Alleged Neo-Nazis Get 90 Days in Jail for Having Skull, Signs

Two men described by police as neo-Nazi punk rockers were sentenced Wednesday to 90 days in jail for possessing a human skull and signs stolen from Jewish cemeteries, authorities said.

Jacob Luis Rupe, 20, and Craig Matthew Lax, 21, were sentenced in Burbank Municipal Court after a jury found them guilty of receiving stolen property and vandalizing church property, a court clerk said.

The two men were also placed on five years probation, ordered to pay $950 each in restitution to cemeteries and to perform 400 hours of community service on a Caltrans road crew, the clerk said.

They were arrested April 23, when police recovered the human skull, a sign from a temple and a Holocaust memorial sign while serving a warrant at the men’s apartment in the 2300 block of North Fairview Street, authorities said.

During a preliminary hearing early in the case, about 40 friends came to show support for the defendants, telling reporters outside the courthouse that the two men had been unfairly portrayed by the media and the police as racists.

The stolen property charges against the men stemmed from a case last November in which gravestones and urns were found inside a van in which the defendants were riding, said Robert Werner, the deputy district attorney who prosecuted the case.

The routine traffic stop at North California Street and San Fernando Road resulted in the prosecution of the driver, Kevin Beardsley, 21, on misdemeanor charges by the Burbank city attorney’s office, Werner said.

Rupe and Lax, however, were not charged in that case because of a lack of evidence connecting them to the rash of vandalism incidents at a handful of Jewish cemeteries, including Mt. Sinai Memorial Park near Griffith Park and Sholom Memorial Park in Sylmar, Werner said.

But in April, Benjamin Reynolds, an acquaintance of the duo, told police about items he had seen in the men’s apartment, Werner said. Reynolds became a key witness for the prosecution, telling the jury how Rupe admitted boiling the skull to clean it and nicknaming it “Mr. Shane.”