Fullerton Man Held: Took Rifle to Meeting of Racists

A 21-year-old ex-convict from Fullerton who attended a white-supremacist convention in northern Idaho has been arrested there and may face a federal indictment for illegally possessing a rifle, officials said Tuesday in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.

The Kootenai County Sheriff’s Department in Coeur d’Alene identified the suspect as Martin D. Cox. The sheriff’s office said Cox is on probation for an assault conviction in California.

Former Ku Klux Klan leader Tom Metzger said Tuesday that Cox is one of his race-separation recruiters in Orange County. Metzger, in a telephone interview, said that Cox had “been set up by a rube sheriff” in Idaho.

Metzger, who lives in Fallbrook, created a furor on the Cal State Fullerton campus last year when the student newspaper disclosed that he had been making cable-TV tapes on campus that advocated racial separation.

After weeks of student and faculty protests, Metzger was barred from taping at campus studios. Metzger now makes the cable TV tapes at a cable studio in Fullerton. Metzger said Tuesday that Cox had appeared in one of his racial-separation TV tapes.

“He is a hard-working person, a printer by trade, and he helps me in Orange County,” Metzger said of Cox.

Undersheriff Larry Broadbent, in a telephone interview from Coeur d’Alene, said Cox was arrested Saturday night as he was leaving the convention of a white-supremacist group, the Aryan World Congress. Metzger was one of the speakers at the convention.

Broadbent said Idaho state police stopped Cox’s car about eight miles north of Coeur d’Alene on a traffic citation. Cox was arrested when he was found to be driving with a suspended operator’s license, Broadbent said. Cox’s car also had a faulty license tag, Broadbent said. Officials said Cox was still in jail Tuesday afternoon.

Broadbent said police found a .22-caliber rifle in the car Cox was driving. “We turned this information over to federal authorities because it’s a federal offense for a convicted felon to have firearms,” Broadbent said.

Broadbent said Cox has a shaved head and is a member of “The Skinheads,” which Broadbent described as a neo-Nazi group whose members admire Adolf Hitler. Members of that organization and other white-supremacy groups attended the two-day Aryan World Congress this weekend, Broadbent said. The event was peaceful and no mass arrests resulted.

Metzger, however, said state, federal and local police in Idaho had “harassed” the segregationist convention. Metzger said he believes police stopped Cox “without a legitimate reason.”

Metzger confirmed that Cox belongs to “The Skinheads.” He said the members of that group are “young, urban working-class people, and they don’t let anyone push them around. Sometimes they get into confrontations with other groups, such as black gangs.”

Metzger said he didn’t know the nature of Cox’s California conviction. Cox is a supporter of, and recruiter for, Metzger’s new organization, White Aryan Resistance, Metzger said. He has described the goal of WAR as seeking “separation of groups by race and culture.”

Metzger said WAR is not a white-supremacy group, “and we’re not right wing because we know the right-wing conservatives have already sold out the white man.”