Prosecution Rests in Alleged Racial Killing

Prosecutors wrapped up their murder case Thursday against three reputed 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,” Schafer said.

The defendants were affiliated with the Lancaster Nazi Lowriders, who eagerly awaited a race war they were sure they would win, attacked minorities, and covered their bodies with racist tattoos, yet welcomed the defendants--all part Latino--into their group, Schafer testified.

“The NLR group there would accept people of mixed race if they believed and adhered to the white supremacist ideology,” Schafer said during expert testimony.

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, Ritch Bryant and Jessica Colwell, both 20, each blame their own client’s 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’d hit her, prosecutors said.

Michael Thornton, who initiated the attack and came to regret it, later tearfully confessed, telling authorities he was a changed person. He testified against his one-time associates.

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

*

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

In his taped confession, played Wednesday, Rojas told district attorney investigator Pat McPherson that he smashed Walker in the face with a board because the homeless 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 federal authorities that she thought the man was already dead when she hit him with a pipe in the face.

“She was very matter-of-fact,” testified Assistant U.S. Atty. Caroline Witcoff during the trial. “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, and all scored some points during the prosecution’s case.

A county medical examiner 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 likely the initial blow that knocked him to the ground, and that he thought the man died quickly--a potential boon for Colwell and, to a lesser degree, for Bryant. More medical testimony is expected next week, when the defendants present their cases.

Prosecutors allege Bryant and Rojas both received lightning bolt tattoos, copies of those worn by Nazi storm troopers, on their biceps after Walker’s killing.

Various investigators have testified that the defendants have admitted their racist beliefs. Schafer, the FBI agent, said both Rojas and Bryant were members of the Nazi Lowriders and that Colwell was a racist associate.

But Colwell’s grandfather, Mike Colwell, who drove from Colorado to observe the trial, said he does not believe she would have done anything violent. He said he wonders whether she went along because of peer pressure and the fear that her friends would turn on her.

He said her mother’s heritage is Mexican and American Indian.

“These things don’t add up,” Mike Colwell said. “It looks like Jessica got with a bad crowd at that phase and now she’s paying dues.”