KKK Leader Accused of Illegally Possessing Firearm After Prison Release
Just on the heels of being released from federal prison last year, the former head of the International Keystone Knights of the Ku Klux Klan is accused of illegally possessing a firearm.
Steven Joshua Dinkle, 30, was sentenced to two years in prison in May 2014 for burning a 6-foot wooden cross in a predominately black community in Ozark, Ala., in 2009. The cross-burning, Dinkle later confessed, was meant to 鈥渟care and intimidate residents鈥� of the community by 鈥渢hreatening the use of force against them.鈥�
The exalted cyclops of the Ozark chapter of聽the Keystone聽Knights pleaded guilty to conspiracy to violate housing rights, criminal interference with the right to fair housing and two counts of obstruction of justice for lying to federal investigators.
Immediately after his release from prison last year, while beginning three years of 鈥渟upervised release,鈥� Dinkle acquired and possessed a Taurus .32 caliber pistol, according to a federal indictment returned last week Alabama鈥檚 middle district.
His mother, Pamela Morris, who served as secretary of the Klan chapter in Ozark, Ala., was sentenced last year to 10 months in prison and three years of supervised release for committing perjury during a grand jury investigation of the cross burning by her son and another Klansman. Morris, 48, was released from federal prison on Feb. 4, Bureau of Prisons records show.
