Texas Jury Hears Account of Fatal Shooting by White Supremacist | Hatewatch | Southern Poverty Law Center
*Mexikaresistance.com Note: Yet another example of white christo-fascist terrorism that never makes the news.By Friday, jurors are expected to begin weighing the evidence against a Texas murder suspect allegedly linked to Kingdom Identity Ministries, a racist, anti-Semitic group that opposes mixing of the races. Defendant Mark Simmons of Buda told an investigating officer that the victim, his friend Steven Woelfel, deserved to die because he had a Mexican girlfriend, according to testimony in the Hays County trial.
Simmons contended that after years of the U.S. government spying on him, he was in a paranoid mental state at the time of the killing, according to the San Marcos Mercury. He testified that he accidentally shot the 55-year-old Woelfel in his friend’s home in April 2010 and let the body sit for a week before setting a fire that burned it beyond recognition. In addition to murder, he’s charged with arson and tampering with evidence.
A Texas ranger testified at the trial that when Simmons, 52, was arrested he had white supremacist literature in his possession, including the book Vigilantes of Christendom: The History of the Phineas Priesthood. The book, said ranger Jimmy Schroeder, concerns a Biblical figure named Phineas, who apparently kills a mixed-race couple to win God’s favor.
Schroeder also said he found the words “avenger of blood,” apparently in Simmons’ handwriting, on charred paper in the garage — ostensibly a reference to the Phineas book. Schroeder said investigators also found information about cleaning a crime scene and disposing of a body in the garage.
Before his capture in June 2010, after weeks on the run, Simmons went to the home of Kingdom Identity Ministries founder Mike Hallimore, prosecutors said. Simmons claimed he visited Hallimore merely to annoy government agents who were spying on him from an aircraft.
Kingdom Identity Ministries, based in Harrison, Ark., is the largest supplier of materials related to Christian Identity, a radical-right theology that generally identifies people of color as soulless sub-humans and Jews as satanic or cursed by God. It churns out Identity Bible study courses, tracts and books, and teaches that Judgment Day will arrive in the form of a sanctified race war, a theory widely popular with prison-based racist gangs like the Aryan Brotherhood.
FULL ARTICLE: Texas Jury Hears Account of Fatal Shooting by White Supremacist | Hatewatch | Southern Poverty Law Center.
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