Hammerskin Gets Hammered

Jury convicts Rowlett carjacker on 8 federal offenses
TO ORIGINAL STORY

By JIM GIBBS Staff Writer

Gary Dale Stanley Jr., 41, of Kaufman, pictured, and his mother Margaret Menough, 58, were convicted Wednesday by a jury on eight federal counts related to a carjacking in Rowlett last year. Stanley could receive a life sentence.
It took less than 30 minutes for a federal jury in Dallas to convict Gary Dale Stanley Jr., of Kaufman, and his mother, Margaret Menough, on eight counts related to a pair of Rowlett carjackings late last year and the subsequent attempt to threaten the victims in those carjackings.

Stanley, 41, was convicted late Wednesday on two separate counts of carjacking, using a firearm during and in relation to a crime of violence, being a convicted felon in possession of a firearm, two counts of tampering with a victim/witness and two counts of conspiracy to tamper with a victim/witness. Stanley faces up to life imprisonment and a $2 million fine for this conviction. He will be sentenced Oct. 18 by Judge Jorge A. Solis.

Menough, 58, was also charged in the indictment. She has signed documents agreeing to plead guilty to two counts of tampering with a victim/witness. She faces a maximum statutory sentence of 20 years imprisonment and a $500,000 fine.

Evidence was presented at trial that on the morning of Sept. 21, 2005, Stanley, a convicted felon and self-professed white supremacist, began a robbery spree in Rowlett, committing two carjackings, one using a loaded pistol.

Minutes after attempting to rob a Rowlett woman of money at gunpoint as she sat in her vehicle preparing to bring her daughter to school, Stanley then carjacked a Rowlett woman of her vehicle at gunpoint as she prepared to leave for work. The carjacking victim immediately called 9-1-1 and informed the authorities of what had just happened to her.

“All of the Rowlett Police officers worked very hard to bring this case to a successful prosecution,” said Lt. David Nabors, a spokesman for the Rowlett Police Department. “The jury in this case came back with a verdict in 30 minutes and I think that says a lot about the strong case we had against Stanley.”

A Rowlett officer in a marked police unit spotted the vehicle and attempted to stop it. Stanley began a high speed chase and eluded capture; however, he crashed into a utility pole in the process and immediately abandoned the vehicle, with the engine running, and the loaded pistol inside. He then came upon another vehicle, with the keys inside, parked in a nearby driveway and drove away, only to abandon this vehicle in the front yard of another residence a few minutes later.

After jumping fences and running through an alleyway, Stanley confronted his second carjacking victim, a Rowlett school teacher, as she prepared to leave for school, and he took her vehicle by force. The second carjacking victim immediately called 9-1-1 and reported the incident.

Within a matter of minutes, officers with the Rowlett Police Department intercepted the vehicle and a frightening high-speed chase ensued. Stanley even drove through a school yard to avoid the police and he re-entered the roadway and accelerated to a speed in excess of 90 mph, zipping through school zones and passing school buses.

In light of those circumstances, the police terminated the chase. Stanley later abandoned the vehicle in a wooded area in Collin County and stole a bicycle from a nearby residence. A Lavon police officer spotted him and took him into custody after he attempted to avoid the officer on the bicycle.

Stanley was later transferred to the Rowlett Police Department, where investigators there questioned him.

“He wasn’t always real forth coming and truthful during his interview,” Nabors said. “But, we have some detectives who do an excellent job of interviewing suspects. Stanley was covered in Nazi tattoos and Hammerskins tattoos. A lot of those tattoos are tattoos that gang members get when they get in jail. There’s nothing on his body that is there for show, though. It all has a message.



“He had been in prison before and in those cases, it is very difficult to get any information on the case at all because those guys won’t tell you anything. It was really a tribute to our investigators that they were able to get him to talk and tell us much of the information that led to his conviction by this jury in just 30 minutes.”

Nabors added that Stanley, who lived in the 1000 block of Highland Acres in Kaufman, had previously lived in Arizona and that there are no known Confederate Hammerskins in Rowlett.

“Stanley had been in the state penitentiary in Arizona for robbery twice as well as for burglary, theft, aggravated assault, possession of stolen property, flight to avoid prosecution and damaging property,” Nabors said.

Nabors added that while Stanley is a member of a white supremacist group, the car jackings were not race related.

“Stanley is a member of the Confederate Hammerskins, a white supremist group but his attacks were not racially motivated,” Nabors said. “He was just out to get some money.”

The Confederate Hammerskins were formed in the 1980s in the Dallas area and is made up exclusively of white males inclined to violence, Nabors said. Since that time, dozens of groups have formed around the United States.

“The reason that we decided to prosecute this at the federal level is because, at that level, when they are convicted, they go day-for-day on that sentence,” Nabors said. “There’s no time off for good behavior like there is in state court. In the federal courts, there are mandatory sentencing guidelines. He can get as little as seven years through the guidelines, but when they start looking at all the other factors that are involved in this case n the fact that he used a gun, has a prior record, is affiliated with a gang n all those things play into the sentencing.”

“So he could get anywhere from seven years to life and my guess is that he is going to get a pretty long sentence. He should be very old by the time he gets out of prison.”

Stanley was originally indicted in October 2005, for the carjacking and weapons offenses and the case was set for trial in federal court in January 2006. In mid-December 2005, however, the two carjacking victims received threatening telephone calls from a female caller, who informed them that if they did not drop the charges and refuse to testify, that their lives, as well as the lives of their family members, would be in danger.

State and federal authorities conducted an investigation and learned that Stanley’s mother, Margaret Menough, was the person who telephoned the victims and threatened them. Specifically, the authorities intercepted telephone calls between Menough and Stanley, who was incarcerated at the time, discussing their plans to threaten and intimidate the victims. In January 2006, charges were added to include victim/witness tampering, as well as conspiracy to commit these offenses, against Stanley and Menough.

U.S. Attorney Richard B. Roper praised the investigative efforts of the Rowlett Police Department, the Lavon Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The case was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Gary Tromblay and Chad Meacham.