The Sacramento Bee reported this morning that the rather ironically named David Lynch, founder of the hate group American Front, was murdered on Wednesday at his home in Citrus Heights, a suburb of Sacramento. A woman in the home was also shot in the leg.
The Southern Poverty Law Center reported in 2007,
David Lynch [is] a clever and charismatic skinhead organizer whose history of racist activism dates back to the late 1980s, when Lynch became the eastern states coordinator for American Front, a nationwide skinhead coalition modeled after Britain's National Front. After American Front's power waned in the mid-1990s, Lynch lived for a time in Canada, then relocated to Sacramento, where he gradually assumed control of the Sacto Skins, one of the oldest skinhead gangs in the country.
While he maintained a strong presence in the Sacramento white supremacist subculture from the late 1990s through 2005, at one point meeting with then-National Alliance chairman William Pierce when the neo-Nazi leader visited Sacramento, Lynch for the most part limited his activities to that city alone.
American Front was modeled on the British racist National Front. Lynch was responsible for organizing and uniting white supremacist groups throughout the west. His group also did outreach into prisons via a group called Prison Skins, which supported incarcerated skinheads.
"Lynch basically laid low for a while and got smarter," said Sacramento County Sheriff's Department Lt. Milo Fitch, who ran his department's gang unit from 1995 to 2002 and specialized in white-power gangs. "He was definitely a player in Sacramento [in the late 1990s], but he wasn't making the same kind of moves he is now. Lynch is a very bright guy. He's very organized and articulate. As he's gotten older, he's more carefully balancing wanting power with his fear of going to prison. His strategy now is to be more of the puppet master and less of the street soldier."
Lynch worked for an asbestos abatement firm.
[His work] requires him to travel to New Orleans for post-Katrina clean-up contracts. According to law enforcement sources, Lynch makes frequent side trips to Florida to network with skinheads there, including Richie Myers, another former high-ranking official in American Front. Myers was the Florida state leader for American Front until 1991, when he was convicted of attempted murder and sentenced to 10 years in prison for trying to drown another American Front official, John Daly, after Lynch and Myers learned that Daly was secretly Jewish. Myers is now off parole and free of restrictions prohibiting contact with active white-power gang members.
In addition to the organization he did around the country, the skinhead groups were active in the movement against Latino immigration in California.
Four of the five American Front rallies in Sacramento in the past year were held outside Home Depot stores where Latino day laborers gather. For these rallies, the skinheads carried signs that read, "Stop the Illegal Invasion," and "Health care for illegal aliens costs Californians $1.4 billion a year." And they did not dress like skinheads. Instead they wore street clothes. Lynch even donned khakis and a button-down shirt.
"The only one of the five rallies they've had where they actually looked like skinheads to the average person passing by was a rally last year at the state Capitol," said Sacramento County Sheriff's Department Sgt. Tim Curran. "They're being very strategic about taking advantage of the immigration issue, and they're very good at blending into society. The only time they dress out as skinheads is when they think it serves a specific political motivation. Otherwise, they don't look the part."
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center's blog,
Skinheads and neo-Nazis from around the country are posting memorials to Lynch on Facebook. Expressing what seems to be the common sentiment, Billy Roper of White Revolution wrote: “Dave Lynch: My Friend, and one of the best men I’ve ever known, a hero of our people and our cause. We are in shock.”
The suspect in the case is believed to be an associate of Lynch.
Police also did not release the identity of a man detained Wednesday afternoon as a "person of interest," but three law enforcement sources told The Bee the individual was an associate of Lynch from the world of hate groups who recently had been fired by Lynch.
Good riddance to the creep. These groups have managed to operate mostly below the radar of the mainstream media for the past couple of decades. Back in the 1980s I remember much more attention being paid to skinheads and the problems they were causing. David Lynch's murder sheds some more light on what these groups have been doing over the past decade.