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Under Pressure, Neo-Nazi Landlord Puts Properties on Market
Posted By Brentin Mock On April 3, 2008 @ 7:28 pm In Extremist Commerce, Hate on Campus, Anti-Semitic, Neo-Nazi, Hate Groups | No Comments
[1] Bill White has a duplex to sell you. Make that 17 duplexes. The [2] neo-Nazi landlord has put the bulk of his Roanoke, Va., real estate holdings on the market, Hatewatch has learned. Asking price: a cool $2 million.
Although White has complained recently about subprime financing woes, it’s unclear exactly what’s motivating this sudden move, and whether it’s related to the American National Socialist Workers Party (ANSWP) chairman’s [3] rapidly developing legal troubles, as reported today in the Virginian-Pilot.
White is facing possible fines and jail time as a sanction for posting threatening comments along with the home address and telephone number of Kevin Mottley, an attorney with the Richmond, Va., law firm Troutman Sanders (or, as White describes him, “the attorney representing the niggers in Virginia Beach.”) Two days ago, on April 2, White was forced to appear before U.S. Magistrate F. Bradford Stillman to explain why he was publishing thinly veiled threats against Mottley, along with the attorney’s personal information, in a case White is not directly involved in. The magistrate did not say when he would announce any sanctions against White.
Mottley is part of a team of lawyers representing five African-American tenants in Virginia Beach who sued their landlord, John Crockett Henry, alleging a long pattern of racial discrimination. The tenants also filed a complaint with the U.S. Justice Department, which is now [4] investigating Henry and his connections to White, who mailed threatening letters to Henry’s tenants, calling them “niggers” and “dirty parasites” and warning them to watch out for white activists. White also mailed copies of National Socialist, a neo-Nazi publication he edits, to their homes.
The Department of Justice subpoenaed E-mails between Henry and White as evidence in a civil trial scheduled to begin in federal court May 19. White retaliated by posting Mottley’s personal information to various neo-Nazi websites and sporadically threatening all of the plaintiffs’ lawyers.
“After we are done with our legal dispute, they are open game,” White wrote Feb. 22. Referring specifically to Mottley and Mottley’s family, White wrote: “Do not send them ‘hate fliers’ or nooses. Do not call and record them and place those phone calls on YouTube. Do not open credit cards in their name, empty their bank accounts by Internet, hack their emails.”
One week later, White wrote, “I don’t care what happens to them one way or the other. … I could see agitated ANSWP fans who are not members and not under my control in any way deciding to ‘help,’ as they have when they have mailed nooses to black leaders or kidnapped members of Jewish groups.”
All these blog entries were included in the material White’s Internet service provider turned over to the Department of Justice, and Mottley’s attorney has asked the U.S. magistrate hearing the civil case to slap White with a citation for criminal contempt.
Mottley, who reports receiving “strange phone calls” at his house in recent weeks, testified at the April 2 hearing that his wife is fearful they may be harmed and that he perceived the posts to be threats.
White testified that any calls for violence on his website, on which he frequently advocates the murder of his perceived enemies and non-whites, are intended purely as satire. Mottley was less than relieved.
“I don’t perceive Mr. White to be a choir boy,” he testified after hearing White’s explanation. “Maybe in his mind he finds some humor in this. I don’t.”
Judge Stillman is expected to rule on the contempt complaint later this month.
White could be hoping to fund his legal battle and/or pay any fine he receives with proceeds from the sale of his 17 duplexes sited along Chapman and Patterson Avenues in Roanoke’s traditionally black Mountain View neighborhood. Listed by his wife, Century 21 realtor Meghan White, the duplexes include a total of 35 units. White claims they are currently generating $18,500 in rental income per month at full occupancy, or about $530 per unit.
Whatever his reasons for seeking to unload the duplexes, White shows no signs of taming his prolific online screeds in response to the pending judgment. The day after he appeared before Judge Stillman, White posted Mottley’s home address and phone number again, and taunted him for being a “ridiculous, cowardly, shaking-trembly attorney who basically cried on the stand yesterday when describing how terrified and fearful he was.”
White also published the home address of U.S. Department of Justice lead attorney Lori Wagner, and left instructions for his followers to “Write to them. Call them. Tell them what you think. … You have a right to contact people who are involved in activities that draw public attention. They do not have a right to conduct their activities in secret or to hide from you. And if they do something irrational, like hire police bodyguards to protect them from “threats” that exist wholly in their imagination, we are in no way responsible for that.”
