Chilling Tale of Racism Offered at Murder Trial

Prosecutors wrapped up their murder case Thursday against three white supremacists with a chilling description of a group of hapless youths who believed in dusty notions of a white master race and who hoped to start a race war in the High Desert.

“They believed that their white supremacist philosophy was a religion and they would be willing to die to eliminate minorities in America,” FBI Special Agent Jack Schafer, who has investigated civil rights violations in the High Desert since 1992, testified Thursday.

“They wanted to eliminate the minorities from Lancaster and create an all-white Lancaster,” he said.

The defendants were affiliated with the Lancaster Nazi Lowriders, who eagerly awaited a race war, Schafer testified.

“The NLR group there would accept people of mixed race if they believed and adhered to the white supremacist ideology,” he said. All three defendants are part Latino.

It was in Lancaster, he testified, that a shaded lightning bolt tattoo could only be earned by killing a minority.

And it was the desire for those tattoos, Deputy Dist. Atty. Jacquelyn Lacey alleged, that led the defendants to beat a black homeless man to death nearly four years ago in a vacant lot behind a fast-food restaurant.

But lawyers for Randall Rojas, 24, and Ritch Bryant and Jessica Colwell, both 20, each blame their co-defendants for the killing, and at least two dispute that the attack was motivated by racial hatred.

Rojas, Bryant and another man, who is being tried separately on lesser charges, sought out Milton Walker Jr. after a white woman walking down the street told them he had hit her.

Michael Thornton, who initiated the attack, later tearfully confessed, telling authorities he regretted his action and had become a changed person. He testified against his one-time cohorts.

Prosecutors allege that Rojas repeatedly beat Walker with a stick and kicked him while Bryant egged his friend on with racial slurs. Bryant left but later returned with Colwell, and they both beat Walker again, the prosecution says.

Several witnesses testified that the defendants bragged about the attack. Jurors also learned about the trio’s admission to authorities of their involvement in the beating.

In his taped confession, played Wednesday, Rojas told district attorney’s investigator Pat McPherson that he smashed Walker in the face with a board because the man was coming at him with a knife.

“I handled it how I handled it, but I was scared for my life,” Rojas said on the tape.

Colwell told authorities she thought Walker was already dead when she hit him in the face with a pipe. “She was very matter-of-fact,” testified Assistant U.S. Atty. Caroline Witcoff. “She didn’t display any remorse. It was as if she was saying, ‘We went to a movie.’ ”

Because Walker was beaten twice, Rojas’ lawyer, Donald Calabria, will argue to jurors that Bryant and Colwell administered the fatal blows. Lawyers for those defendants claim in turn that Walker was already dead when they returned. Each of the three defendants is being tried by a separate jury.

A county coroner testified that all of the blows--nine to 13 of which contributed to Walker’s death--were delivered while the victim was still alive.

But during cross-examination, a neuropathologist said he believed Walker died from what was probably the initial blow that knocked him down. This expert also said he thought Walker died quickly--a potential advantage for Colwell and, to a lesser degree, Bryant.