I know the church well - was in there for their CHristmas bazaar.
It gets weirder - that’s literally across the street from the house I grew up in. Mom will probably want to go - thanks.
I base on my comments on what I read in the Los Angeles Times, in their article of 2 March 2005 (free registration required).
What seemed especially stupid is that Matthew Hale threatened judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow because she ordered his white supremacist group, the “World Church of the Creator”, to change its name and fined them two hundred thousand dollars (because of copyright infringement - another group had a similar name.)
The thing is, judge Lefkow had originally ruled in their favor, but she was reversed by a federal appeals court, and so in November 2002 she told Hale that she “had no choice but to order him to stop using [the name] on his website and in all printed material.”
Another thing I found interesting - some of you may remember people from a white supremacist website coming to the Straight Dope and trying to spread their gospel over here. I’ll just quote directly from the Los Angeles Times article:
«At Stormfront.org — an Internet discussion site frequented by adherents of white supremacist ideology — one chat room participant urged in a December 2002 posting: “Post the pictures of her family for all to see.” A second participant promptly posted photographs of the judge, Michael Lefkow and their children, adding snippets of personal data from their church website.»
I’m sure some of the old-timers will remember the stormfront people and their interactions with the Straight Dope Message Board.
I, too, was horrified by this crime. Hopefully they are able to sort out what happened and punish the people responsible.
What floor? I’m on [personal info deleted - EZ].
I’m three floors down from you in [personal info deleted - EZ]. Feel free to pop by if you’re bored. It’s a small office, so I do a little bit of everything, including manning the reception desk.
I’ll keep the personal anecdotes short at the moment, as I’m in a bit of a hurry, but…
Matt asked the school for funding to start a school-sponsored and endorsed white supremacist organization. The day after he was denied this request, every frat on campus (and some of the sorrorities, I hear) had fliers left anonymously at their doors inciting them to expel all minorities from their organizations. Matt denied connection, but (I hear, I don’t know for sure) the guy in the local copy shop pretty much ratted him out. Nothing official was done, but Matt spent the rest of the week being an edgy, seething weasal.
I’m unclear on the details as to why he was here (maybe he was visiting) but my PR professor told our class that during his tenure that our mailboxes were stuffed with white supremacist literature.
My sympathies extended to all. I saw the story in the Washington Post print edition yesterday. I’m sure DOJ and the US Marshals will pull out all the stops to nail the perps. My question is this: since Hale “declared war” wouldn’t this possibly fall under terrorism statutes? What about RICO?
Just so you know, Lieu, the state of Illinois doesn’t have a problem with it either.
I used to clerk for a federal judge in Houston who had a nutjob try to have him killed. He was jailed briefly on a contempt charge and tried to have put out a hit on him (with very specific instructions on how, he was to be handcuffed and dropped off of a boat into the Gulf), and luckily the people he was trying to solicit put him in touch with the FBI. The nutjob traded a few days in lockup for a life sentence in the federal pen.
The security at the courthouse was great, the U.S. Marshals are a great bunch of guys who do not screw around, but occassionally something creepy would happen like some mentally off person would spray paint a rambling message directed at a judge across the street from the courthouse, and you’d be reminded that despite the efforts of the Marshals and the FBI that being a federal judge or prosecutor (or working for or being related to one) was potentially dangerous. At work several dozen guys with automatics are a buttons touch away, but once you left the courthouse at night you were vulnerable to whoever came looking for you. Hearing about something like this makes me very, very sad and very, very angry.
My mom made an interesting point when I called to tel her about the funeral; a large proportion (if not every last one) of the Legal Assistance attorneys lean pretty heavily to the left. It’ll be interesting to see what their view on capital punishment is in this case if the murderer is ever convicted.
This case is getting a huge amount of coverage here in Chicago. The idea that a person or persons unknown would enter a house in the middle of the day, drag a 94 year old woman into the basement and shoot her in the head, and also execute a 64 year old man recovering from foot surgery (the reason why he was home) is appalling. According to the Trib, several cigarette butts and a pop can have been recovered from near where the two suspicious men were seen sitting in their car smoking cigarettes and drinking pop. God, I hope the killers could actually be that stupid and if it was white supremacists, then the odds are real high that they were that stupid.
Yeah. National news. CNN. ABC. CBS. NBC. FOXNEWS. USATODAY.
I am really tired of all the news folk on my doorstep every day, EVERY DAY.
Later, I will tell you about the Tribune reporter my stupid roomate let in our house this morning. Reporters are dumbasses. So is my roomate.
Sorry to nitpick, but she was 89 yo, and that doesn’t change how foul the entire thing is. Mike was using crutches because of recent Achilles tendon surgery.
To the scum that did this: Tough guys aren’t you? Kill two invalids. They couldn’t get away easy could they? Did that make your microscopic wee-wee get hard?
Never thinking I would praise the Chicago Police, I will say they have made me feel as safe as I ever have: I have had to present ID the last two nights in order to get home. Walking up my street. I usually come home 'tween 1 & 2 AM. *Super civil libertarian here. * I whipped my ID out so fast…they were very nice about it and very apologetic.
All I can say **Eva Luna ** is this: if you ever had the slightest interaction with Mike and Joan, not about either ones relation to the legal system, just as people, they were such sweet, caring people…I think this is why I am so angry. And I know, because of what Mike spent his life on, defending the worst, the defenseless, it makes me have a have a serious problem with advocating the death penalty.
I would never speak for the family in this regard. But, I think they would see it as a way to honor his beliefs and oppose the ultimate price.
Well, I wasn’t thinking of the family so much as the rest of the Legal Aid crowd…they are mostly pretty pacifist types, but as evidenced by the TV footage of Judge Lefkow’s return to her house last night, pretty damn stubborn, too. I wonder if any of them will waver in their beliefs; it’ll be interesting to see if she says anything publicly on the death penalty as the trial (I hope they catch the slime, and that there’s a trial) gets underway.
And sheesh, that will be some really difficult jury selection.
Once again we strongly urge users not to post identifying information on this board, such as your suite number in the office building where you work. If you wish to confirm that someone is your neighbor, please do this by e-mail. Not to be paranoid, but as the Lefkow murders make clear, there are a lot of crazy people out there. I have edited several posts above to remove personal information.
Probably some people will oppose capital punishment in this case and some won’t. If someone close to you is murdered you might feel sad or angry enough that you would want a specially heinous (and possibly inappropriate) punishment for them; that’s why we don’t allow family members of victims to choose the sentence for the attackers.
I heard a member of Murder Victims’ Families for Reconciliation (a national organization of family members of both homicide and state killings who oppose the death penalty in all cases) speak at a panel discussion on the Death Penalty and he said one of the tough things for him when he opposed the death penalty sentence for the murderer of his father was the social pressure from his friends and other family, in the form of “If you really loved your father you would want his murderer to be punished.” Some people who knew about his opposition to the death penalty said to him, after his father was murdered, “So I bet you’ve changed your mind now, haven’t you?”
Check out this link to a blog. Seems like one of the suspects seen around the Lefkow home looks an awful lot like one of Matthew Hale’s syncophatic followers. I assume the police have been notified of this? Right?
http://maxblumenthal.blogspot.com/2005/03/its-guy-on-right.html
Holy hell, that’s a pretty uncanny resemblance.
God, that poor woman. I can’t imagine. 
I don’t let my views about the death penalty be known outside online venues, and even then I try to be fairly judicious about it.
Let’s just say that opposition to the death penalty != opposition to punishment. I’m not advocating a slap on the wrist like a year or two in jail for murderers.
I think the cops are aware of this. Go here.