Teen Linked to Milwaukee Supremacists
Chicago Tribune
March 25, 1993
By Andrew Martin and David Silverman
During the months before he allegedly bombed a Zion roller rink last summer, Randall Scott Anderson traveled to Milwaukee on several occasions to meet with representatives of a white supremacist group based there, police said Wednesday.
A clearer picture of Anderson's neo-Nazi contacts also began to emerge as a federal magistrate refused a pretrial request by Anderson's attorney for a psychological evaluation of the teen.
Anderson, 19, was charged on Sunday with the June 14, 1992, bombing of the Park Roller Rink in Zion-a weekend gathering place for black teens and church groups.
Police say that during the months preceding the attack, Anderson corresponded with several white supremacist groups, including the Milwaukee-based Church of the Creator .
Formerly based in Otto, N.C., the Church of the Creator was founded by 72-year-old Ben Klassen , a retired real estate developer and former Florida legislator. Klassen moved the church to Milwaukee last March, and it has been active in Wisconsin and the Chicago area distributing racist literature, police said.
Copies of the group's newsletter, "Racial Loyalty," were found among Anderson's possessions in his parents' Winthrop Harbor home during a weekend search by police.
The church is composed of white supremacists and goes by the belief that "you are the creator of your own church. You can create your own beliefs," said Lake County Sheriff's Lt. Chester Iwan.
Police believe Anderson met with group members several times, Iwan said, but he would not elaborate on those contacts. Federal authorities investigating the case said Anderson attended several church meetings and parties sponsored by the hate group's members.
Anderson also has been linked by correspondence to Thomas Metzger, leader of the San Diego-based White Aryan Resistance and neo-Nazi groups in Hayden Lake, Idaho, officials said.
But those ties were not discussed during the pretrial hearing in U.S District Court in Chicago, in which Magistrate W. Thomas Rosemond Jr. denied a request for Anderson to be examined by a court-appointed psychiatrist.
Anderson sat passively, dressed in a blue prison jumpsuit, as Rosemond said he would deny the request based on events at a hearing Sunday in which the youth had acted as his attorney.
"Mr. Anderson clearly understood those proceedings, as shown in his request to be placed in protective custody so that he would not have to share his cell with an African American," Rosemond said.
Deputy U.S. Atty. Patrick Murray then outlined Anderson's role in the bombing during direct examination of FBI Special Agent Judith Coughenour, who led the government's investigation.
Coughenour described how with a group of five or six friends Anderson had constructed a pipe bomb filled with matches and black powder, and how sometime after midnight on June 14 Anderson and one of the friends drove to the Park, where they spray-painted a racist message on a back wall of the building before lighting the bomb and throwing it through a front window.
No one was injured in the attack, which damaged a concession area inside the rink and destroyed several video games.
The hearing, however, did little to shed light on how Anderson, a youth described by teachers at Zion-Benton High School as "brilliant," became involved with white supremacist groups.
Rosemond ordered Anderson to be held while a grand jury reviews the case. Anderson's attorney, James Reilley, did not request bond for the teen, and Anderson was returned to the Metropolitan Correctional Center, where he has been held since Sunday.