1 on charges ranging from illegal weapons and drugs to forgery and identity theft. The arrests, in addition to 10 others carried out earlier, followed the discovery of a gang hit list that targeted five local police officers and one prosecutor for death.
Dec. 18
A federal judge in Greenbelt, Md., sentenced Robert Weiler Jr. to five years after the anti-abortion zealot pleaded guilty to charges in a plot to blow up an abortion clinic and shoot the people inside. Weiler, 25, was arrested at an interstate rest area last June, after his father told officials about Weiler鈥檚 intentions.
Dec. 19
A military judge sentenced Coast Guard Petty Officer Chad Blair to a year in prison and a bad-conduct discharge for posting Ku Klux Klan recruitment flyers and illegal possession of explosives and seven unregistered weapons. Prosecutors had asked for a nine-year sentence for Blair, who was assigned to Air Station Cape Cod, Mass.
