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Atomwaffen Member Sketched a Map to Take the Neo-Nazis Down. What Path Officials Took Is a Mystery
Some experts and former officials see the case as part of a larger pattern, evidence that federal agencies are understaffed and out of position in confronting the threat of white supremacist terrorism — even as the FBI’s latest report shows a spike in hate crimes for the third straight year.
by A.C. Thompson Nov. 20, 10:45 a.m. EST
Tampa police detective Kenneth Nightlinger, seated right, questions Atomwaffen member Devon Arthurs in May 2017. (Frontline)
This story was co-published with Frontline PBS.
It was a grisly scene inside Apartment 3722 at the Hamptons, a gated community in Tampa, Florida.
One body lay face up on the floor, wedged between a wall and an air mattress. A handgun was stuffed in a holster on the dead man’s waist. The other body, clad in a black T-shirt and shorts, was slumped back on a futon, a shattered and bloody iPhone on his lap. A police investigator would later write that the two men had been “shot multiple times at close range with an assault rifle.”
There were some obvious clues that this was no ordinary double homicide. Tacked to the wall near the bodies was a large black-and-white flag bearing the insignia of the Schutzstaffel, or SS, Adolf Hitler’s elite paramilitary unit. On a nearby shelf was a black Stahlhelm, the distinctive helmet worn by Nazi soldiers during World War II. There were multiple copies of “Mein Kampf” and a prominent place was reserved for “The Turner Diaries,” the infamous novel of race war in America that has inspired generations of terrorists, among them Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber. A framed picture of McVeigh sat on a dresser.
On that night in May 2017, the police quickly took two suspects into custody and developed a rough outline of what had happened. One of the suspects, Devon Arthurs, 18, said the victims were his roommates, and members of a neo-Nazi group called the Atomwaffen Division. Arthurs said that he’d decided to leave the group, and that he’d killed the men to keep them from carrying out what he said were their plans for violence.
The second suspect detained by police, Brandon Russell, also lived in the apartment. Russell told the authorities he’d just returned home from a weekend of training with the Florida Army National Guard. And then Russell revealed something that should have set off alarms among federal investigators assigned to track the growing threat from armed, violent right-wing extremists. He said, and the police quickly confirmed, that the single-car garage attached to the apartment was full of explosives.
https://www.propublica.org/article/an-atomwaffen-member-sketched-a-map-to-take-the-neo-nazis-down-what-path-officials-took-is-a-mystery
by A.C. Thompson Nov. 20, 10:45 a.m. EST
Tampa police detective Kenneth Nightlinger, seated right, questions Atomwaffen member Devon Arthurs in May 2017. (Frontline)
This story was co-published with Frontline PBS.
It was a grisly scene inside Apartment 3722 at the Hamptons, a gated community in Tampa, Florida.
One body lay face up on the floor, wedged between a wall and an air mattress. A handgun was stuffed in a holster on the dead man’s waist. The other body, clad in a black T-shirt and shorts, was slumped back on a futon, a shattered and bloody iPhone on his lap. A police investigator would later write that the two men had been “shot multiple times at close range with an assault rifle.”
There were some obvious clues that this was no ordinary double homicide. Tacked to the wall near the bodies was a large black-and-white flag bearing the insignia of the Schutzstaffel, or SS, Adolf Hitler’s elite paramilitary unit. On a nearby shelf was a black Stahlhelm, the distinctive helmet worn by Nazi soldiers during World War II. There were multiple copies of “Mein Kampf” and a prominent place was reserved for “The Turner Diaries,” the infamous novel of race war in America that has inspired generations of terrorists, among them Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber. A framed picture of McVeigh sat on a dresser.
On that night in May 2017, the police quickly took two suspects into custody and developed a rough outline of what had happened. One of the suspects, Devon Arthurs, 18, said the victims were his roommates, and members of a neo-Nazi group called the Atomwaffen Division. Arthurs said that he’d decided to leave the group, and that he’d killed the men to keep them from carrying out what he said were their plans for violence.
The second suspect detained by police, Brandon Russell, also lived in the apartment. Russell told the authorities he’d just returned home from a weekend of training with the Florida Army National Guard. And then Russell revealed something that should have set off alarms among federal investigators assigned to track the growing threat from armed, violent right-wing extremists. He said, and the police quickly confirmed, that the single-car garage attached to the apartment was full of explosives.
https://www.propublica.org/article/an-atomwaffen-member-sketched-a-map-to-take-the-neo-nazis-down-what-path-officials-took-is-a-mystery
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