Temple Arsonists Sent to Prison

In a courtroom crowded with Jewish leaders on hand to denounce their religious and racial hatred, two brothers were sentenced to long prison terms Friday for the 1999 torching of three synagogues.

U.S. District Judge Garland E. Burrell Jr. sentenced Benjamin Matthew Williams, 33, mastermind of the arson attacks, to 30 years in prison. James Tyler Williams, 31, was sentenced to 21 years and 3 months.

The brothers still face trial next year on charges of killing a gay couple outside Redding.

During Friday’s emotional 2 1/2-hour hearing, the Williams brothers sat impassively as Burrell allowed two rabbis and two other local Jewish leaders to testify about the aftermath of the arson fires, which caused more than $1 million damage to the synagogues and an abortion clinic.

The judge said the arson attacks amounted to “terrorist criminal activities . . . born out of the seeds of hatred.” The crimes, the judge added, constituted “a serious trampling on the liberty of others.”

Rabbi Brad Bloom of Congregation B’nai Israel, one of the burned temples, faced the Williams brothers and told them, “Your hatred for everyone and anti-Semitism for Jews will never prevail.”

The community, Bloom added, “will never succumb to your perverted vision of Christianity and of America.”

The rabbi said the Williams brothers represent “a continuum of anti-Semitic perpetrators,” from Babylonian guards to 19th century Russian czarists to the Nazis during World War II.

“Yes,” Bloom lamented, “we have known the Williams brothers for a long time.”

Len Feldman, vice chairman of Sacramento’s Jewish Community Relations Council, said the arson fires “forced me to explain to my two children a world I had hoped had been left behind.”

Many in the affected congregations remain fearful, said Rabbi Yossef Etz-Hasadeh of Knesset Israel Torah Center. “What can’t be replaced is peace of mind.”

The Sacramento County arsons were among a rash of hate crimes across the nation in the summer of 1999, including Buford Furrow’s attack on a Jewish community center in Granada Hills and a white supremacist’s killing rampage in the Midwest.

The Williams brothers will face trial in April in the Shasta County slayings of Gary Matson and Winfield Mowder, a gay couple shot to death on July 1, 1999, in their home near Redding. The Williams brothers, who lived in the Redding area, have pleaded not guilty in that case. They could get the death penalty if convicted of the murders.

After their arrest, Benjamin Williams confessed to the killings, as well as the arson fires, in jailhouse interviews with reporters. He talked of mounting a Bible-based defense against the various charges and insisted that his younger brother was innocent, a claim prosecutors reject.

Benjamin Williams also told reporters he is willing to be executed to become a “Christian martyr” whose death would spur more attacks on Jews, homosexuals and members of other minority groups. In an earlier interview with The Times, he said the Redding slayings were justified as “an execution” because homosexuality is a violation of biblical law.

In court Friday, both brothers declined an invitation by the judge to talk about their crimes or express remorse.

“I have nothing to say to this court,” Benjamin Williams told Burrell.

Attorneys for James Williams argued that he had been led astray by his domineering older brother. They suggested there was little direct proof that he harbored racist and anti-Semitic hatred.

Burrell rejected those arguments, noting that James Williams had admitted helping set the fires.

The younger brother’s absence of remorse in the more than two years since the fires also doomed a bid by his attorney for a lighter sentence.

The arson fires were set in the early morning of June 18, 1999. The first report sent firefighters to Congregation B’nai Israel, a Reform temple established in the 1850s.

Over the next half-hour, other fires damaged Congregation Beth Shalom and Knesset Israel Torah Center, an Orthodox synagogue in suburban Sacramento. A week later, an arson blaze hit the abortion clinic.

The Williams brothers were arrested in July 1999 after the Redding murders.