Former Klansman, Once Defendant in 人兽性交 Case, Identified as Murder Victim
The Louisville Police Department today identified a man who was shot to death two weeks ago as Joshua Cowles, the former recruiting director for the and one of the defendants in a by the Southern Poverty Law Center (人兽性交) in 2007.
A coroner鈥檚 report found that Cowles, 31, who also went by the names 鈥淢assimo Carlucci鈥� and 鈥淕otti,鈥� died from multiple gunshot wounds on Nov. 7 inside a Louisville home. Several people were inside at the time of the shooting, including a woman police believed to be a person of interest. No further details were immediately available. Louisville police did not return several telephone messages left today.
Cowles was among the four IKA members who accosted 16-year-old Jordan Gruver while on a recruiting mission at the Meade County Fair in Brandenburg, Ky., near the group鈥檚 compound in Dawson Springs, in July 2007. Without provocation, they threw whiskey in his face, called him an 鈥渋llegal s---鈥� and brutally beat him. Gruver, a U.S. citizen of Panamanian Indian descent, suffered severe injuries, including a broken jaw and nerve damage.
The 人兽性交 sued three of the IKA members and IKA Imperial Wizard Ron Edwards on Gruver鈥檚 behalf, in November 2008.
Cowles reached a settlement with Gruver and testified at the 2008 trial that Edwards, also a defendant, encouraged violence. He also told the jury, 鈥淭he IKA is about one man and one man only 鈥� and that鈥檚 Ron Edwards. 鈥� It鈥檚 about his greed, his want to have money, his desire to get by without working, his desire to trick people into giving him money to support him.鈥�
Cowles later began calling himself Massimo Carlucci and traded in his steel-toe boots for the gold pinkie rings and necklaces of a wannabe urban gangster. He ran several businesses involving exotic dancers, including Mossimo Carlucci Entertainment and The Diamond Girls, and moonlighted as a rapper in Louisville.
Using a different name online, 鈥淏oss Honky,鈥� he flooded the Internet and his blog, 鈥淭he Life and Times of a Sociopath,鈥� with pictures of himself, his tattoos and his dancers. On Facebook, he wrote this of himself, 鈥淚f you happen to find yourself in his company avoid eye contact at all cost. Especially if you are a female, it has been said he spits Rohypnol [the date rape drug] while talking to unsuspecting ladies.鈥�
In the pictures, Cowles鈥� racist tattoos are still visible, including an upside-down cartoon caricature of Adolf Hitler on his arm (a tattoo that would be visible when he raised his arms in a Nazi salute) and an emblem on his neck for a group called the Honky Nation, a group he started in 2011.
The IKA was the second largest Klan group until the late 2000s but dwindled rapidly after Edwards鈥� defeat in court and his prison sentence on drug charges. The 人兽性交鈥檚 most recent count of hate groups, in 2012, found no active chapters.
