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Tuesday, March 01, 2005

Law - [Updated] Illinois Federal Judge's husband, mother found dead

The Chicago Tribune website is reporting this morning:

The federal judge whom white supremacist Matthew Hale attempted to have murdered found her husband and mother lying dead in her house when she returned home Monday night, police said.

Judge Joan H. Lefkow returned to her house in the 5200 block of North Lakewood Avenue after work and found the bodies of her husband, attorney Michael F. Lefkow and her mother, Donna Humphrey, lying in blood in the house, police said.

Detectives, U.S. Marshals and FBI agents rushed to the scene and were investigating the deaths as a "death investigation," police said. Other family members may also have been present when the bodies were discovered, neighbors said. * * *

Hale, the 33-year-old founder of the World Church of the Creator was arrested in January 2003 and charged with soliciting Judge Lefkow's murder a month after she had held him in contempt of court. Based largely on testimony from Hale's "security chief," a jury convicted Hale of soliciting the judge's murder in April 2004.

U.S. District Court Judge James Moody is scheduled to sentence Hale on April 6. Hale is currently being held at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in the South Loop.

Evidence in the case against Hale included an email he sent the security chief, Thomas Evola, asking for Lefkow's home address. The address was posted on a white supremacist web site.

In a recorded conversation played at the trial, Evola, who was an FBI informant, talked with Hale about Lefkow and asked, "We gonna exterminate that rat?"

Hale first came to prominence in 1999 as a white supremacist and head of the World Church of the Creator. Over the Independence Day weekend, former church member Benjamin Smith went on a shooting spree directed at racial minorities, killing two and wounding nine.

These 1999 shootings included one in Bloomington, Indiana where a male Korean-American who was leaving Sunday church services was killed. Earlier, in Skokie, Illinois, Ricky Byrdsong, former Northwestern University baskeball coach, an African-Amercian, was shot and killed. See this July 5, 1999 CNN story.

[Update 11 AM] "Victim, judge `very close'" is the title to this new Tribune story about Michael Lefkow. A quote:

Their lives changed sharply in 2003 when Matthew Hale, the 33-year-old founder of the World Church of the Creator, was charged with soliciting Judge Joan Lefkow's murder a month after she had held him in contempt of court on a separate civil suit.

After Hale's arrest, Lefkow, 61, chose to stay on as the judge over the lawsuit that had so engendered Hale's hatred. Despite the alleged death threats, the judge said removing herself from the case would only pass along Hale's hatred to another judge.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on March 1, 2005 06:15 AM
Posted to General Law Related