Combat 18 Accused Of Purloining David Lane's Ashes

He’s been dead nearly two years, but there’s a fight brewing in the white nationalist movement over one of its heroes, David Lane.

Actually, the brouhaha is over only a part of Lane. About one-fourteenth of him. That portion of his ashes is reportedly in Perth, Western Australia, more than 9,000 miles from where he died in Indiana. The last time a dead man’s ashes traveled this far may be when the cremains of LSD devotee Timothy Leary and Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry were blasted into orbit in 1997.

How Lane's ashes got all the way to Perth is a matter of controversy. Women for Aryan Unity activist Victoria “Vickie” Cahill is accusing members of the Australian division of the violent neo-Nazi skinhead group Combat 18 of misappropriating the ashes “through lies” and then “sending rape threats, threats of beatings” to Cahill and other WAU members when they protested.

“We want those ashes back,” Cahill posted to Stormfront and her MySpace page March 9.

Some background:

Lane died in May 2007 in a federal prison in Terre Haute at the age of 68. He was serving a 190-year sentence for racketeering, conspiracy and violating the civil rights of Denver radio talk show host Alan Berg, who was murdered in his driveway in 1984 by Lane and other members of the Bruders Schweigen, or Silent Brotherhood. The terrorist group was also known as The Order. Lane, a onetime member of the John Birch Society and the Ku Klux Klan, was a founding member of the group and served as the getaway driver in the Berg murder.

While in prison, Lane wrote screeds about race and became revered among white nationalists. He is perhaps best known for coining the “14 Words,"  “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White Children.” He co-founded 14 Word Press in Idaho to publish his writings. After his death, neo-Nazi stage mom April Gaede announced that she “and the gals from WAU [Women for Aryan Unity]” had created a memorial fund to have Lane’s ashes stored in the capstone of a pyramid monument to be erected in a white homeland, per Lane’s wishes.

But the gals couldn’t raise enough money for a full-sized pyramid, Gaede later revealed, and so they decided to apportion Lane’s ashes among 14 miniature pyramids – one for each of the 14 Words. Each of the puny pyramids was to be enshrined in the homes of 14 white nationalist women, including Cahill.

It wasn’t long before Gaede and Cahill and other members of Women for Aryan Unity were feuding over Lane-related matters, with Gaede accusing the WAU coven of “showing off” Lane’s remains at white nationalist events.

Now Cahill is urging a boycott of a proposed “ash spreading memorial service” for Lane in Perth. An invitation to “pro-White concious [sic] people” to attend the big event was posted last month on Stormfront. “Date will be finalized when attending numbers have been estimated,” it read. “Civil and neat attire is expected for the proceedings.”

Cahill is vowing to reclaim the ashes before said proceedings can proceed. “If I have to make my way to Australia to get these ashes I will,” she wrote. Cahill then added, ominously, “I will be contacting the bruders about this.”