Hate Fliers Found on Driveways

As many as 100 Seal Beach residents awoke Monday morning to find racist fliers on their driveways, apparently distributed by a white supremacist group linked to racially motivated killings in Illinois and Indiana.

“I was shocked, embarrassed, and I felt afraid,” said Wendi Rothman, who found one of the fliers rolled into a newspaper on her driveway about 6:45 a.m. “This is a pristine, sleepy little beach town. We have controversies, but we don’t have hate. We’re a melting pot of people and want to speak out loudly against this.”

The fliers, attributed to a group called the World Church of the Creator, call on Caucasians to “awake, unite, . . . save the white race.” It listed two post office boxes: one in Sierra Madre, the other in Seal Beach. Attempts to reach the group Monday were not successful.

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Capt. John Schaefer, a spokesman for the Seal Beach Police Department, said the group is based in Peoria, Ill., and has made its presence felt locally before.

“The organization, while bearing a post office box in Seal Beach, is not located here,” he said. “We’ve heard of them in the past--this is not the first time, in fact, that this particular flier has been seen around town.”

Schaefer estimated that 50 to 100 of the fliers were distributed in the Old Towne area of the city late Sunday night or early Monday.

By Monday afternoon, he said, the department had received at least 20 calls from residents angered and disgusted by the contents.

“This is obviously not the kind of behavior anybody wants,” Schaefer said. “It’s the kind of thing we need to pay attention to. If any additional information becomes available, we want to be on top of it.”

The World Church of the Creator, which authorities think was founded in 1973, is said to harbor animosity against Jews, Christians who do not share its views, homosexuals and all non-whites, who members believe should be forced to leave the country.

Currently led by Matthew Hale, a self-proclaimed clergyman and would-be lawyer in Illinois, the group made headlines last year when one of its members, Benjamin Nathaniel Smith, went on a Fourth of July weekend shooting spree in Illinois and Indiana that left at least 11 dead or wounded. Most of the victims were black, Asian or Orthodox Jewish.

Smith killed himself before he could be apprehended.