Militant Leader Pleads Guilty to Racketeering, Brink’s Holdup

The security chief of the militant group The Order, until recently one of the FBI’s 10 most-wanted fugitives, pleaded guilty Wednesday to racketeering and to a $3.8-million armored-car robbery.

Richard J. Scutari, 38, said little as he entered the pleas before U.S. District Judge Walter McGovern, but agreed with a prosecutor’s description that he was a leader in the militant sect and played a supervisory role in the July, 1984, robbery of a Brink’s Inc. armored truck near Ukiah, Calif.

In pleading guilty to racketeering and conspiracy to racketeer, however, Scutari denied involvement in the June, 1984, gangland-style murder of Denver radio host Alan Berg. That crime had been included as an underlying act in the racketeering counts.

Could Get 60 Years

Scutari, who had been scheduled to stand trial June 2, faces up to 60 years in prison when he is sentenced June 5.

In return for the guilty pleas, the government dropped counts of transporting and concealing stolen money, harboring a fugitive and conspiracy to commit robbery.

The racketeering charges were included in a Seattle indictment against 23 members of The Order. The armored car robbery was listed in a separate indictment out of San Francisco.

In December a federal jury convicted 10 Order members of racketeering, while Scutari was the only person indicted on those charges to remain at large. He was arrested by the FBI in March in San Antonio, Tex., after spending six months on the FBI’s 10 most- wanted list.

Slaying Accusations

Prosecutors alleged that Order members waged a crime campaign to topple the U.S. government and replace it with an all-white nation. Sect members were accused of killing Berg and another man, staging robberies that garnered more than $4 million, counterfeiting and committing other crimes in 1983 and 1984.

Witnesses in the Seattle racketeering trial said Scutari allegedly stood guard with Order founder and leader Robert Mathews while one of those convicted earlier of racketeering, Bruce Carroll Pierce, pulled the trigger on Berg. The sect fell apart in December, 1984, when Mathews was killed during a fiery, 37-hour standoff with FBI agents on Whidbey Island, north of Seattle.