White Supremacists Discussed Killing Norman Lear, Witness Testifies

Members of The Order discussed assassinating TV’s “All in the Family” producer Norman Lear, Denver radio talk show host Alan Berg and others with “anti-white views,” a witness testified Monday in the racketeering trial of 10 alleged members of the white supremacist group.

Denver Daw Parmenter II testified that he and other Order members had also discussed killing Morris Dees, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala., which monitors Ku Klux Klan activities, and Peter Lake, a journalist who infiltrated the Aryan Nations, an Idaho-based religious group from which The Order split.

No target was selected at that meeting in early June, 1984, Parmenter told the U.S. District Court jury. However, Berg was shot to death in the driveway of his Denver home on June 18, 1984.

Members of Hit Team

The triggerman was Bruce Carroll Pierce, one of the 10 defendants on trial, Parmenter said, adding that the other members of the hit team were Richard Scutari, who remains at large; Robert Mathews, who was killed in a shoot-out with lawmen last December, and David Lane, who is on trial.

Parmenter, 33, said that Lear and the other assassination targets were chosen because they were Jewish or held what The Order considered to be “anti-white” views. Parmenter cited also what he called anti-white television programs produced by Lear.

Parmenter testified that he and six others staged an armored car robbery at a Seattle shopping center on April 23, 1984, in which more than a half million dollars was taken to “help the white movement.”

After they returned to their base in northeast Washington, the robbers split the loot, with each receiving about $24,000, Parmenter said.

$40,0000 to Aryan Nations

It was then decided to give $40,000 to the Aryan Nations, and Parmenter said that he was told by defendant Gary Lee Yarbrough that the money had been delivered.

In his second day of testimony as the racketeering trial began its second week, Parmenter told also of a May, 1984, cross-country “recruiting” trip that he and two others took to line up possible new members for The Order, and of efforts by the group to set up a counterfeiting operation.

Ten of the 23 alleged Order members indicted for racketeering in April are on trial in Seattle. Eleven others have pleaded guilty in the case. One remains at large, and one faces trial in Missouri in the killing of a state trooper.

Parmenter pleaded guilty in January to racketeering in exchange for a 20-year sentence in a medium-security prison and his testimony at the trial.