Suspects’ Ties to Anti-Semitic Sect Investigated

Two brothers under investigation in the murder of a Redding area gay couple and three synagogue fires here appear to have been heavily influenced in recent years by an apocalyptic, anti-Semitic faith that has been a unifying force for the fractious white supremacist movement in the 1990s, experts and law enforcement officials said.

As investigators try to piece together a case against Benjamin Matthew Williams, 31, and his 29-year-old brother, James Tyler Williams, it remains unclear whether the pair were part of any particular organized militia or hate group.

But law enforcement officials probing the June 18 arson blazes and the double murder two weeks later increasingly believe the brothers were swayed by Christian Identity, a fringe faith that considers Jews and people of color subhuman, and views abortion and homosexuality as unpardonable sins.

Much of the hate literature uncovered by authorities during searches of the brothers’ Redding area homes reflects the teachings and philosophy of Christian Identity, which experts believe has as many as of 50,000 followers in North America.

While the brothers cobbled together their own ideology, “they drew heavily on the Identity movement,” one law enforcement official said.

The Williams brothers sit in Shasta County Jail, charged for now with receiving stolen property. But investigators are collecting evidence they say will result in the filing of murder charges this week in the deaths of a gay couple whose bodies were found July 1 in their home near Redding. The brothers also are suspected of playing a role in the synagogue arsons, authorities say, in part because a list of about 30 people mentioned in news reports of the blazes was found in one suspect’s home.

Authorities also recovered a box identical to one found at one of the Sacramento synagogues after the arson fires and a notebook filled with anti-Semitic writings similar to language in fliers found at two of the damaged synagogues, the Sacramento Bee reported last week.

Federal agents have interviewed two witnesses, including one who helped draw up a composite sketch that looked similar to the older Williams and another who spotted a red car similar to the one the brothers drove, the Bee also reported.

Authorities have refused to confirm the report.

Tyler Williams, who like his older brother goes by his middle name, told the Redding Record Searchlight in a jailhouse interview last week that he never met the slain couple. He said his fate is in God’s hands. “What I always like to say, is whatever the Lord God wants to happen will happen,” he told the newspaper.

Attorneys for the brothers had no comment or did not return repeated phone calls to their offices seeking comment.

From Devout Family

Longtime friends and classmates in the Central Valley expressed shock that the two high school honor students, who come from a religiously devout family, would end up suspected of crimes like these. “They’re a very, very warm, gracious, loving family,” said Craig Cook, who was pastor at a Central Valley church the Williams family attended in the early ‘90s.

Matthew Williams has yet to speak publicly, but some friends say that in recent years he underwent a troubling shift away from a conservative--and strident--Christian faith to more radical beliefs centered on anti-Semitism, racism and staunch opposition to government.

And they suggest his younger brother, who always seemed cowed by Matthew, was pulled along with him.

“It’s not like he identified strongly with any one group or organization,” said Jonathan Bernstein, the San Francisco-based regional director of the Anti-Defamation League. “He was dabbling in a lot of things.”

The early morning arson attacks, which caused more than $1 million in damage to three Sacramento synagogues, attracted nationwide attention. Then, less than two weeks later, Gary Matson and Winfield Mowder were found shot to death in Happy Valley, outside Redding. Investigators believe the pair crossed paths with the brothers because of their mutual interest in horticulture.

The Williams brothers, neither of whom had ever been arrested, were seized by police in Yuba City as they picked up an ammunition loader allegedly purchased with Matson’s credit card.

Investigators are now asking whether the outbreak of violence in Northern California and the Midwest is part of a larger criminal enterprise or conspiracy. James Maddock, the FBI’s top agent in Sacramento, has said the law enforcement task force looking into the Sacramento arson fires will coordinate with other federal agents around the country. Law enforcement officials from across the nation will meet soon to compare notes, one source said.

Federal investigators are specifically trying to determine whether the crimes are related to a July 4 weekend shooting spree that left two dead and nine injured in Illinois and Indiana. Gunman Benjamin Nathaniel Smith, who had ties to the Illinois-based World Church of the Creator, a white supremacist group, also killed himself as police were closing in.

Matthew Hale, leader of the World Church, said federal authorities are trying to smear his group by linking it to events in Northern California and the Midwest. Hale insisted his organization has no ties to the Williams brothers. “They have never been affiliated with us whatsoever,” Hale said. “We’ve heard they are Christian Identity adherents.”

Joe Roy, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, said it appears the Williams brothers were driven by the canons of Christian Identity. “People don’t connect the dots,” he said, “but a lot of the terrorism in this country is perpetrated by people linked to Christian Identity.”

Experts in domestic terrorism say Christian Identity, which has more than 90 active ministries in 34 states, is the religion of choice for white supremacist groups such as Aryan Nations, Posse Comitatus and factions in the Ku Klux Klan and militia movement.

Followers of the religion include Eric Rudolph, who is a suspect in the Atlanta Olympics bombing and attacks on abortion clinics, and a cadre of true believers in the Midwest who pleaded guilty in connection with 22 bank robberies meant to fund a revolution.

The religion has no central authority or ecclesiastical structure. The most radical arm of the faith believes that Jews were the product of a union between Eve and Satan and that blacks and other minorities are lowly “mud people.” It is vehemently anti-gay. Non-whites will be destroyed, along with the government, in a final apocalyptic battle, they believe.

On the cusp of the millennium, a report by Roy’s group warned that “there is a risk that many in the Identity movement will attempt to bring their apocalyptic vision to reality through violence.”

Early on, newcomers to white supremacy are introduced to “a potpourri of alleged conspiracies involving the government and various international agencies,” according to Roy’s group. “Soon, many of them find themselves asking who is behind these nefarious plots. Christian Identity offers them the answer--the ‘cursed’ Jew.”

Raised in a deeply religious family, Matthew Williams has hit rough patches before. During a stint in the Navy after high school, a failed relationship produced a child.

Soon after he enrolled at the University of Idaho in 1993, he joined a charismatic Christian church. But he left in 1995 with half a dozen other disaffected members, publicly accusing church elders of operating a cult.

Church leaders scoff at the notion, saying members of their multiracial congregation enjoy freedoms typical of any mainstream religion. Williams, they say, seemed to be a troubled soul.

“He was an aloof guy,” said Tom Weaver, executive administrative assistant at the church. “He had some personality issues and problems. Let’s leave it at that.”

Williams then began a vigorous quest to hone his spiritual philosophy, hunkering down in his aging trailer off campus and using his computer to tap into the Internet, according to several friends. The journey, they said, included almost monthly shifts in diet--from drinking fungus teas to consuming a brew of liquid silver he claimed would purify his system. Worried about impurities and poisoning his body, he rarely used deodorant or brushed his teeth with commercial toothpaste, said Michael Godbold, a friend from that period.

Godbold and others describe the elder Williams brother as unabashedly ardent about the cause of the moment, a “born fanatic” who couldn’t live with life’s subtleties. Though book smart, he also accepted--without skepticism--whatever radical-right philosophy he reeled in on the Internet, friends said.

“He would bounce around from weird idea to weird idea,” Godbold said.

Ultra-Right Propaganda

Early on, Matthew Williams gobbled up anti-tax zealotry. But then he turned to the teachings of the Christian Identity movement. From there it was a short jump to militia Web pages, white supremacist publications and other ultra-right propaganda, friends said.

Jeff Monroe, a college library technician who befriended Williams in the Northwest, recalled driving past a group of African American athletes with Williams at the University of Idaho. Williams turned to him and questioned whether blacks were subhuman, Monroe said.

“By the time he left here, he was a hard-core anti-Semitic, racist,” Monroe said. “He did it so fast. In six months he went from having not much of an opinion to being a confirmed racist.”

Publicly, however, Williams showed none of this. Charles Bond, his landlord at the trailer park, remembers the elder Williams brother as very quiet, very friendly, very polite. “There was no indication of fanatical feelings. . . . Until the guilty plea comes in, I find it hard to believe he did anything like this,” Bond said.

Friends and schoolmates who grew up with the Williams brothers in Gridley--about 90 miles south of Redding--had the same impression. But when Matthew Williams returned to Northern California in 1996 to live with his parents, the change in his personality seemed cemented.

His voluminous letters grew increasingly radical, Monroe said, bristling with anti-Semitic language, referring to the U.S. as “JerUSAlem” and complaining about a Jewish conspiracy controlling the media and government.

Last spring, Williams wrote a letter to a Redding newspaper columnist, labeling integration “folly” and suggesting that the notion that society can grow stronger through racial diversity “is a great lie that should be obvious to anyone observing modern America.”

He also was an acquaintance of Larry Wampler, a Redding area resident who organized a speech in February by John Trochmann, a leader of the Militia of Montana. “I had no influence on him. John Trochmann had no influence on him,” said Wampler, who then excused himself, saying, “The FBI is at the door.”

In his jailhouse interview, Tyler Williams said he and his brother had always been close. But friends say the younger brother was dominated by his elder. For a time, Tyler moved to Idaho and lived with his brother.

Matthew, they say, demanded that his brother read what he read, eat what he ate. Monroe recalls having Tyler over for dinner one night. Matthew called and insisted that his younger brother come home and eat with him. Tyler dutifully got up and drove back home.

Tyler tried working in Seattle, but left after a week. After that, Monroe said, he “became his brother’s shadow.”

At Chico State, where Tyler Williams got a degree in industrial arts in 1994, he was remembered as clean-cut and a good student--anything but a radical. Ray Rummell, a professor of mechanical engineering and manufacturing, recognized Tyler in news photographs after his arrest.

“I had no clue he had that kind of prejudice; he never revealed anything in my presence,” Rummell said. “He was pretty reserved and didn’t stand out.”

When the brothers were arrested July 7, investigators said they found two assault rifles and a shotgun in their car. One brother was wearing a bullet-proof vest. In the newspaper interview, Tyler Williams said they were on their way to a gun range at the time.

The younger brother said investigators told him he could face the death penalty if charged in the slayings but he seemed unmoved, explaining that the Bible “talks about how to die is to gain.” Death, he added, “doesn’t really matter. It’s a small matter.”