Shooter Cultivated His Racist Views in College

The white supremacist who police believe killed two people and wounded nine during three days of racist mayhem had been preaching hate and colliding with authorities for more than two years before he began his shooting outburst.

And although Benjamin Nathaniel Smith’s racist beliefs apparently started taking shape when he was in his early teens, the 21-year-old began his public proclamations around the time he became friends in college with the minister of a white supremacist church.

Smith died late Sunday after shooting himself three times--first in the chin while fleeing police in a stolen van in rural Southern Illinois, then once in the chest and again in the leg during a scuffle with officers trying to pull him from the crashed vehicle, authorities said. He was alive when handcuffed but was pronounced dead a short time later at a hospital.

On Monday, police raised the total of nonfatal shootings attributed to Smith from seven to nine, naming him as the prime suspect in a Saturday shooting in Springfield, Ill., and another in Decatur, Ill., that left two African American men wounded.

“There were so many shootings you couldn’t keep up,” said Lt. Jim Burton of the Springfield Police Department.

After a sweltering holiday weekend of terror, people in Illinois and Indiana breathed a sigh of relief Monday upon learning of Smith’s death. He is believed to have slain an African American father of four and a South Korean-born college student, and wounded six Orthodox Jews, two black men and a Taiwanese student.

“It’s over,” one woman said. “I’m just glad it’s over.”

Smith was raised in the upper-middle-class suburbs of Chicago, his father a doctor and his mother a real estate agent. An average student with a fondness for classic literature and fantasy board games, he graduated in 1996 from New Trier High School, alma mater to such notables as Charlton Heston, Rock Hudson and singer Liz Phair.

He pleaded guilty to a battery charge in the Chicago suburb of Skokie that year and was sentenced to a year of court supervision and drug counseling.

In the fall of 1996, Smith enrolled at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, majoring in agriculture. Sometime during the next year or so, he met the Rev. Matt Hale, the leader of the white supremacist World Church of the Creator, who was then studying law. The two became friends, apparently bonding over a shared belief in the inferiority of blacks, Jews and “the mud races.”

Over the next two years, Smith evolved into one of the church’s most vociferous, most virulent parishioners.

But the “genesis of my racial awakening began in the eighth grade,” he wrote in a March issue of the church’s newsletter, the Struggle.

Smith wrote that his Jewish teacher “began with the ‘slaughtering’ of the Indians by white pioneers and settlers. He then moved to the ‘evils’ of black slavery, and ended with the ‘murder of 6 million Jews.’ . . . The entire class was mind-manipulation, pure and simple, but then it happened. . . . The L.A. race riots broke out overnight. I saw scenes of [blacks] burning down the City of Angels and dragging whites from their cars for no reason other than the color of their skin. The experience was brutal and frightening. . . . What would whites do if a full-scale race war broke out?”

Tall, lanky and with short, well-groomed hair, Smith had several run-ins with campus police during his 18 months at the University of Illinois, said Lt. Mike Metzler of the Urbana Police Department. At one point, Smith and Hale were questioned for allegedly stuffing racist leaflets into the mailboxes of African American law students, authorities said.

It was during his time in Champaign-Urbana that Smith’s latent racism began to intensify, he wrote in the same issue of the Struggle.

“At the time, I was not a complete racist. . . . By talking to [minorities], I discovered that the vast majority of black, brown and yellow students were here because the government was paying their way. The muds were not more qualified; in fact, they were less qualified. . . . I felt as if what was once our government had begun to turn against white people.”

Smith was expelled in February 1998 for allegedly possessing drug paraphernalia and striking his then-girlfriend, Elizabeth Sahr. Hours before Smith’s death Sunday, Sahr told the University of Illinois student newspaper that the shooting rampage was likely his “Independence Day” celebration and predicted he would not be taken alive.

In the summer of 1998, Smith enrolled at Indiana University in Bloomington, changing his major to English and later to criminal justice, according to school officials.

Almost immediately, he made his presence known to the campus and the city--albeit through a pen name, Benjamin “August” Smith, which is a reference to Roman emperor Caesar Augustus, according to World Church of the Creator documents. He employed the name when writing racially biased letters to the editor of the school paper and mailing anti-Semitic leaflets to a school Jewish group.

His own neighbors in the largely minority student apartment complex did not realize that the odd, distant and somewhat unfriendly Ben Smith in their building was the racist Benjamin “August” Smith, who, through his writings, quickly earned a reputation in the liberal college town.

“This building is 80% minority; he had blacks on both sides and above him,” said Tyrese Alexander, a 23-year-old African American student who lived in the apartment next to Smith’s. “He never let on that he was Benjamin ‘August’ Smith. There was no intensity in his eyes, no threat in his character. We had discussed [Benjamin ‘August’ Smith] in class and I never knew I was living next to this guy.”

Over the summer and into the fall, Smith and another church member, David Carne, passed out thousands of racist leaflets, including one titled “Facts That the Government and the Media Don’t Want You to Know.” For their efforts, the church named the two “creators of the month,” a prestigious award for energetic members, for August.

In September, university Vice Chancellor and Dean of Students Richard McKaig summoned Smith to a meeting for not adhering to the university’s rules on where and when fliers may be posted.

“He felt we were harassing him due to the content of his fliers,” McKaig said. “We wanted him to know the campus regulations on advertising. He indicated he did not intend to violate regulations, but he did intend to exercise free speech rights. It was a businesslike meeting.”

Smith stopped distributing his pamphlets on campus but continued to spread them throughout the town--prompting a massive anti-hate rally in November and leading to the creation of an anti-racist community group that is still active.

Shortly thereafter, Smith shaved his head. And in April, Smith and a friend, Christine Weiss, were charged with littering for allegedly tossing hate mail onto lawns in suburban Wilmette, Ill., where Smith’s parents live. Smith was also charged with driving under the influence.

Then, on Friday night, Smith climbed into his 1994 Ford Taurus. He had a .22-caliber and a .380-caliber pistol. Some of his victims say he also had a dead look in his eyes.

He drove to West Rogers Park, a racially diverse Chicago neighborhood, and opened fire on groups of Orthodox Jews walking to and from a synagogue, wounding six, including a 15-year-old boy.

He then drove to Skokie and fatally shot 47-year-old former Northwestern University basketball coach Ricky Byrdsong in front of two of his children.

A few minutes later, he fired five shots at an Asian American couple, missing them.

On Saturday, police say, Smith made his way south, to Springfield, where he shot a 31-year-old African American man, wounding him in the buttock, and fired at two other black males a few minutes later.

Then he headed for Decatur, where he shot pastor Stephen Anderson, wounding him in the forearm and hip as Anderson waited to cross the street. Anderson is black.

Before the day was done police believe Smith shot 22-year-old Steven Kuo, a graduate student of Taiwanese descent, as he walked with four friends near the University of Illinois. The bullet tore through the femoral artery in Kuo’s right leg. He was listed in serious condition.

On Sunday, Smith headed for Bloomington, Ind., his other former collegiate stomping grounds. There, he shot Won-Joon Yoon, a 26-year-old graduate student in economics, twice in the back as Yoon stood outside the Korean Methodist Church. Yoon died at the scene.

Shortly after 10 p.m., back across the state line in Salem, Ill., Smith dumped his car and approached a woman in a van. “He pulled a weapon, pointed it at her head, and told her to get out of the van,” said Marion County Sheriff G.L. Benjamin.

A 15-minute slow-speed chase ensued. Smith shot himself once in the chin, police say, and crashed his car. As officers approached the bleeding man, he put his hand into a bag, pulled out a gun, and fired at least two more shots, striking himself in the chest and leg.

The bag also contained a large amount of cash.

On Monday, as two families planned funerals and nine others cared for wounded relatives, Hale mourned his friend Smith.

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“As far as we’re concerned,” Hale said, “the only loss was the loss of one white man.”

Times staff writer Stephanie Simon in St. Louis contributed to this story.