Website Read by Accused Racial Killer Encouraged 'Lone Wolf' Murders
The 22-year-old man who allegedly carried out a racially motivated rape and murder spree in Brockton, Mass., on the day after Barack Obama was inaugurated as America’s first black president told investigators that he drew his inspiration from the white nationalist website Podblanc, according to a police report.
Keith Luke, the man arrested Wednesday after a shootout with police in the Boston suburb, allegedly told police he wanted to kill blacks, Latinos and Jews because he had learned on racist Internet sites “about the demise of the white race.”
American neo-Nazi Craig Cobb runs Podblanc from Estonia, where Cobb moved in 2007 after decades of neo-Nazi activism in America with groups such as World Church of the Creator, White Revolution and the National Alliance. Podblanc features videos detailing combat handgun tactics, offers instructions in how to make Molotov cocktails and other improvised explosive devices, and explicitly celebrates and encourages “lone wolf” terrorism, up to and including hate crime murders of non-whites and Jews.
One Podblanc video entitled “Sniper Bags Negress,” for example, heralds the January 2008 random killing of a black woman in Omaha, Neb., by 19-year-old Kyle Bormann, who told police he targeted the victim because he was “pissed off” at black people. The website also glorifies the actions of Asa Coon, a troubled high school student who opened fire in a multicultural studies classroom in Cleveland in October 2007, wounding two teachers and two students before committing suicide.
“We need a martyr’s section for guys like Bormann and Asa Coon,” Cobb wrote in the “Sniper Bags Negress” comments section. “I’ll work on getting that installed.”
The alleged Brockton killer told police that he shot to death two immigrants from Cape Verde (an archipelago 375 miles off the coast of West Africa) and attempted to kill a third after forcing his way into her apartment, handcuffing her and raping her because he was “fighting for a dying race” and “fighting extinction” of the white race, the police report states.
According to the report, Luke told investigators he’d planned to continue his killing spree from just before 1 p.m., when it began, until 8:30 p.m., when he planned to shoot up the weekly bingo night at a synagogue near his house before turning his 9mm pistol on himself.
His goal, he allegedly told investigators, was to kill as many non-whites and Jews as possible. He was carrying 200 rounds of ammunition.
During a videotaped interview with detectives, Luke said he spent most of his free time on racist websites, especially Podblanc, which he said “spoke the truth about the demise of the white race.” Podblanc has more than 800 registered users. It's unknown at this point if Luke is one of them.
“Luke told us he educated himself about the ‘nonwhites’ on the internet and based on what he saw in public,” the detectives stated in their report. “Luke told us he would watch other people’s messages about ‘nonwhites’ and he would reply to their messages online.”
According to the arresting officers, Luke “muttered unintelligibly about the ‘Zionist Occupation’” when he was first taken into custody. Radical-right extremists often refer to the federal government they despise as the “Zionist Occupied Government,” or ZOG.
“Yesterday this defendant methodically began an evil plan of mass murder and rape in the City of Brockton, targeting victims he identified as non-white,” First District Attorney Frank Middleton said at Luke’s arraignment Thursday.
Luke pleaded not guilty to two counts of first-degree murder, one count of aggravated rape, and two counts of armed assault with intent to kill. He’s being held without bail.
