White Supremacy and Criminal Activity in the World Church of the Creator

[October 9, 1998]

Four members of an alleged hate group were charged with armed robbery and pistol-whipping the owner of an adult video store in Hollywood on March 29, 1998. The four suspects -- Raymond Leone, 18; Angela King, 23; Dawn Witherspoon, 22; and Donald Hansard, 23 -- are members of the World Church of the Creator, known by civil rights groups as a "neo-Nazi street gang" headquartered in Peoria, Illinois.

According to the Anti-Defamation League, The World Church of the Creator, established in 1973, attracted several hundred neo-Nazi skinheads and other white supremacists. Arthur Teitelbaum, southern area director for the Anti-Defamation League, commented, "This is not a real church. This is a group of violence-prone gutter-level bigots. They're one of the most violent groups of the right-wing extremists."

Their battle cry, RAHOWA! ("Racial Holy War!") reflects a philosophy, according to Prosecutors of the Hollywood incident, that advocates the persecution of African American and Jewish citizens. Because their purpose is to build a "whiter and brighter world," they targeted the video store, believing "...media outlets were controlled by Jews and that it was permissible to steal from the Jews," Thursday's indictment revealed.

The group received national attention in 1991 when George Loeb, a World Church minister, was arrested, convicted and sentenced for life imprisonment for the murder of Harold Mansfield Jr., an African-American veteran of the Persian Gulf War. Three times this year, well-to-do neighborhoods were littered with World Church fliers, including racist messages and cartoons of Martin Luther King Jr. In addition, police charged two members of the organization with the beating of a father and son. Federal officials believe the Hollywood robbery was patterned after an incident recorded in The Turner Diaries, a manifesto addressing racial revolution.