Man Guilty in Race-Motivated Robberies

One of five men charged with robbing banks throughout the Midwest to finance a white-supremacist revolution was convicted Monday in U.S. District Court in Columbus, Ohio, of five felony counts stemming from two robberies.

Peter Kevin Langan, 38, was found guilty of participating in holdups at banks in Columbus and in Springdale, near Cincinnati, in 1994 and 1995.

Langan also was known as “Commander Pedro,” the name of the grenade-wielding star of a recruiting tape for the Aryan Republican Army, a small cell of violent extremists.

His boyhood friend, Richard Lee Guthrie, told authorities he also was a member of the group. Guthrie pleaded guilty to 19 robberies before apparently committing suicide in his Kentucky jail cell in July.

Scott Stedeford, 27, was convicted on three felony counts relating to an Iowa robbery in Des Moines in November. A federal grand jury in Philadelphia recently indicted Langan, Stedeford, 19-year-old Kevin McCarthy and 24-year-old Michael Brescia of conspiracy to rob the banks and work to overthrow the government. Mark Thomas, an Aryan Nations leader who lives near Allentown, Pa., was charged with helping to guide the group and receiving some of their proceeds.

Langan’s sentence on Monday’s conviction could range from 35 years to life in prison, said Fred Alverson, a U.S. attorney’s spokesman in Columbus. Sentencing is not expected until late spring.

Before the suspects were arrested, the mysterious bank robbers were known in the press as the Midwestern Bank Bandits. They struck over a two-year period beginning in January 1994, from Nebraska east to Ohio and from Wisconsin south to Missouri.