Reputed Skinheads to Be Tried in Slaying of Homeless Man

What happened to Milton Walker Jr., is plain enough: Two days after Thanksgiving 1995 the 43-year-old homeless man died in a vacant lot, his skull crushed by repeated blows.

To know who killed him and why, prosecutors say, is to delve into a world of bigotry, savagery and self-loathing, to peer into the small lives of a vicious group of young white supremacists at the peak of a hate-fueled crime rampage in the high desert.

The slaying, authorities say, marked a wave of violence and intimidation so severe that federal investigators stepped in to restore order in the Antelope Valley, a community now labeled a hotbed of racial hatred.

In a region still reeling from the summer’s racist attacks on a Filipino letter carrier and a Jewish community center, three separate juries will be asked to decide whether three reputed white supremacist teenagers beat the life out of Walker behind a Lancaster fast-food restaurant because he was black.

When trial begins this week, jurors will learn about a society of young people who cover their bodies with tattoos of storm troopers and “white power,” and who, court records show, await a final “race war” by picking fights with minorities, primarily blacks, then boasting of those attacks. They will hear how the skinheads’ fear of their own “Aryan brothers” leads to group violence, and they may learn how fists are turned even on a concerned parent trying to save a 16-year-old girl from delinquency and hatred.

“Basically, what they wanted to do was to intimidate and to use violence to give the opinion that Lancaster was not a safe place for minorities,” FBI Agent Jack Schafer testified at one hearing. Schafer has investigated hate crimes in the Antelope Valley since 1993. “And if they continued their attacks on minorities, that minorities would no longer want to move into Lancaster and thus Lancaster would become an all-white community.”

In an ironic twist, all three defendants are of mixed race. Randall Lee Rojas, 24, is half Latino and half white. Ritch Bryant, 20, is part Latino. Jessica Anne Colwell, also 20, has both Latino and Native American ancestry, Schafer said.

But all three consider themselves white.

They face life in prison without the possibility of parole on charges of first-degree murder with the special circumstance that the slaying was racially motivated--one of only a handful of such killings in Los Angeles County history.

Authorities say the defendants, who shared a connection through the Nazi Low Rider gang, have taken part in other racially motivated beatings, threats and a stabbing--crimes that have sent both Rojas and Bryant to prison on two- and eight-year sentences.

The proof that they killed Walker, according to court records, centers on the testimony of a former friend who threw the first punch, on the defendants’ boasting of the crime to friends and on their statements to investigators admitting involvement.

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Because Walker was the victim of two separate beatings, and only one defendant is alleged to have been present both times, testimony about the exact time of death will be critical to determining who is responsible for the fatal blows.

While Deputy Dist. Atty. Jacquelyn Lacey is expected to call many witnesses to testify about the defendants’ racists beliefs, the defense appears poised to argue that, whatever their beliefs, they were not the motive behind their clients’ actions that night. Instead, their beliefs were simply the consequence of a desire to protect others and, in one case, of morbid curiosity, the defense will suggest.

“You had people that had a lot of hatred in them, but didn’t necessarily commit this crime because of their hate,” Rojas’ lawyer, Donald Calabria, said before Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Lance Ito issued a gag order in the case last week.

“This wasn’t a midnight hunt for a black man,” Calabria added. “There were events that started it.”

According to court documents, testimony and interviews, this is how those events unfolded:

About 7 p.m. Nov. 25, 1995, Rojas, Bryant and a third man, Michael Thornton, were sitting on a sidewalk drinking whiskey straight from the bottle.

Argument Reported

A woman, who witnesses said had just had an argument with Walker, walked past. One of the men asked her how she was doing.

“Not too [expletive] good,” the woman, who is white, reportedly replied. “Some [expletive] just kicked me in the back.”

Rojas, Bryant and Thornton began walking toward Walker. As they approached, they saw Walker push a smaller man, who also was white, to the ground. Thornton ran over.

“Did you hit that woman back there?” Thornton asked. Before Walker could reply, Thornton kicked and punched him.

Walker hurried away, but Rojas caught up with him and allegedly smashed him in the head with a 2-by-4, knocking him to the ground. With Bryant encouraging him, Thornton said, Rojas repeatedly beat Walker in the face as he lay on the ground, immobile. All the while, Rojas allegedly called out racial slurs.

Thornton, who testified without immunity from prosecution, said he tried to pull Rojas off the victim, because he “thought that was a bit much.” But Rojas broke free, he said, and kicked Walker in the head, “like you would kick a football.”

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Thornton joined in the kicking, because he was afraid he “might end up on the ground right next to him as a race traitor for protecting him.”

When the beating was over, the trio walked over to two men standing nearby, one white and one Latino, and shook their hands.

“We’re skinheads,” Rojas allegedly said by way of introduction. “We’re here to help.”

The three tattoo-covered teenagers left, rejecting Bryant’s alleged requests that they should finish off Walker.

Thornton said Bryant wanted badly to kill a minority to “earn his bolts,” referring to a lightning bolt tattoo that indicates the bearer has killed a minority, Thornton said.

According to her own statements to authorities and friends, Colwell returned with Bryant to the vacant lot later that night. She told investigators she intended to check on whether the victim was dead, the cornerstone of her defense.

Colwell admitted shoving a metal pipe in Walker’s eye and said Bryant repeatedly kicked him and beat him with a wooden stick. She allegedly bragged to friends later that she thought she killed Walker because he “gurgled” when she “played with his eyeballs.”

“She didn’t really seem upset,” one teen testified about Colwell’s confession to her. “You know, [it] didn’t seem really to matter.”

A coroner determined that Walker had sustained six to nine severe blows in the head, each of which alone could have been fatal and all of which were administered while he was still alive, records show.

Bolt of Lightning

After Colwell and Bryant left Walker, Colwell said she accompanied him to the house of a freelance tattoo artist. Johnie Gunderson, also a Lancaster resident, said he remembers Bryant waking him up about 11 p.m. on the night of the killing, wanting to get a tattoo of two lightning bolts.

“I said it was late and I was going back to bed,” Gunderson testified. He gave him the tattoo a few weeks later.

During court hearings, Thornton said Walker’s death and the events that followed led him to examine his life and beliefs and reject them.

“Seeing that and [hearing] the sound of the board hitting the man, it clicked in my head that this was wrong,” Thornton said. “This is the wrong way to be.”

As a result, he testified for prosecutors at a preliminary hearing last year, even though he said telling the truth jeopardized his life. Prosecutors agreed not to press murder charges.

“If I go to jail, I go to jail,” Thornton said. “That is the consequence for what happened, but at least this makes me feel better inside.”

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John Daley, Colwell’s attorney, suggested that Thornton’s remorse was either faked or short-lived. Thornton has been investigated by the Yuba County Sheriff’s Department for allegedly organizing local teenage skinheads, he said.

Thornton’s cooperation in the case ended last year, when prosecutors charged him with assault for his admitted attack on Walker. He is currently in custody, awaiting trial on those charges.

In a hearing last week, Thornton said he was exercising his right against self-incrimination and would no longer answer questions about Walker’s death. Ito decided his testimony will be read to jurors.