Hearing Set for Metzger to Fight Plans by Court to Sell His House in Fallbrook

Tom Metzger, the white supremacist from Fallbrook, faces a Feb. 21 San Diego Superior Court hearing to explain why his house should not be sold to help satisfy a $12.5-million judgment against him and his organization, White Aryan Resistance.

San Diego attorney James McElroy, who has been active in trying to seize Metzger’s home and other assets since the October verdict issued by a Portland, Ore., jury, personally served notice of the Feb. 21 hearing Thursday on Metzger and his wife, Kathleen.

“They refused to accept service, however, so we passed (the notice) over the fence and also posted the fence,” McElroy said Friday, referring to Metzger and his wife.

The Portland jury found Metzger, his son, John, the White Aryan Resistance and two skinheads liable for $12.5 million in the beating death of Mulugeta Seraw, a 27-year-old Ethiopian immigrant living in Portland whose skull was split open when he was attacked by skinheads in November, 1988.

The jury found that the two skinheads, who pleaded guilty in the slaying, were incited by the Metzgers and his group’s campaign of racial hatred. Metzger is appealing the verdict.

The Metzgers’ Fallbrook house is worth about $150,000, McElroy said. State law, however, allows the Metzgers to keep the first $45,000 in equity worth of the house, McElroy said.

In recent weeks, Tom Metzger has appeared before a federal grand jury investigating the Sept. 15 bombing of the federal courthouse in downtown San Diego, which shattered the building’s front doors but caused no injuries.

Metzger, who has denied any link to the bombing, was ordered last week by federal prosecutors to produce the subscription list to the White Aryan Resistance newspaper, a demand he said he will refuse. That act could put him in contempt of court. The next hearing date in the federal case is uncertain.

The managing editor of the paper, Wyatt Kaldenberg, also could face contempt charges, McElroy said Friday.

At a hearing Thursday, Municipal Judge Timothy Tower reinforced a Dec. 21 order barring the transfer of funds in a bank account controlled by Kaldenberg, McElroy said. But, the lawyer claimed, Kaldenberg took out $1,200 from the account on Dec. 21, shortly after the first order was issued.

Tower, who said each count of contempt could bring five days in jail and a $1,000 fine, set a Jan. 31 hearing to consider the allegations against Kaldenberg, according to McElroy.