Supremacist Group a Mystery to Hate Crime Experts : Prejudice: The few investigators who had heard of the Fourth Reich Skinheads trace them to flyers distributed last March in New Jersey.

The Fourth Reich Skinheads are such a mystery to Southern California that even some of the area’s leading hate crime investigators had never heard of the group until three of its suspected members were arrested Thursday.

“I’ll be honest, I didn’t know anything about them until I read it in the newspaper,” said Tommy Greep, a detective in the Los Angeles County sheriff’s Special Investigation Bureau who specializes in hate crimes.

Other law enforcement officials were equally surprised to hear about the group, whose members allegedly plotted to assassinate African-American and Jewish leaders and bomb the First African Methodist Episcopal Church, among other violent actions.

Christopher David Fisher, a 20-year-old sandwich shop employee from Long Beach, and two juveniles connected to the group were among eight suspected white supremacists who were arrested Thursday. But the other five were charged with trafficking in illegal weapons and apparently have no connection to the Fourth Reich Skinheads.

Independent organizations that monitor hate crimes have traced the group’s first appearance to March, when neo-Nazi flyers were placed on car windshields in Woodbridge, N.J. One flier was attributed to the Fourth Reich Skinheads and another included the name “SS Action Group,” which is based in Michigan.

When the flyers surfaced, the mayor of Woodbridge called for “a strong, united stand against the racist messages” and said the flyers were the “product of a deranged mind.” He also directed police to investigate the origin of the flyers.

The Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala., which monitors nationwide instances of hate crimes, does not have another recorded case of the group operating in the United States.

In fact, the Anti-Defamation League, in a report issued Wednesday tracking the existence of skinhead groups in the country, does not list the Fourth Reich Skinheads, although it estimates that there are 3,300 to 3,500 skinheads in 40 states.

According to an affidavit filed by a federal agent investigating Fisher, the first contact made with Fisher came in April, when a confidential informant working for agents called the White Aryan Resistance hot line and Fisher returned the call.

Fisher said that he was the leader of the Fourth Reich Skins and that it had more than 50 members. The group had committed two pipe bomb attacks, he said, once against a member of the “Spur Posse” group in Lakewood and another against an African-American in Paramount. There was no independent corroboration about the Paramount attack.

Authorities said Fisher also boasted that he threw a Molotov cocktail at a synagogue in Westminster but that the device did not ignite because it was raining.

During the informant’s third meeting with Fisher, he brought along six other suspected members of the group, all of whom were juveniles. Fisher and one of the youths provided more details about the attacks and in a later meeting Fisher allegedly delivered rifles, bayonets and black powder that was intended to be used to bomb the First AME Church.

The threats extended to the church’s pastor, the Rev. Cecil Murray, Rodney G. King, Danny Bakewell of the Brotherhood Crusade and rap music singer Easy E. One of the juveniles charged in the purported scheme said Murray would be killed when he uttered the words “Justice will be done” in a sermon while other skinheads would “spray the crowd inside.”

On Friday, White Aryan Resistance leader Tom Metzger sought to distance himself from Fisher and the Fourth Reich Skinheads, saying that although he had heard of them operating out of the San Fernando Valley, he was in no way affiliated with the group.

It would be easy for anyone to set up a hot line through the White Aryan Resistance by themselves, Metzger said, and if Fisher established one, it was without his knowledge.

“These groups pop up all the time and they are usually pretty small,” he said. “I condemn the possible bombing of a black church or killing Rodney King. In fact, we denounced the police beating of Rodney King. It’s an insult to our intelligence for anyone to suggest we would be part of that.”

Metzger said he knew that a law enforcement official had infiltrated white supremacist groups about two to three years ago and he said he constantly updated his hot line with notifications that arrests could be imminent.

“They felt the best place to set up a trap was L.A. and that’s what they did,” he said. “People will realize now that this is a serious game and listen when I warn them.”

But Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, believes that Metzger is still the catalyst for hate crimes in this area.

“The main point is that anyone can start a self-proclaimed hate group and it doesn’t matter what name they use,” he said. “Tom Metzger has been the magnet for this type of group in Southern California for 15 years.”