Metzger’s Wife Is Ill; He Gets Early Release : Courts: Judge cuts short the white supremacist’s jail term so that he may be with his spouse. She is in critical condition with cancer.

White supremacist Tom Metzger, sentenced to six months in jail for his role in a 1983 cross burning, was granted an early release Friday to be with his critically ill wife.

Superior Court Judge J. D. Smith said he approved the release request for the sake of Kathleen Metzger and not the former Ku Klux Klan leader.

Smith, however, warned Metzger he will be held accountable for comments made in a jailhouse interview that the judge said were threats against him.

Metzger had likened himself to a wounded grizzly bear in the woods and said that “the hunter better run, because the bear is very dangerous.”

Kathleen Metzger, 49, was reported in critical condition with lung cancer at Fallbrook Hospital in San Diego County.

Her son, John, said Thursday that she went into respiratory arrest Wednesday night and was rushed to the hospital.

A note sent to the judge by her doctor stated that she is gravely ill with a collapsed lung and low blood pressure.

“She is extremely unstable and certainly there is a likelihood that she will not survive,” Dr. Timothy Killeen wrote.

The Metzgers have been married 28 years. Kathleen Metzger’s cancer was diagnosed last fall and she underwent extensive radiation therapy.

John Metzger said she had shown improvement until flu-like symptoms appeared recently. They went away but she continued to weaken, he said.

Metzger, former Grand Dragon of the Klan and founder of the White Aryan Resistance group, was convicted in October of misdemeanor unlawful assembly for his role in the Dec. 3, 1983, cross burning in the San Fernando Valley.

He was sentenced to six months in jail, three years of probation and 300 hours of community service. He began serving the jail sentence Jan. 6.

Three others, Stanley Witek, 58, a leader of the neo-Nazi Nationalist Socialist American Workers Party, Erich Schmidt, 26, and Brad Kelley, 29, were convicted of felony conspiracy, unlawful burning and unlawful assembly.

Metzger claimed that he was not responsible for the cross burning and attended at the invitation of Frank Silva, who was then head of the California Ku Klux Klan.

The defendants contended that the cross burning could not be seen by the neighborhood and was a memorial for a white police officer killed by a black man.

Prosecutors contended that the burning was staged to intimidate the racially mixed Lake View Terrace neighborhood.