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Miranda grinned at me from across the table. “I’m so glad you talked me out of trying to do this by phone,” she teased.
I gave her a halfhearted scowl, then turned back to Laurie. “What kind of priests?”
“Phineas Priests. Self-proclaimed priests. Followers of an Old Testament character named Phineas.”
I was almost afraid to ask. “And what did Phineas do that these people find so inspiring?”
“He ran his spear through a mixed couple—a Hebrew man and a non-Hebrew woman. In the Christian Identity movement, the title ‘Phineas Priest’ can be claimed by anybody who kills or beats up a mixed-race couple. Or a homosexual couple. Or someone who’s considered a traitor to the white race.” She moused around on her laptop for a moment, then displayed a close-up image of an embroidered shoulder patch. At first glance, it looked almost like one we’d used on our Forensic Response Team jumpsuits until recently, featuring a white skull and crossbones stitched on a shield-shaped black background. Looking closer, though, I saw that this one was captioned PHINEAS PRIESTHOOD, and what angled down beside the skull was not a bone, but a spear shaped like a lightning bolt. Underneath the skull were the words “Yahweh’s Elite.”
She clicked again, and the shoulder patch was replaced by a photo of a sneering young man proudly displaying a leather jacket emblazoned with the words “Phineas Priest” across the back. “This is Daniel Lewis Lee. I took this picture of Danny at a white-power rally in Pulaski, Tennessee, in 1992. Back then, we didn’t know what ‘Phineas Priest’ meant yet, but we could tell he was mocking us with it. In 1996, Danny Lee and two buddies robbed and killed a gun dealer—a guy named Mueller, which they thought was a Jewish name—along with his wife and eight-year-old daughter. They suffocated all three by putting plastic bags over their heads.” Across the table, I saw Miranda wince. “Before they killed the girl,” Laurie went on, “they tortured her with electric cattle prods, asking about hiding places for guns and money. When they finally threw the bodies in a swamp, they joked that they were putting them on a liquid diet.”
She showed us another person—a handsome young man with close-cropped dark hair and a well-groomed mustache. He wore an orange jumpsuit, a bulletproof vest, and waist shackles. “Another guy strongly influenced by Christian Identity. Eric Rudolph. Remember him?”
“The guy who set off a bomb in Atlanta during the Olympics?” I ventured. “Back in, what, 1996?”
“Bingo,” she said. “He also bombed two abortion clinics—one in Atlanta, the other in Birmingham—and a gay bar in Atlanta. His bombs killed three people and injured more than a hundred. He said all the bombings were motivated by his opposition to abortion and homosexuality.”
“I’m having trouble connecting the dots,” I said. “What does bombing abortion clinics have to do with Christian Identity and hating Jews?”
“Remember that conversation we had about logic? My guess—and it’s just a guess—is that Identity hard-liners don’t give a flip about black women having abortions. But white women having abortions? They’re killing God’s Chosen Babies. So those white patients—and the doctors and nurses in the clinics? They’re not just murderers, they’re ‘race traitors,’ too, to folks like Rudolph.”
“Rudolph’s the guy who hid out in the mountains of North Carolina?” said Miranda. “For a really long time, right? Like, a year or two?”
“Like, five years,” Laurie corrected. “Despite the best efforts of the FBI and ATF and U.S. Marshals. He probably had help—maybe from other Identity members, maybe from antigovernment militia types. The Identity movement helped spawn the militia movement of the 1980s and 1990s.”
“Of course,” said Miranda. “Speaking of the devil’s offspring.”
“Any other reason you think the Christian Identity movement could be linked to our dead guy?”
“Maybe,” Laurie said again. She seemed to like the word “maybe” quite a lot. “For one thing, we’ve found Christian Identity groups in several parts of East Tennessee. Madisonville. Sevierville. Sweetwater. James Wickstrom—‘Wood-Chipper’ Wickstrom—came down for several gatherings at a farm in Sevierville. She shrugged. “Sow enough seeds of hatred—at a Christian Identity meeting or a presidential campaign rally—and sooner or later, some of those seeds will sprout, and violence will follow.”
Miranda frowned. “You said, ‘For one thing.’ I hate to ask, but it sounds like there’s another thing? Another reason?”
Laurie nodded. “These hate groups are constantly morphing. Old ones weaken or shut down, new ones spring up in their place. When SPLC got started, back in the early seventies, it was all about the Klan. Then Christian Identity and neo-Nazi and neo-Confederate groups cropped up. People looking for like-minded extremists can move from group to group, as their obsessions evolve, or as the groups rise and fall. Or people can belong to multiple groups at a time. There’s a particularly scary guy named Tilden Stubbs, for instance. Stubbs started out in Christian Identity, but then he got involved in the Southern Heritage Council—another group I wouldn’t entirely rule out in your murder case.”
“Southern Heritage? Sounds like a bunch of history buffs,” I said. “Civil War reenactors and such. Isn’t that pretty tame stuff?”
She made a face. “This group doesn’t stop at dress-up and playing army. This is an honest-to-God neo-Confederate group, trying to whip up enthusiasm for a secession campaign—”
“Wait,” I interrupted. “Secession, as in Civil War secession?”
“Exactly. And their rhetoric’s getting more and more strident. Their leaders rant about blacks taking jobs from whites, about blacks raping white women right and left. I suspect Tilden Stubbs of playing a role in the more militant tone. It started getting a lot harsher after Stubbs got involved with them, and that hasn’t changed, despite the fact that he’s been in prison for the past five years.”
“What’s he in for?” Miranda asked.
“Stealing weapons and explosives from the army. He was a Green Beret at the time.”
“Holy howitzers,” said Miranda. “Was he in cahoots with Heil-Hitler Glenn Miller?”
Laurie shrugged. “Not directly, far as we know. Bad apples from the same hate-family tree, though. Leaders of the neo-Nazi and Christian Identity movement encourage their followers to enlist in the military—especially the special forces, so they get specialized training in explosives and covert warfare. People like Miller and Stubbs have taken that advice and run with it. Stubbs and a buddy stole machine guns, grenades, C-4, TNT, land mines, even antiaircraft guns from Fort Campbell and Fort Bragg.”
“They stole them from army bases?” squawked Miranda. “Doesn’t Uncle Sam guard that stuff?”
“Not closely enough,” Laurie said dryly. “Like Glenn Miller, Stubbs wrote a manifesto and printed out copies for his followers. He pledged to devote his life to defending the Aryan race against blacks and Jews. And he thanked the government for training him to fight the coming race war.”
Miranda rolled her eyes. “Three cheers for God and cou
ntry.”
“Scary thing is, people like Stubbs and Miller really are true believers,” Laurie said. “Other scary thing is, there are lots more guys out there—mostly guys—stockpiling weapons and nursing grudges—not necessarily true believers, but if things start to get bad, they’ll join the fight. Maybe they’re pissed off because they’re in dead-end jobs, or because they got dumped. Or maybe they’re just mean so-and-sos who would love to have an excuse to start shooting people. Some people are just angry to the core, you know? And just looking for a reason to act on it. It’s like road rage on steroids. Cultural, socioeconomic, racial road rage, backed by automatic weapons and explosives.”
Miranda cocked her head and raised her eyebrows, studying Laurie’s face with almost clinical curiosity, then asked, “How many years have you spent immersed in this wonderful world of hate-spewing lunatics?”
“Twenty. More than. Twenty-five, almost.”
“Jesus,” said Miranda. “Your job makes ours seem downright cheery by comparison.”
Laurie laughed. “To each his own. I love reading about what y’all do. But to see it, and smell it, up close and in the flesh? I’d be puking in the bushes.”
“Well, then,” I said. “It’s so nice that we all have our special gifts. So bottom line: You do think we’re looking at a hate crime?”
“I do,” she said. “Only question is, which variety of hate? So many to choose from. It’s like Baskin-Robbins and the thirty-one flavors. Except all these flavors are toxic.”
I gave Miranda a questioning, can-we-go-now look. She shrugged, which I took as assent. “Laurie, you’ve given us a lot to think about. Obviously we need more information, but it helps to hear that we’re probably barking up the right tree. Figuratively and literally.” I pushed back from the table and stood up, and Miranda followed my lead. “Thanks very much.”
I held out my hand, and Laurie shook it firmly, saying, “Let me know how it goes. And call me if I can help.”
