Slain Man’s Estate Sole Bidder on Metzger House : Court Auction: White supremacist vows that losing his house will not force him to change his politics or his practices.

The modest Fallbrook home from which white supremacist Tom Metzger has waged his racial hate campaign was auctioned by court order Wednesday--and the only bidder was the estate of the Ethiopian emigre beaten to death three years ago by skinheads incited by Metzger and his followers.

One of the attorneys for the estate, Jim McElroy of San Diego, said the house will be “fixed up” and turned over to a real estate agent for sale. No one else showed up at the front of the Vista Courthouse at 11 a.m. Wednesday to bid on the house--and none was expected, McElroy said.

From the forced sale, Metzger will receive $45,000 for his “homesteader exemption” as allowed by state law. A check covering that amount was turned over by McElroy to the San Diego County Marshal’s Office.

The balance of the minimum-bid $121,500 sale price--representing 90% of the appraised value of the two-story stucco home--will be deducted from the $5-million civil judgment against Metzger for what a civil jury said was his role in the November, 1988, killing of 27-year-old Mulugeta Seraw in Portland.

Morris Dees, of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala., filed a civil lawsuit against Metzger, his White Aryan Resistance (WAR), and his son, John, who recruits youthful, racist skinheads, claiming that the two Metzgers and their organizations incited the attack on Seraw and should be held civilly responsible for the murder.

Last year, a Portland jury agreed and ordered the Metzgers to pay a $12.5-million judgment to Seraw’s 9-year-old son. The senior Metzger was told to personally pay $5 million of that, and McElroy said the Fallbrook home was Metzger’s largest single asset.

While his house was being sold Wednesday, the older Metzger was appearing in a Los Angeles County courtroom where he is standing trial with three other white supremacists for participation in a 1983 cross-burning in Los Angeles’ Kagel Canyon.

Metzger, a former Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon, said Wednesday that Dees and McElroy were “just a bunch of thieves” who won the civil suit by bribing witnesses. “It’s fraud,” Metzger said in an interview.

He predicted there would be no other bidders for the house and said the minimum bid was “$30,000 more than it’s worth,” partly because it was in need of extensive repairs.

“It was not exactly Brentwood where I lived,” Metzger said.

Metzger vowed that losing his house will not force him to change his politics or his practices. He said he plans to move to another location in north San Diego County, but he would not be more specific.

McElroy said he is prepared to begin proceedings to evict Metzger, but he said it is his understanding that Metzger already is moving out of the house and, indeed, the house appeared vacated Wednesday afternoon. Neighbors said Metzger had been moving out, box by box, over the past several days into a nearby apartment complex. The chain-link fence that surrounds the home was padlocked at the driveway, and there were no signs of life inside.

Metzger conceded that there were “mixed emotions” in being forced out of his home of 20 years, where he raised four of his six children. But, he added: “I don’t allow materialism to affect me very much. When you are a political soldier, you have to be prepared to lose things.”

McElroy said the home had been appraised at $145,000--but the figure was based on a “drive-by appraisal” because no one has been allowed to see the inside of the house, which sits on about a quarter-acre lot that seems to have gone without maintenance.

McElroy said he isn’t sure what the house will look like when he gets the keys to it, within a week.

“I hope I find a palatial estate that will sell for a great deal of money,” McElroy said with a laugh. “But I’m expecting that may not be the case.

“Mr. Metzger has said in the past that he doesn’t have fire insurance, and not to be surprised if neighbors burn it down after he’s left,” McElroy said. “So we’ve written him a letter, putting him on notice that, if there are any damages done to that house, we would be making a claim against his homesteading exemption for the damage done to it.”

He said he is hopeful that the house will eventually sell.

“We’ll turn it over to a real estate agent, fix it up to the extent it needs to be, and try to sell it for the full value, $145,000, for the benefit” of Seraw’s son.

Will there be a stigma attached to the house?

“The way the real estate market is in California, I imagine that anyone who sees an opportunity to make a good buy will offer the money,” McElroy said.

Other Metzger assets--ranging from a pickup truck, facsimile machines and video and audio equipment to video tapes produced by Metzger for his “Race and Reason” cable television shows--will be auctioned later, along with a 10-by-50-foot trailer used by Metzger as a meeting hall.

The estate is also collecting proceeds sent to WAR’s two post office boxes in Fallbrook--through which, in 1988 and 1989, about $100,000 in contributions had funneled. A court-appointed receiver is now in control of those two boxes, and the amount of money coming through them now for WAR has slowed “to a trickle,” McElroy said.

He noted, however, that WAR rents postal boxes in two other states, and he is considering what legal options he has to gain control of them, too.

Metzger, by trade a television repairman and installer of satellite TV dishes, has abandoned his work and is now on welfare, McElroy said Wednesday, “although that will have to end because he’s going to have a check for $45,000.”

“We’ll never receive the total award from Mr. Metzger,” McElroy said. “Mr. Metzger doesn’t have $5 million. The judgment is good for 20 years, however, and as long as Mr. Metzger has assets or is making money, some of that money will be going to the family of the man whose death he caused.”

McElroy said the $45,000 going to Metzger was paid by a loan to his clients by supporters of the Southern Poverty Law Center, who will be repaid when the house is sold.

Aside from court officials, McElroy and reporters, the only other person at the brief auction proceedings Wednesday was a man who identified himself as George Kader of San Clemente, speaking with what he described as a Hungarian accent and describing himself as a white separatist with no affiliation with Metzger.

Kader said he protested the court-ordered auction because “a guy who is busy being the father of six children is being chased out of his home by a group of high-powered and financed Jews from the East Coast.”

Gorman reported from Vista and Wilkinson reported from Los Angeles.