I Hate Illinois Nazis

9:03 pm, 3/1/05

I Hate Illinois Nazis
You may remember Matthew Hale, the head of his Chicago-based white supremicist group, "World Church of the Creator", who was imprisoned for trying have a federal judge killed after he lost his trademark infringement case.

Hale...has asked for a new trial, saying [his own defense attorney] Durkin disparaged him throughout the trial and went ''so far as to calling me names and even telling the jury that I deserved to be convicted on a moral basis.''

In another court filing, Hale also accused the government of altering transcripts of a secretly recorded Dec. 5, 2002, conversation. Hale contends he did not order anyone's murder and was talking about an attorney when reference was made to ''exterminating'' and ''Jew rat,'' and not a federal judge.

(If he was only going to exterminate an attorney, it's all supposed to be OK then?)

Well, tragically, that judge came home last night and found her mother and husband shot to death.

Should the killings be linked to Judge Lefkow's role as a jurist, "it will be the first time that family members of a United States judge have been murdered," he said.

Molloy said the killings appear to have occurred between 10:30 a.m., when the grandmother talked with one of her granddaughters on the phone, and 5:30 p.m., when the judge returned home.

He encouraged anyone "who has any information" to call a tip line at 312-744-8445.

If Hale was tied to this, he should swing from the tallest tree, the moratorium be damned.

Update: A couple more details escape in John Kass' Chicago Tribune column:

She crossed others, too, including one of the most feared men in Chicago, the Outfit enforcer Frankie "The German" Schweihs. She ordered Schweihs held without bond pending his 1988 extortion trial, saying the reputed hit man was capable of "committing dangerous acts."

Schweihs was convicted and sent to prison. He's one of those Outfit types mined for DNA as the FBI investigates old murders as part of Operation Family Secrets, an investigation I told you about three years ago.

But no one has connected the German with the Lefkow killings. And though I've been told that police are looking into white hate groups, and are now running down a lead about two white skinheads possibly seen in the alley before the crime, no one has formally connected Hale or white supremacists to it either.

Hale, the so-called "Pontifex Maximus" of his "church", was obsessed with the idea that Lefkow must be "a probable Jew or married to a Jew". (The family is apparently Episcopalian.)

Another Tribune piece has more on his plot to kill Lefkow, if you aren't familiar with it.

The security chief, Anthony Evola, was in fact an FBI plant in Hale's church who had secretly recorded their conversations.

On one of those tapes, recorded Dec. 5, 2002, at the church's headquarters in East Peoria, Evola is heard asking Hale, "We gonna exterminate that rat?" in reference to Lefkow.

Evola testified at trial that Hale leaned back in his chair with both hands behind his head and "nodded yes with a smile on his face."

"Whatever you wanna do," Hale then said on the tape. "My position's always been that I, you know, I'm gonna fight within the law. ... If you wish to, ah, do anything yourself, you can, you know?"

Hale then added: "So we're clear?"

"Consider it done," Evola said.

"Good," Hale replied.

The taped conversation took place one day after Hale sent Evola an e-mail asking for Lefkow's home address.

The real irony of Hale's self-serving lunacy is that Lefkow had originally ruled in his favor. It wasn't until an appeals court overturned it and she attempted to enforce that ruling that Hale became obsessed.

Hale originally came to some national prominence after one of his followers went on a shooting spree targeting minorities across Illinois and Indiana, killing 2 and injured 9. At the time, Hale suggested that what set the guy off must've been that the State of Illinois denied Hale a license to practice law. (In a final, ironic twist, as I understand it, he will finally be allowed to serve as his own attorney: At his sentencing in April.)

It only takes one or two angsty punks trying to enforce the will of "Pontifex Maximus".

Update: One of the things I should point out here, is that Lefkow's mother was 89, on a walker, and her husband was on crutches, recovering from a ruptured Achille's tendon. They lived on the north side. This was not a street thug robbery in some rough neighborhood, gone wrong when the residents fought back. These people were apparently forced into the basement and executed when at their most vulnerable.

A couple of people have brought up using the federal murder laws (and the federal death penalty) to get around Illinois' moratorium. The way it's been explained to me, Governor Blagojevich also has the authority to override the moratorium by executive order. If that's the case and we get a clear bead on who did this, one would hope, if this turns out to be what it appears to be, that the Governor would do the right thing for once. The personal tragedy for Lefkow and her family is, itself, immeasurable, but as a number of judges and attorneys have expressed in the last couple days, there's a social issue that has to be considered here.

"If someone was angry at me, they should go after me. It's not fair to go after my family....It's just so cruel," Lefkow said. "He was on crutches after some surgery, and they didn't have a chance. It was just cold-blooded. Who would do this?"

It isn't fair to go after her family, but that's likely why they did it. Even if this turned out to be somehow unrelated to Hale's murder plot, the mere possibility is enough to explain why this has to sorted out swiftly and firmly. Being intimidated comes with a judge's job, that's how the system works, but you can't have people acting on those threats any more than we tolerate cop killers. If it was intended as revenge on Lefkow or to intimidate the judge in Hale's sentencing next month, either way it was meant to send a message to our justice system, and it's not enough to just step up security on judges and prosecutors: Our justice system needs to make sure to send a message back. Attacking the system that preserves the rule of law in Illinois and in America is an attack on all of us, and like all such attacks, it should carry a terrible reckoning.

Update: The evidence includes ammo casings, a bloody shoe print, and a fingerprint on a shard of glass. The home also received several calls the night before, possibly from a correctional facility.