Speaker 1: I want to welcome everyone back to part four of
my reading of Crying Wolf Hate crime Hoaxes in America
by Laird Wilcox. Quick reminder about Thomas and I doing
movie reviews, watching movies, commenting on them. If you go
to my website Freemanbeyond the Wall dot com forward slash movies,
you see all the movies that we've recorded and how
you can access them. All right, I'm going to jump
into chapter five, and we may not get through this one.
This is a long chapter, kind of strange, but considering
the first heading is blacks, so yep, here we go
Chapter five. By far the largest number of hoax incidents
involved black victims and non black, usually white offenders. This
is true both on the campus and in the community.
The most common motive is to capitalize on the psychological
benefits of victimization or to promote a specific personal, social,
or political agenda, but other motives, such as insurance fraud
and attempts to cover up other crimes, are not uncommon.
Some hoaxes are simple pranks they got out of hand,
but the majority involved some degree of planning and deliberate organization.
New heading cases he already touched on this one, but
it's a good one to come back to. I remember
this one clearly. In November nineteen eighty seven, a black
Wappinger's Falls, New York teenager, Tawana Brawley, claimed to have
been kidnapped for several days, raped by white men, smeared
with dog feces, placed in a plastic garbage bag, and
marked with racial slurs. The case quickly became a cause
celeb with editorials, marches, and politicians and media personalities deploring
the incident and the racist climate that obviously led to it.
Revenel sharped, and a black activist with a shady background,
became spokesman for the Brawley family and insisted that justice
be done and the white men responsible be prose prosecuted.
The incident fueled support for hate crime legislation around the
nation as the case was reported nightly on network news. Yeah.
I was living in Florida at the time, and it
was on the news every damn night. Tawana Braley and
her handler's basted and nationwide attention and acquired victim status
on a scale rarely seen. Discrepancies in her story were
evident from the very beginning, a claim that she had
been raped and brutalized by three white police officers, quickly
fizzled out under examination. A detailed investigation determined that she
was seen by friends during the period she said she
was held captive, and that she spent much of this
time in an apartment previously rented by her family. Other
elements of her story were gradually eliminated one by one,
and police subsequently reported that the Braley case was a
massive fabrication and hoax. What made the Broadly case outstanding
was the incredible media feeding frenzy that took place. Although
there was reason for skepticism, virtually from the beginning, newspaper
and television media were slow to pick up on the
implausible nature of the allegations. Only at newspaper and television media.
They were slow to pick up on it. They didn't
want to pick up on it. They wanted to capitalize
on it for several reasons. It just doesn't have to
be one reason, ever, for anything, it's several reasons. Only
after the doubt was substantial and clearly pointing in the
direction of a hoax was the public informed. New York
Post columnist Eric Brindell commented that radical attorney William Kuntler
had said, concerning the Brawley case, it makes no difference
any more whether the attack on Tijuana really happened. A
lot of black women are treated the way she says
she was treated. A lot of black women are kidnapped
by police, held in apartments mirrored with dog FECs, raped
over and over again, and put in a garbage back.
Is that what William Hunseler would have us believe. Three
years after the case broke, the Brawley matter was still
being litigated. According to news reports, a county prosecutor was
defamed by a black teenager who falsely claimed he was
one of six white men who abducted and raped her.
A judge rule State Supreme Court Judge Ralph Binzzer ruled
Tuesday that Tawana Brawley intentionally inflicted emotional distress on Stephen Pagoni's,
a former assistant district attorney for Dutchess County. A special
grand jury cleared mister Pagonis of any involvement in the
Brawley case and concluded miss Brawley fabricated the story. As
the Barley incident was capturing headlines and Wappinger falls twenty
five miles away in Kingston, New York, another racial hate
crime hoax was brewing. Police had discovered the nude body
of nineteen year old Anna Kithcart, a black woman who
had been strangled, beaten, and killed on Both eyes were
carved the initials KKK, an obvious reference to the Ku
Klux Klan. The community was shocked and it seemed clear
that malignant racism had once again struck an innocent black person,
but not for long. Within days, police investigation focused on
Jeffrey Allen Dawson, a twenty nine year old black man
with a criminal record. Dawson was arrested after he made
incriminating statements about the murder to a wired undercover policeman.
Kingston Police Department sources said the murder was apparently drug
were related. As for alleged KKK connection, Ulster County District
Attorney Michael Kavanaugh said, nothing would lead us to believe
that this murder was committed by members of any racial
hate group such as a KKK. Interestingly, two Brawley Family advisors,
Reverend al Sharpton and Alton Maddox Junior, got on the
bandwagon in this case. Too sharp denomatics were soon conducting
their own investigation in the slag set Maddox. I believe
it was a racially motivated crime. Yeah, it was, but
not in the way you're talking about. October nineteen ninety one,
two crossburnings reported South Seattle, Washington. The first cross was
thirty inches tall, the second cross never actually ignited. Aaron Briggs,
one of the victims, said, it makes me sad that
we have not come as far as I thought we
had come. Predictably, the KKK style crossburning sent a shock
through the community. Sensitivities were raised, racism was deplored, and
anti racist forces were energized. Three months later, the monster
was captured. Unlike most other cases where the culprit is
vilified and condemned and wearing no excuse whatsoever, we'll do,
the case was reported with kindness and understanding and with
a charity and compassion unusual in stories of racist criminals.
Here's why. When they heard the confession of a troubled
sixteen year old who admitted he was behind a string
of cross burnings and racial vandalism against black people in
southern Seattle, police were stunned and saddened. The youth, who
also is black, told police he committed the acts of
vandalism to create fear that would attract the media. Captain
Douglas Dills, who heads the police section that investigates malicious
harassment or hate crimes, said it appears as the youth
had a fascination with both national and local media coverage
of racism and racial incidents. The teenager is not only
under super suspicion in a string of malicious harassment crimes,
but in several arsons as well. You know what that
tells me. That tells me that he's a victim because
he had to watch all of that and see it.
The newspaper also reported that the youth might have been
inspired by a Phil Donna Hugh TV show the day
before about hate crimes. According to police, the arrest cleared
up a large number of unsolved cases of allegedly racially
motivated crimes in the community, all registered in the statistics
kept by anti racist groups. One of the most convoluted
and bizarre hate crime hoaxes was exposed in Portland, Oregon,
in October nineteen ninety two. Hoaxes can be very elaborate
and almost always requires some degree of planning, but the
case of Azalea Cooley forty, a black lesbian, involved a
series of misrepresentations, distortions, and outright lies covering up to
eight covering up to eight years, including false claims of
disability that left her wheelchair bound and a bogus racial
harassment that began as far back as nineteen eighty five,
when she allegedly received death threats. In nineteen eighty three,
Cooley moved in with Susan Soewen, whom she had been
dating since nineteen eighty one. Wow took that long. In
nineteen eighty six, she claimed she had been diagnosed with
cancer and quit her job as a corrections officer. So
also a corrections officer, continued to live together and were
active in community politics. I am completely shocked by that.
The most recent reports of racial harassment began on May third,
nineteen ninety two, when racist graffiti was painted on Coulian
Sone's house. Following that the word en was painted on
the house, a note card with Hitler lives death to
all ends was found on the doorstep, and a swastika
with the words burn and burn was written on Cooley's
wheelchair ramp. Over a period of week some seventeen hate
crimes incidents occurred, none of which police were able to solve.
Hitler lives death to all in someone point to any
evidence that Hitler had any problem with black people, check
some of his quotes about them. Coolian Son turned to
the local anti bigotry coalition to counsel them through the ordeal,
the Metropolitan Human Rights Coalition. And when I say had
a problem with him that he wanted to see them
destroyed or dead or anything like that, he I mean,
having opinions is not the same as, oh, they should
all be punishers in some sort of way. Cole and
Sone turned to the local anti bigotry coalitions to counsel
them through the ordeal. The Metropolitan Human Rights Coalition set
up a special hotline to receive tips on the perpetrators.
Police questioned several suspected skinheads and neo Nazis, and even
arrested one man who was seen watching the cross burning
Cooley's yard, but later said they didn't believe he was responsible.
Azalea Cooley became, to paraphrase a local journalist, a poster
child for Portland's victimized classes, i e. The black, handicapped,
and gay lesbian communities. She reveled in her victimhood and
eagerly accepted the role of a martyr. On Sunday, November first,
nineteen ninety two, she helped lead a rally and march
named to take a Stand against Hate reportland I thought
she couldn't stand or walk. Photos of Cooley being pushed
in her wheel show oh yep, at the head of
the march were widely publicized. There's just something about that.
She became a symbol of the fight against bigotry and
prejudice on a grand scale. On the very morning of
the march, someone set fire to a cross on Cooley's lawn,
unbeknown to Coolian Zone. However, this time police cameras recorded
the incident. That same evening, police arrived and searched to
cooley Cone residence. They said they found items in the
house consistent with materials used in the cross burning. The
videotape showed that the person who let the cross had
come from inside the house. Susan Zone, who had filed
the original hate crime complaints, was served with a warrant
for initiating a false police report, a class misdemeanor. She
was placed on administrative suspension at the Moltnomah County Jail,
where she had been a line supervisor for fifteen years.
No charges were filed against Cooley at that time. Scott Lively,
spokesman for the Oregon Citizens Alliance, a group opposing special
civil rights protections for homosexuals known as ballot Measure number nine,
responded to the arrest. He said, this indicates our position
that the No On nine campaign has been basing their
position on fraud. I think there is high emotion on
both sides, but when a black, crippled woman in a
wheelchair starts burning crosses in her own yard, it's fraud
in a sad day for the community. I think it
exposes what we have been saying all along. On November twentieth,
nineteen ninety two, The Oregonian Portland Daily reported that Azalia
Cooley had confessed to staging the cross burnings, death threats,
and vandalism. Coley admitted that the hate crimes that happened
at our home were my doing. In June nineteen ninety three,
federal Judge Helen J. Frye placed Coolly on two years
probation for lying to an FBI agent. She was also
ordered to spend four months House arrest. The charges against Sewen,
who had filed a defamation lawsuit against sheriff's officers involved
in the investigation, were still pending at the time of
this writing. How was Cooley able to fool so many
people for so long? Rachel Zimmerman, writing in Willamette Week,
a Portland weekly, noted Coley fooled so many so fully
because she was seen as the ultimate victim, an African
American lesbian, wheelchair bound and dying of brain cancer, haunted
by an anonymous bigot. In hindsight, there were a number
of signs suggesting the attacks were a hoax, but those
who came to Coolies aid were blinded either by naivete,
by their own abhorrence of racism, or by the temptation
to hold such a victim up as a symbol, even
a martyr in nineteen ninety. Curtis leewa founder of the
multiracial and quasi vigilante Guardian Angels organization, claimed in nineteen
eighty that three New York City transit officers abducted him,
drove him around, and threatened him in order to force
his organizations to end subway patrols. He also claimed that
someone painted KKK in white power outside the group's headquarters.
The organization, founded by Sili Went nineteen seventy eight, had
acquired a reputation for sensationalism and as publicity seeking. As
slee what puts it. We were just little people trying
to get recognition for doing good work. In November nineteen
ninety two, Sleewa admitted that the kidnapping, the KKK graffiti,
and other events were in fact faked. He remarked that
the constant media attention played a part in the deceptions.
It became like an intoxicant, a narcotic, he said early
life on SLIWA. Three men and a youth, all black,
were arrested in August nineteen ninety in connection with three
cross burnings in Prince George's County, Maryland. Ross Farewell eighteen,
Gerald Simmons twenty and Reginald Stewart twenty one, and the
juvenile were charged with the offenses. According to Captain Ron
Serniki of the County Fire Department, a homeowner in the
forest View section of the community discovered the cross burning
in the front yard about three am after a brick
was hurled through the living room window earlier. Three black
uths had jokingly donned white sheets and set fire to
a cross in front of a friend's house in the
ninety five hundred block of Castle Drive in Forestville. The
friend came out to see what was going on and
then joined the trio as they went on. Captain Siernarchi
sier Nikki went on to minimalize hate crime aspects of
the incident, claiming that the act wasn't racially or religiously motivated.
They were just being crazy. I guess something that just
got at a hand. Can't dismiss the stuff. In Lawrence,
home of the University of Kansas, a small cross was
burned and KKKA was spray painted in several buildings in
Lawrence neighborhoods. In October nineteen ninety, police determined that the
culprit were probably juveniles. The two foot high cross was
made from pieces of wood taken from a discarded sofa,
tied together with fabric from the sofa, wedged against the
ground in building and set a fire. The Edgewood Home
Tenants Association held an emergency meeting last week to express anxiety.
It's terrible because so many people are afraid, said fifteen
year resident Francis Moore, sixty three years old. In another case,
across was burned in front of an all white fraternity
near the University of Kansas, accompanied by a note containing
anti Ye comments. Militant anti racists have been active in
the Lawrence community and at the university. In Angela Davis,
a former member of the Central Committee of the Communist
Party USA, and militant anti racist activists, had recently spoken
at KU. Other suspected hoaxes have occurred. What makes the
Lawrence case interesting is that obvious hoaxes were treated as
bona fide incidents by the media, which in turn encourages hoaxers,
which I saw. Eagle writer Dave Hendrick wrote a lengthy
article entitled Racial tensions Taint Lawrence's Image, never mentioning that
the cross burnings and graffiti were hoaxes. He did note
that reports about the cross burnings and graffiti had been
filed from Clan Watch, a division of the Southern Poverty
Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama. These fake hate incidents may
become part of the statistic state issue periodically. An unnamed
black teenager in Queens, New York told the authorities that
a white man had set him on fire. News reports
of December nineteen eighty six noted that police at first
believed the account reported it as a third racial attack
in Queens in a week, but when detectives found inconsistencies
to fifteen year old and three of his friends admitted
the fabrication. Police said the youth had accidentally burned himself
by letting gasoline in a fireplace. That's just Darwin. He
fabricated the story in order to avoid punishment and gain sympathy.
In Bensalem, Pennsylvania, albert A Dawson, a twenty eight year
old black man, was arrested in charge with ethnic intimidation
in February nineteen eighty four for allegedly setting crosses a
fire on the lawns of four interracial couples. At the
time of the incidents, it was believed that the offenses
were committed by white racists. One of the couples, Floyd Darden,
thirty three, who was black, and his wife Janet, who
was white, woke up with a burned cross in their yard.
The fact that these black brings a totally different dimensions
to the thing, Darden said. Another family living directly across
the street from Dawson consisted of a young black woman
who recently married a white man. Another interracial couple also victimized,
lived two blocks away. Dawson, twenty eight, was freed about
was freed after posting ten percent of his fifty thousand
dollars bail. Alan Rubinstein assistant Dicktatric, attorney, said that the
cross burning certainly was a racially most motivated incident. Had
Dawson not been apprehended, the image of the KKK or
neo Nazi skinheads would have remained in the public mind
concerning the incident. As we have seen, even law enforcement
officers are not immune from racial hoaxes. A Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
police officer was charged in March nineteen eighty eight with
writing an anti black slur on a six foot banner
and a District Police station. Police patrolman, Ross Barnes, a
fourteen year veteran who is black, confessed to the act. Apparently,
Barnes was attempting to inject racism as an issue in
the transfer of officers within the department. Ronald Oliver, president
of the one thousand member Guardian Civic League, Philadelphia's minority
police organization, said for a black person to do that
is beyond my capacity. That point leads me wondering. One
of the most widely publicized cases of terroristic bombing in
US history, blamed on racists and occurring on the very
eve of a Congressional vote on hate crimes responding reporting
legislation in December nineteen eighty nine, contains the elements of
a planned deception. Newspapers and television throughout the nation spoke
of the connection between the series of letter bombs which
resulted in the murder of a US district judge and
a lawyer who had handled civil rights cases, and they
claimed right and the claimed rising tide of racially motivated
hate crimes. The incidents proved useful in promoting the agenda
the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Center for Democratic Renewal.
Both organizations attempted to link the bombings to right wing
racial extremists. As an early suspect in the mail bombing
of U S District Court Judge Robert Vance and attorney
Robert Robinson, Wayne O'Farrell of Enterprise Alabama proved a dead end.
Hundreds of federal agents descended upon O'Farrell's home and salvage
store in a prolonged, detailed investigation that was covered daily
in the national media. Nevertheless, investigators failed to find any
conclusive evidence linking him with the bombings. When O'Farrell was
under investigation, he sold t shirts to tourists as souvenirs
and had his photo taken with visitors to his store.
Dotty Lee Snow, a relative of Hank Snow, recorded a
song attribute to Robert Wayne O'Farrell, which he sold cassette
tapes of for five dollars each. Several months later, federal
agents arrested Walter Leroy Moody on several unrelated charges. Moody,
who had been convicted for bomb possession in nineteen seventy two.
Moody had been convicted for bomb possession in nineteen seventy two.
Moody had turned out had been a suspect almost from
the beginning. Federal agents had focused on O'Farrell as a
diversion in In an attempt to throw investigator's office trail, Moody
included racist commentary in his letters to various media to
create the false impression that the bombings were racially motivated,
when in fact they were not. According to news reports,
mister Moody has no history of racial animis in Both
his brother and Michael Bergan, a former Moody lawyer who
married a black woman, said they believed that if race
was behind the mail bombs, they would be surprised if
mister Moody would be involved. Moody became a suspect shortly
after O'Farrell did, although federal agents did not divulge this
fack to the media. In fact, federal agents were watching
Moody almost two weeks before highly publicized searches of O'Farrell's
premises took place. The focus on owd farrell kept the
issue up in the air, and newspapers around the country
speculated on what seemed an obvious racist motivation behind the crime.
Full public attentions to Moody would have exposed a total
absence of racial motivation. There was no law enforcement need
for the o faral deception, for Moody knew he was
a suspect as soon as he was placed under surveillance
early in the investigation. The federal agents were not particularly surreptitious,
said Moody's attorney, while Michael Haupman, adding that Moody was
under constant surveillance from early January until his arrest in
July on unrelated charges. Agents made their headquarters a convenience
store down the street from Moody's home and followed Moody
while wearing jackets with FBI printed on the back. The
hate crime angle was allowed to percolate through public consciousness
for eleven months, including the period when hate crime reporting
legislation was before Congress, which subsequently passed. Moody was apparently
kept under surveillance to be arrested at the appropriate time.
On June twenty eighth, nineteen ninety one, Moody was found
guilty on all seventy one counts related to the bombings.
During During his trial, federal prosecutors conceded that his motives
were devoid of any racial considerations. Prosecutor said that Moody
was obsessed with his failure to get his nineteen seventy
two conviction for possessing a bomb overturned, leave a criminal
record that prevented him from attaining a dream of his
dream of practicing law. Moody blamed the KKK for the bombings.
In July nineteen eighty seven, Portsmouth, Virginia black community leaders
began receiving vitriolic racist hate mail, including obscenities, racist remarks
and threats. Calls for actioning as the white hate group,
were demanded. It was cited as one more example of
the rising tide of hate crimes. The incident took a
dramatic turn when a police investigation found that fingerprints on
the letters belonged to James W. Holly Third, the city's
first black mayor, who denied the charges and claimed that
he had been framed. Fortunately for Holly, at the time
of the incident, there were no hate crime statutes, so
he wasn't charged with a criminal act, and all some
thirty letters directed to eight individuals, all but one of
them black leaders in the community, had been mailed. The
mayor's fingerprints were on file with federal authorities because of
a nineteen seventy three assault charge, of which he was acquitted.
Tests showed copies of newspapers contained in the mailings were
made by the copier on the sixth floor of the
city Hall, where the mayor had his office. Five months later,
voters held a recall election. In fifty seven points seven
percent of the elector had voted to retired the sixty
year old dentist and longtime civil rights leader. Howy continued
to maintain that he had been framed. In Milwaukee, Wisconsin,
a black city aldermen initiated a hoax in June nineteen
ninety that nearly put one hundred year old meat company
out of business. Alderman Michael McGhee, who had recently formed
a black paramilitary group called the Black Panther Militia, charged
a sausage packed by white owned usinger's family. The Sausage
Incorporated was tainted with rat poison. McGhee said the militant
African Underground Squad was responsible when the company recalled eighty
pounds of meat from one hundred and fifty stores. An
examination found none of the meat tainted, according to news reports.
Milwaukee Mayor John o'norquist and others said they believe McGhee's
story was fabricated because the aldermen brought the warning to
news media instead of reporting to it immediately to police.
It's a hoax, it's phony, Norquist charge. What he's really
doing is scaring the hell out of people, which feeds
racism and bigotry. The controversy arose when a group of
businessmen opposed a McGee sponsored bills to rename a city
street after Martin Luther King Junior. A portion of the
street in question is already named for him. The businessman
opposed renaming the rest of the street, saying the change
would inconvenience their businesses. Letters appearing to be of KKK
origin exhorting Blacks to continue killing each other circulated in
Washington for a several week period of nineteen ninety one.
Entitled a salute to all gangbangers. The letters thanks black
gang members for having killed over four thousand black since
nineteen seventy five. The letters read, keep killing each other
for nothing. You are killing each other for our property.
You are killing that what could be future black doctors, lawyers,
and businessmen that we won't have to compete with. And
the good thing about it is that you are killing
the youth. One edited version was printed in the Washington
Afro American newspaper. Observers noted that one version of the
letter misspells the name of the klu klux klus Klan
Clucks with a s. Washington, DC talk show host Robert
Breeden said on WPGC radio, I don't think the letter
is from the Klan, but it should give those who
are involved in black on black violence something to think about.
I think the letter was written by some black person who,
like myself, is fed up with the violence and is
trying to do whatever it takes to get through to
these young people. In Brooklyn, New York, a sixteen year
old teenager said he said she had been the victim
of a racial hate crime at the hands of two
seventeen year old white ewes as she was walking on
a city street late one Sunday evening. According to police
Sergeant Adel James, they yelled ethnic slurs and said she
didn't belong there. They went through her purse, removed lipstick,
ripped their blouse, and smeared lipstick on her chest and neck.
Then they struck her in the face and fled the scene.
The teenager was taken to Coney Island Hospital, where she
was treated by physicians and released, according to news reports.
Four days later, on October third, nineteen ninety two, newspapers
reported that the teenager had recanceed her story. It didn't happen,
said Captain William Plackenmeier. She was looking for sympathy from
her boyfriend and made up a story police investigators began
to suspect the hoax when important elements of her story
didn't check out. In the meanwhile, New York Mayor David
Dinkins excited the case as an example of hate crime
to illustrate the need for estate anti bias laws. David Dinkins,
I mean New York has had some prized mayors. I'm
being facetious. Dinkins took the cake. He was replaced by
Rudy Giuliani, who as much of a scumbag as he
would become, and now he seems to I don't know,
trying to redo his image or something like that. Juliani
did clean up the city. It only took building an
army and putting an army on the streets in order
to do it, which is I think if you're gonna
have multicultural society, that's the way you're gonna have to
do it. You're just gonna have to have an overwhelming
police presence that's ready to shoot anybody that gets out
of line. Also, being able to drive up property prices
helps a lot, rent rent prices, things like that. Yep,
not that I condone that, but I don't condone living
in city either. So hate crime hoaxes are sometimes used
to cover up crimes, to draw attention away from criminal activity,
or to create a victim cover for an individual fearing
discovery and criminal prosecution. Deron Birdsong and the sixteen year
old black youth testified in May nineteen eighty eight that
David Price, and eighteen year old black man, was shot
and killed by Carlottle, white men who were yelling racial
epithets while driving through a Louisville, Kentucky neighborhood. Police Chief
Bobby Crouch described the shooting as a racial hate crime.
The charges rocketed through the Louisville, Kentucky community and quickly
brought calls for justice and an end to white racist terrorism.
There were problems with this account, however, Police showed that
Price had been shot from a distance of three to
six feet away, not thirty or forty feet away as
birds On had testified. Also, it was learned that Price
was a drug dealer. Later, in September nineteen eighty eight
in federal court, Birdsong recanceled his previous story in testiify
that Price was shot in the back by Keith Pointer,
a seventeen year old black youth and fellow drug dealer.
According to news reports, while police still believed there was
a carload of men yelling at blacks in the area,
they now believed Price, who was black, may have been
shot accidentally. No shots were fired from the alleged carload
to whites. This was a fiction, Birdsong, originally concocted to
protect Pointer. Birdsong, stuck with the fabrication during four statements
to the FBI, finally told his mother to call police,
and he told them what had actually happened. Heavy smoke
poured from the west wing of the Manor Baptist Church
and School in San Leandro, California, in September nineteen ninety two,
destroying the church officers and damaging the library. Police and
fire investigators initially believed the arson was a racially motivated
hate crime. Graffiti was sprayed on the walls before the
church doused with kerosene and gasoline and set a fire.
Almost immediately, though, attention shifted to Sean Reagan, thirty, former
principal of the church, school and church treasurer. He had
been accused of embezzling twenty thousand in church funds. Reagan
had resigned from his post in June nineteen ninety two.
The reason, according to church officials, was his poor performance.
Reagan told investigators that he sprayed the graffiti to make
them think the arson was racially motivated. According to San
Leandro Police Lieutenant James o'meira, part of Reagan's motive was
emotional revenge and anger toward the people, and fearful that
he was going to be exposed. In July nineteen ninety one,
seventy three year old Helen Kluel, who lived alone in
an upper East Side building, was found stabbed, beaten, and
strangled in her apartment. According to news reports, the police,
after finding a note in missus Kluell's apartment that contained
references to the KK and Rachel and ethnic slurs, classified
the killing as a bias incident, but Captain William Rowe,
the commander of the fourth to TIX Detective's Division, said
the police had been unable to link the contents of
the notes of the crime. A few days later, police
had their culprit in custody. The note, which read KKK
hates Jews, ends and Spies, had apparently been written by
Charlo Charles Acasio, a Hispanic who lived with his mother
on the same floor. As the victim. Police detective Joseph
Barrell observed that the apartment house is a very secure building.
He said, most of the investigators that had got feeling
it was someone who lived in the building or had
access to it. The note was intended to kind of
throw us off the track. It just didn't fit. Albany,
Oregon's mayor Jean Bellhumer, reported to police in June nineteen
ninety three that he had been the victim of a
racial hate crime. Belle Humor is white, his wife and
children from her previous marriage were black. His seventeen year
old son awakened him with the story. The two boys
had flattened three of the tires on the family car
and stole a hood ornament. A racial hate note was
attached to the windshield, which made the defense a hate
crime under law. Police were looking for two teenagers. However,
when they interrogated Belle Humor's son the next day, the
boy admitted to police having fabricated the hate crime story.
After driving the car into a ditch and flattening three tires,
three black youths on a bicycle stealing spree in June
nineteen ninety one claimed to have been attacked by a
group of white men before they were apprehended by police
in Cleveland, Ohio. So three black youths were stealing bikes
on a spree and they were just attacked. At the
time of the theft. Police were called, who chased and
apprehended five blackhthes. Four others got away. Cleveland Police Sergeant
Patrick Reynolds said they had fabricated the story to conceteal
these their crimes. The blacks were among a larger group
who had previously stolen bicycles from the same bike shop.
When they returned to the bike shop, and employee, thinking
they were going to make a second attempt, ran out
after them. The fabricated account the attack by white men
was easily debunked in this instance, according to Cleveland Prosecutor
Mark McLain, after the police sought to everyone, it was
clear there was no racially motivated attack. A fourteen year
old black teenager claimed they had been shot in a
racially motivated drive by shooting near clear Lake, California, in
July nineteen eighty eight. This raised the consciousness of the
community to the issue of hate crimes in related matters.
One month later, however, clear Lake police Chief Robert Pseudo,
reported that the black youth admitted that he had accidentally
shot himself in the hand with a revolver he claimed
to have found in a park. No hate crime had
ever occurred in Akron, Ohio to black teenagers reported in
March eighteen eighty nine that a car load of white
youths had beaten them. The attack had occurred as they
were walking along a city street. They said the white
youths began taunting them and then attacked them. Both boys
suffered facial injuries, and the fourteen year old's jaw was
broken in four places and fourteenth had been knocked doubt.
I mean, this is just this story is always the reverse.
When when do you ever if you can name one
case where white youths drove by and started taunting and
then jumped out and started beating some black kids just
for no reason other than their black you're proven my point.
When does this ever happen? If this happens all the time,
we'd be talking about that all the time. It'd be
on the news every fucking night. The day of the attack,
police began investigating the theft of a nineteen seventy nine
Chevrolet from a parking lot. Police discovered that the attacked
black teenagers had stolen the car and wrecked it when
the sixteen year old drove into a poll. The facial
injuries were apparently caused by the accident. They were charged
with receiving stolen property and making a false police report.
In August of nineteen eighty eight, a biracial couple living
in the Troy, New York Martin Luther King Apartments reported
finding their apartment walls painted racial slurs in the initials KKK.
Don Roe is white, her sixty three year old husband
Pleasant is black, and they have six children. I'm not
even going to begin to ask questions about that. The
couple reported that they had been to to what racial slurs,
to the point that they often stayed inside with the
curtains drawn. Police investigating the incident, however, told another story.
Detective Robert Paul came to suspect that the victims had
been feuding with someone. He said there had been no
signs of fourth century neighbors had not noted anything unusual
around the apartment at the time of the alleged hate crime.
He noted that the housing complex is racially mixed and
that biracial couples are not uncommon. There had been no
other racial incidents there. Police declines to characterize the case
as a hoax when pressed, but it was clear that
there was suspicion that the KKK was not haunting the complex.
After all, it had the potential to be an the
Rodney King case. Four white Berkeley, California police officers were
accused of beating, severely beating Ronald Griffin twenty five, a
black man who had was taken to a local hospital
with a broken upper and lower jaws and several teeth
knocked out. A police officer identified by the victim as
the one primarily responsible for the May nineteen ninety two incident,
was placed on administrative leave. According to Griffin, he had
been walking along a Berkeley street when two officers pulled up,
asked him to identify himself, and drove away. He said
that He said that two squad cars came by later
with two additional officers, put him in one of the
cars and drove him to an unknown location, where he
was handcuffed, beaten, beaten unconscious with a baton, and abandoned.
The media initially sensationalized the case. However, It was soon
learned that Griffin had been recently released from sam Quentin
after serving four years for attempted murder and robbery. His
arrest record also included narcotics dealing, narcotics dealing, burglary, and
auto theft. On several occasions, either fled or resisted arrest,
and in one case almost ran his car into a
patrol car. Four days later, lawyers for Griffin announced that
plans for a lawsuit against the policeman was dropped due
to lack of supporting evidence. The police department interviewed all
officers who were on duty when the alleged beating occurred
and reviewed all radio transmissions during the period. After a
thorough investigation, they announced that Griffin's account was a fabrication.
According to news reports, police here say they now have
solid evidence that Richmond that the Richmond black man who
was claimed that he was beaten up ten days ago
by four white Berkeley cops made up the entire episodes
of Coverer's involvement in a three city crime spree. Sources
said police believe Griffin attempted to rob a drug dealer
and his jaw was broken when his victim hit him
with a gun butt. Finally, as the hoax unraveled, it
was learned that the day before Griffin made his charges
against police, he was allegedly fired. He had allegedly fired
a gun at a tenderloin dope dealer he was trying
to hold up. The bullet hit and killed an innocent
Mexican immigrant bystander. The gun recoiled, striking him in the jaw,
which accounted for Griffin's injuries. How was he shooting? I'm
not gonna say that. Griffin, along with a companion, was
subsequently charged with murder, two armed robberies, and kar theft.
He was returned to San Quentin Prison, where he was
being held on parole violation. Reverend James Dixon, a black
minister in Houston, Texas, had received a hate letter in
January nineteen ninety two which said, boy, you are one
trouble maker. What do you think we should do about this?
The words this is the Klan were printed in large letters,
and an illustration of a klansman in robin hood was included.
Media accounts said the letter contained several racist statements, like
they had to draw a robin a hood because no
one knows what the Klan would look like Charles Lee, Texas,
Grand Dragon of the minuscule White Camellia Knights of the
ku Klux Klan, denied his organization was involved. The letter
might be a hoax to arouse publicity for Dixon. Li
said that this kind of thing only brought notoriety and
police harassment for the Klan. But a few days later
another letter appeared, this one apologizing for the first one.
The writer said he was not a member of the
KKK and that he had intended the letter as a
joke and apologized for the letter. Constable Jack Abercia said
the author of the apology also wrote the original letter
based upon similarities in the letters. By this time, the
copycaf phenomenon had kicked in, and yet another letter was received,
containing racist threats and apparently not related to the other
two letters. Michael Low, grand Dragon of another tiny Houston
based KKK faction, was interviewed by The Houston Chronicle. He
said his clan groups opposed to the use of threatening
letters or violence. Warren de de de Lueur, publisher of
left wing alternative paper West Virginia Advocate, was found dead
in his garage in July nineteen ninety two, a victim
of a gunshot wound. Delieure's outspoken attacks on the KKK
were a matter of public record, as he challenged his
members to come out from behind their robes, hoods and masks. Consequently,
the KKK found written on the walls of his home
with a marker, seemed certain to implicate the Klan in
his death. A police investigation soon cleared up the attempt
at hoax. Police spokesmen were quoted as saying that the
sixty year old publisher, destroyed over failing health and criticism
of his newspaper, committed suicide. Forensic evidence and examination of
the scene compelled police Corporal dB Burkhart to observe that
the results indicate mister Dellure died the results of a
self inflicted gunshot wound with his own gun. A source
said that there was an air of mystery about Deulieu,
and I think he wanted to get out the same way.
Kenneth Daugherty, an employee at the University of San Diego,
told police in February nineteen ninety two that three white
skinheads had attacked him at an automated teller machine after
he had deposited his paycheck. His original account was that
he fought a single skinhead but was overwhelmed when two
other skinheads beat and kicked him while shouting racial epithets. Daugherty,
a black gulf Or Navy veteran, claimed no one in
the parking lot would come to his help, and a
nearby bicycle shop refused to allow him to make a
nine to one one call to police. Finally, he said,
he flied down a patrol car, but the officers refused
to take a report of the hate crime. Media accounts
of the incident brought an orgy of sympathy and offers
of financial assistance. A San Diego Police Department internal investigation, however,
concluded that Dougherty had made up the entire incident. According
to Assistant Police Chief Dave Worden, after an exhaustive investigation
into the matter, we believe that his claims were outright fabrications.
We have conclusive evidence it did not happen. No one
Dougherty a claim to have talked with or who witnessed
the incident, could confirm the attack, including the clerk at
the bicycle shop. Police could not locate a single whitis
as from the allegedly crowded parking lot, nor the police
officer that was supposedly flagged down. In New York City,
Lewis Watkins, twenty five, a black man, claimed he had
been beaten in January nineteen ninety two by five white
men in a white van. One man allegedly got out
and pushed him to the ground, then others got out
and began kicking Watkins, using racial slurs and referring to
an earlier abduction and rape of a fifteen year old
white girl by two black men. New York Mayor David
Dinkins took the opportunity to issue an unusually harsh statement
condemning racism in the absolutely senseless, absolutely appalling act of
bias violence. The police investigation became high priority. A few
hours later, however, Mayor Dinkins retracted his statement after police
officials' voice doubts about that the attack even occurred. Watkins
had turned out had made two previous unfounded reports of
beatings at the hands of white men and white vans.
Dinkins pressce Press Secretary Leland T. Jones commented, it's hard
to condemn something that didn't happen. If the price of
a retraction as a biased incident that did not occur.
Will pay the price because we are pleased at an
incident as terrible as this was reported to have been
did not occur. Richard Savino, a white Staten Island, New York,
home owner, was visiting his parents in Delaware, New York,
when police called with news that his house trailer was
on fire. Savino had been trying to sell the trailer
for six months. On one occasion, he had shown it
to a black couple. Subsequently, his car was vandalized and
racial slurs were painted on the trailer. He also claimed
to have received threatening telephone calls at the time of
the fire. The slogan now sell to Ends was found
spray painted on a wall. The police classified the incident
as a bias related hate crime. However, other residents in
the neighborhood were puzzled at the course of events. The
development has Black, Indian, Chinese, and Hispanic residents. The president
of the Meadow Brooks Civic Association said, we don't think
to buy a situation. We have a multiracial community here.
On October thirty first, nineteen ninety one, police arrested Savino
himself for the crime He was charged with arson, conspiracy,
insurance fraud, reckless endangerment of property, and false reporting of
an incident. According to police Sergeant Edward Burns, a black man,
Oliver Mason I had allegedly received a racial hate letter
and was served a dead mouse and broken glass in
an omelet at an Annapolis, Maryland restaurant. He was hospitalized
briefly after the incident. Mason had also complained of being
a victim of racism at the Annapolis Holiday Holiday Inn,
where he operated a gift shop. Mason was hospitalized again
on April twenty fifth, nineteen ninety one, after he found
was found in a men's restroom with an electric cord
around his neck and the words sorry n written on
the door. It's kind of polite. Mason told police someone
had looped the cord around his neck Jessy Juicy smilette.
Mason was subsequently arrested in charge of filing a false
report and hindering a police investigation. Police spokesman Florence Stephens
said investigators had determined that Mason had written the hate
letter he had reportedly reported receiving. In a nineteen eighty
six case, A Saint Charles Missouri, black girl bridge At Clark, fourteen,
told their parents had two white men had throw an
acid on her and shouted racial slurs as she walked
home from school. The black community was in an uproar.
A police investigation revealed that the acid was actually the
results of an accident at a summer job where the
girls built chemicals on her arm, causing first degree burns.
She made up the story on her way home, her mother,
Shirley Clark said, According to news reports, Missus Clark said Bridget,
who had been doing cleaning work at Dushane High School
through a federal jobs program, would be transferred to work
at another school. The headlines in the February six nineteen
ninety three all right, a bunch of people have contacted me.
Is it Olethay Kansas? Or am I just saying it
wrong on purpose? Because a bunch of people contacted me?
The headlines in the February sixth, nineteen ninety three Olithay,
Kansas Daily News were stark and explicit. Vandal scraws racist
message on house under the photograph of a black woman standing.
Besides the hate message ends go home was the caption
Edna Mitchell was surprised and sad and Friday morning to
find a racist remark written on the front of her
spring Hill home. It makes you feel violated, she said.
Rosemary Jackson, Mitchell's sister, was with her when they discovered
the graffiti. She said, my seven year old daughter was
screaming and crying, Mama, how can somebody do this? They
were dumb enough to leave their footprints, and their spelling
was wrong. Later media accounts told of the Mitchell family
being driven from spring Hill or a harassing telephone calls.
They called and told us they were going to kill
our kids. They said we were getting too much publicity,
Mitchell said. Local authority spring into action. Spring Hope police
stopped children on their way home from school for questioning.
Mayor Mary Lavery said she was shocked dismayed. In the
twenty years Lavery had lived in spring Hill, this is
the first time she had heard of a racial incident.
An anti racist witch hunt was brewing. Coincidentally, a nearby Olthay, Kansas.
Employees of the Olathay Water Department had been disciplined for
possessing and sharing racially offensive religious literature. The story percolated
in the local news media for a couple of weeks
and was reported statewide in the large circulation. Kansas City
Star olathay ANDAACP leader Sue Cartwright said the distributors of
dangerous literature should be reprimanded fired. Responding to the opportunity
for further notoriety, a tiny KKK grouplet from a rural
Kansas community passed out flyers and a couple dozen houses
in the city. Community leaders were aghassed. All of a sudden,
the community was sensitized and townspeople were speculating about who
might be responsible about the Mitchell incident and then the
bubble burst. On March ninth, police charged Mitchell with two
counts of making false police reports, a class A misdemeanor
in Kansas. Authorities accused her of invincing several stories as
she was being harassed in the community, including her account
of the racial slur on the wall of her home.
Spring Hill police Sergeant Hugh Grossman said, we took this seriously.
We wanted to find out who did it because it
was such a terrible thing for the city to live down.
We were just surprised at the outcome. Charles A. Lewis,
a black mayoral candidate in Jacksonville, North Carolina, found the
words no Vote n in pink spray paint on his house.
On August ninth, nineteen ninety one, a front page story
in the local newspaper depicted Lewis as a victim of
a racial hate crime and photographed him standing in front
of his vandalized home. Lewis portrayed the incident as an
attempt to discourage his candidacy. If they can discourage me
from running by acts of aggression or other forms of hatred,
that's what they will do. But it won't stop us
because you have a mouse in his pocket. There is
more to the story. Lewis contacted police with the claim
that he was being blackmailed. Some woman had made up
a story to the effect that Louis had paid two
men to deface his house, he claimed, and she was
threatening to tell unless he paid her two thousand dollars.
Police initially believed Louis and set up a sting operation
to entrap the woman under electronic surveillance. Lewis met with
the woman and paid her five hundred dollars. Police moved
in and arrested the blackmailer. However, the same woman had
gone to the county Sheriff's office confessed as she was
planning to extort money from Lewis. She insisted that Louis
had asked friends to paint the racial slur on his
house so he could capitalize on victim status. Police contacted
the men who confirmed the story and arrested Lewis when
he visited one of the men. Lewis subsequently confessed to
the hate crime hoax. Lewis, who had previous convictions for
larceny and bad checks, remained in the race, and incredibly,
despite his confession to the police, continued to profess his innocence.
He lost the election. I find that uards believe. I
think today he'd probably fucking win. At California's March Air
Force Base, the dormitory doors of the twenty second Security
Police squadron was covered with racial and sexual slurs and
red marker. The slogans found on October eighth, nineteen ninety
two included stay with your own kind and KKK. Although
both white and black Air Police Black Air Police officers
slept in the dormitory, only the rooms of black swisters
were defaced. Within a week, military police had charged a
black military policeman airman first class Ivory Lease got twenty eight,
an eighteen month Air Force veteran, with seven counts including
damaging government property, making racial and sexual slurs, obstruction of
justice by tampering with three witnesses, and two counts of
making false statements in another matter. The arrest followed a
week long investigation by Wing commander Brigadier General Don Jensen,
who uncovered the hoax. They had to bring up Brigadier
General in to uncover the hoaks. Give me a fucking break.
Police informants are often unstable and unreliable, particularly in matters
involving alleged hate crimes. Even in cases where they're not
trying to save their own next they may fabricate stories
for no other reason than to feel important, such a
case secured involving the notorious anti Black and anti Jewish
Aryan Nations organization in Idaho. To the credulist mind, there
is little that one could say of Aryan Nations that
wouldn't be believed. Few organizations have received more publicity entirely
out of proportion to their objective importance than this small group.
Not that the group hasn't sought out such publicity, mind you. Nevertheless,
immedia has sensationalized groups to the point where any news
about them becomes big news. Based on the account by
a former informant, FBI agents approached Martial Men, a Jewish
real estate man in Cordelaine, Idaho, with the news that
a group of white racists had conspired to do him
in along with Bill Wassmuth, a former Catholic priest. Both
men had been active in campaign against Aryan Nations and
other white racists activists in their community. The informant, Dan Bordner,
who had infiltrated Arian Nations, had been dropped by the
bureau after FBI agents came to doubt his credibility, also
claimed that a synagogue bombing had been planned for nearby Spokane. Later,
the FBI acknowledged the plot that the plot was sheer fiction.
David Hill of the FBI office in Seattle said, the
bottom line is we found there was no substance to
the allegations. Apparently, however, Bordner, acting as an informant, actually
tried to get a conspiracy of that nature going. According
to February nineteen nine news reports, Sources close to the
investigation said FBI electronic surveillance at Area Nations revealed no
instance where anyone in the group talked about the plot
except the informant, Dan Bordner. Nobody else ever mentioned the threat.
One source said when the FBI gave Bordener lie detector tests,
he flunked big time. Floyd Cochrane, at whose home the
group met and who freely admits his membership in Arian Nations,
said that the whole thing was a fiction to mister Bordner.
Cochran's home was searched by the FBI, and the strength
of Bardner's allegations, no incriminating evidence of any kind was
turned up. The FBI suspects that Bordner fabricated the account
in order to promote a future book. I think I'm
going to stop right there. This is the part I
warned you about in the beginning, where it's just going
to be one thing after another. But I think it's
important because it really just goes to show you that
when something really does happen, when there is like actual
violence against a black person by someone white and it's
racially motivated, it's so out of the friggin ordinary. I mean,
it is truly the exception that proves the rule that
most people just don't fucking care and they just want
to go to work and be left alone and not
be hated. And that includes everyone pretty much. But some
people get off and make money and get notoriety and
get famous on saying that they're being victimized, where a
lot of people nowadays can say they are victimized. There's
a whole fucking slew of this country, section of this
country right now that doesn't have power. There's flooding, there's everything,
and government the people who should the government, who the
one fucking job that they have, they're not willing to
do because they hate those people. They hate Appalachians and
the fact that there are black people included in the
victim group doesn't matter to them. The fact is is
freaking white Appalachians and they hate them. That's a real
victim group. Don't be afraid to fucking call yourself a
victim when you are a victim. Here's a whole list
of people who just make shit up. I'm sure you
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that's it, see you when we're going to finish up
Part five and probably get into part six. Take care bye,