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 Los Angeles County sheriff’s detective 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 to 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 arrested Thursday. But the other five were charged with trafficking in illegal weapons and apparently have no connection to the Fourth Reich Skinheads.

Approached by a confidential informant, Fisher boasted a membership of more than 50. Undercover officers said they met about 18 juveniles who claimed to be members. But the Anti-Defamation League, which monitors hate crimes, says there are only 50 skinheads in all of Southern California.

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

Tracking organized neo-Nazi groups is an inexact science because of the lack of hard data. Skinhead groups are often structureless, with members floating from one group to another, experts say.

For instance, the Southern Poverty Law Center has traced the Fourth Reich Skinheads’ first appearance to March, when neo-Nazi flyers were placed on car windshields in Woodbridge, N.J.

But there had been no other record of the group’s activity until Thursday, when arrests were made 3,000 miles away in Los Angeles and Orange counties.

Regardless of the number of people involved in skinhead and other white supremacist groups in Southern California, area human rights leaders said this week’s events demonstrate the danger they pose.

“It is very important for people not to underestimate what has transpired just because only eight people were arrested,” said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean at the Simon Wiesenthal Center. “You don’t need a big group to make your point.”

While racially motivated hate crimes have steadily increased in Los Angeles County, authorities said crimes involving skinhead groups were believed to have been on the decline before this week’s revelations.

“Hate crime has been rising since 1986, but the extent of the skinhead activity has been going down,” said Eugene Mornell, executive director of the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission. “That is what is so surprising about the grandiose plans that these people had.”

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

Fisher said he was the leader of the Fourth Reich Skinheads and that had committed two pipe bomb attacks, one against a member of the “Spur Posse” group in Lakewood and another against an African-American in Paramount. Fisher was charged in the Spur Posse incident but there was no independent corroboration of 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 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 in the bombing of the First AME Church.

The threats were made against the church’s pastor, the Rev. Cecil Murray, Rodney G. King, Danny Bakewell of the Brotherhood Crusade and rap music singer Eazy-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” with bullets.

On Friday, White Aryan Resistance leader Tom Metzger sought to distance himself from Fisher and the Fourth Reich Skinheads, saying that he was in no way affiliated with the organization.

“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. It’s an insult to our intelligence for anyone to suggest we would be part of that.”