Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: On August twenty fifth, twenty seventeen, a man getting a
Speaker 2: haircut at Tom's barber Shop in Arlington, Virginia saw something
Speaker 2: strange outside in the parking lot. A man in a
Speaker 2: short sleeve, collared shirt and a black tie was setting
Speaker 2: up a small wreath on the sidewalk next to a
Speaker 2: trash can. When this makeshift memorial was situated to his liking,
Speaker 2: the man called his audience to attention. His brief remarks
Speaker 2: were heard only by the assembly of six of his
Speaker 2: fellow neo Nazis, one of whom was holding a comically
Speaker 2: large Nazi flag. They held their right arms out in
Speaker 2: a stiff armed Nazi salute as he bowed his head
Speaker 2: for eighty eight seconds of silent reflection. This wasn't the
Speaker 2: first time that a man in the barber's chair at
Speaker 2: Tom's barber Shop had glanced up to see a Nazi
Speaker 2: in the parking lot. As the man getting his haircut
Speaker 2: walked over to the window to snap the only photograph
Speaker 2: of this gathering, it was fifty years to the minute
Speaker 2: since a barber at that same shop ran outside to
Speaker 2: find George Lincoln Rockwell lying in a pool of his
Speaker 2: own blood. This tiny gathering of white haired men in
Speaker 2: short sleeved shirts had returned to the very spot where
Speaker 2: the commander of the American Nazi Party had been murdered.
Speaker 2: They were there to pay their respects. The men in
Speaker 2: the parking lot in twenty seventeen weren't members of the
Speaker 2: American Nazi Party, not anymore anyway, No one was. It
Speaker 2: didn't exist anymore. But the man being saluted next to
Speaker 2: that trash can was the leader of what it became
Speaker 2: after another attempt at rebranding in the nineteen eighties, a
Speaker 2: group called the New Order. And the man leading that
Speaker 2: tiny band of Nazis in the parking lot twenty seventeen
Speaker 2: was Martin Kerr, a gray haired man in his sixties.
Speaker 2: He joined the American Nazi Party in high school after
Speaker 2: reading an interview with George Lincoln Rockwell published in Playboy magazine,
Speaker 2: but he was still a teenager when his hero died.
Speaker 2: The remnants of the American Nazi Party were forced to
Speaker 2: relocate to the Midwest decades ago, but this memorial service
Speaker 2: in Virginia wasn't a great inconvenience for them. Their group
Speaker 2: was already in the area in August of twenty seventeen.
Speaker 2: Just two weekends earlier, they'd made an appearance at the
Speaker 2: Unite the Right rally in nearby Charlottesville. That man in
Speaker 2: the parking lot, the man who keeps George Lincoln Rockwell's
Speaker 2: ashes in a white urn on an altar, told reporters
Speaker 2: that if Rockwell could have seen those Nazis marching in Charlottesville,
Speaker 2: he would have been pleased. On the fiftieth anniversary of
Speaker 2: Rockwell's death, and in the immediate aftermath of a shocking
Speaker 2: and deadly Nazi rally, George Lincoln Rockwall's successor told reporters
Speaker 2: that Rockwell's legacy was more alive now than ever. I
Speaker 2: am Molly Conger in This is Weird, Little Guys. On
Speaker 2: the morning of the last day of his life, George
Speaker 2: Lincoln Rockwell was up early. He stripped the sheets from
Speaker 2: his bed and threw a bundle of laundry into the
Speaker 2: back of the blue and white Chevy sedan on the driveway.
Speaker 2: He spent most of the morning alone in his room
Speaker 2: with the American Nazi Party barracks, a house he'd nicknamed
Speaker 2: Hatemonger Hill. Several party members were downstairs making final preparations
Speaker 2: for that afternoon's excursion into Washington, d C. After month
Speaker 2: of internal struggle over the party's rebranding, the first issue
Speaker 2: of a newspaper called White Power was hot off the presses,
Speaker 2: and the Nazis storm troopers were going to try and
Speaker 2: stir up some publicity by handing it out to the
Speaker 2: National press outside the halls of Congress. All press is
Speaker 2: good press, I guess, and the stunt was an effort
Speaker 2: to generate interest in Rockwell's newest book, also called White Power.
Speaker 2: But Rockwell had no plans to join his men on
Speaker 2: the trip to DC that day. Perhaps he was anxious
Speaker 2: to avoid another disorderly conduct arrest given his ongoing legal
Speaker 2: troubles in Chicago. Maybe he was looking forward to an
Speaker 2: opportunity to have the house to himself, to spend a
Speaker 2: few quiet hours privately grieving the infant daughter he'd just
Speaker 2: buried a few days earlier. Or maybe he'd just wanted
Speaker 2: to do his laundry. He certainly didn't expect to die,
Speaker 2: not on that day in particular. Anyway, A little before now,
Speaker 2: he made the short drive down the hill to the
Speaker 2: laundromat across the street. He'd already put a load of
Speaker 2: dirty clothes into the machine when he realized he'd forgotten
Speaker 2: something back at the house. If the assassin's aim had
Speaker 2: been better, Rockwell never would have seen it coming. He
Speaker 2: was looking behind him backing out of his parking spot
Speaker 2: when the first shot came through the windshield. This one
Speaker 2: only nicked him. In the instant between the first shot
Speaker 2: and the second one. He probably looked up at the
Speaker 2: rooftop searching for the shooter, and maybe he saw him
Speaker 2: before the second shot pore a hole in his aorda.
Speaker 2: His trademark corn cob pipe, the one he'd once poked
Speaker 2: to the face of Martin Luther King Junior, fell from
Speaker 2: his mouth as he crawled across the front seat of
Speaker 2: the sedan, tumbling out the passenger side door onto the ground.
Speaker 2: His still running car rolled slowly away as he bled
Speaker 2: to death there in the parking lot. Inside the laundromat,
Speaker 2: his dirty clothes were still sitting inside the washer, waiting
Speaker 2: for George Lincoln Rockwell to return with the bleach. He
Speaker 2: dedicated his life to making the world a wider place,
Speaker 2: right up to the end. It was John Patler up
Speaker 2: there on the roof of the Econawash Laundromat in Arlington, Virginia,
Speaker 2: that Friday in August of nineteen sixty seven, John Patler
Speaker 2: murdered George Lincoln Rockwell. That's the official story, and it's
Speaker 2: the one I still believe. Piecing together the exact details, though,
Speaker 2: has been a sort of nightmarish Nazi rashamon comparing these
Speaker 2: different versions of the same event as told by too
Speaker 2: many people with their own secrets to keep in what
Speaker 2: has been probably a failed effort to try to sort
Speaker 2: things out. I read the better part of two biographies
Speaker 2: of Rockwell. I read the relevant passages from William Luther
Speaker 2: Pears's biography. I read issues of Nazi newsletters like the
Speaker 2: Rockwell Report, White Power, National Socialist World, National Socialist Observer,
Speaker 2: Stormtrooper Magazine, and the World Union of National Socialist Bulletin.
Speaker 2: I read old Stormfront posts. I read pseudonymously published open
Speaker 2: letters by disgruntled neo Nazis. I read grainy old photocopies
Speaker 2: of FBI files and stacks of memos to Jay Edyrhover.
Speaker 2: I read most of the fifteen hundred page, four volume
Speaker 2: appellate record in John Patler's criminal case. He did it,
Speaker 2: but not everybody believes that.
Speaker 1: Are you saying Petla didn't kill Rockwell.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I'm saying it, and I always have said it.
Speaker 2: That's Frank Smith. Last week I opened the episode with
Speaker 2: the strange tale a shootout in Maine between two men
Speaker 2: on either side of this debate. In nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 2: Christopher Vidnyevitch drove to Maine and he got into a
Speaker 2: gunfight with Frank Smith. Both men were members of the
Speaker 2: American Nazi Party, and both men had testified at John
Speaker 2: Patler's trial, Vidnyevitch for the prosecution and Smith for the defense.
Speaker 2: And in March of nineteen sixty eight, a few months
Speaker 2: after that trial ended, Smith believed that Vidnyevitch had been
Speaker 2: sent to kill him to keep him from getting to
Speaker 2: the truth of what really happened to George Lincoln Rockwell.
Speaker 2: And that clip is from an interview Frank Smith gave
Speaker 2: in two thousand and sixteen at the age of ninety five,
Speaker 2: nearly fifty years after Rockwell was killed. He's sticking to
Speaker 2: that story. Listeners with a keen ear might have noticed
Speaker 2: that the man Frank Smith is talking to in that
Speaker 2: interview as a South African accent. And if you've listened
Speaker 2: to every episode of this show. It's a voice you've
Speaker 2: heard before. That is South African neo Nazi Yan Lamprecht.
Speaker 2: At some point earlier this year, during the three months
Speaker 2: I spent writing about white supremacist terrorism in apartheid South Africa,
Speaker 2: I played a portion of an interview Yan Lamprecht did
Speaker 2: with the main subject of those episodes, a woman named
Speaker 2: Monica Huggett Stone, and further proving my point that this
Speaker 2: show is just one very long story told out of order.
Speaker 2: In twenty sixteen, when Lamprecht got interested in the legacy
Speaker 2: of George Lincoln Rockwell, it was Monica Huggett Stone who
Speaker 2: put him in touch with Frank Smith because they know
Speaker 2: each other.
Speaker 1: But I wanted to get people who knew him personally,
Speaker 1: if anyone was still alive. And when Monica said you
Speaker 1: knew him, I thought, wow, that is so lucky. I've
Speaker 1: just got to speak to you.
Speaker 2: It's a small world, I guess. But we'll come back
Speaker 2: to Frank's theories. If you read about John Patler's criminal trial,
Speaker 2: you'll almost always see it mentioned that the bulk of
Speaker 2: the evidence against him was circumstantial. And that's true, but
Speaker 2: that word doesn't mean what the average person seems to
Speaker 2: think it means. Circumstantial evidence isn't evidence that is less
Speaker 2: good than its counterpart, direct evidence, although it is often
Speaker 2: characterized that way, But in fact, most evidence is circumstantial,
Speaker 2: and the most common kind of direct evidence, eyewitness testimony,
Speaker 2: is shockingly unreliable. Imagine for a moment that you're a
Speaker 2: juror if you're sitting on a jury in a criminal trial,
Speaker 2: whatever it may be, what kind of evidence would you
Speaker 2: like to see? What sort of evidence would make you
Speaker 2: feel sure? Fingerprints, ballistics, cell phone data showing that a
Speaker 2: defendant's phone was hanging off a tower near the crime
Speaker 2: scene the night of the crime, some kind of so
Speaker 2: called smoking gun, right, that would be ideal. But those
Speaker 2: are all circumstantial evidence, because while they may present a fact, right,
Speaker 2: it can be concretely stated that it is a fact
Speaker 2: that this is evidence of a defendant's fingerprint on a gun,
Speaker 2: or this evidence shows that their cell phone pinged off
Speaker 2: this tower at this time. Those are facts, but what
Speaker 2: they're being shown to prove is a fact that you
Speaker 2: then have to infer. So you have to draw an
Speaker 2: inference based on what is being shown to you. So
Speaker 2: when you see circumstantial evidence that a defendant's DNA was
Speaker 2: found on an object at the crime scene. You then
Speaker 2: have to infer what that means, and what you could
Speaker 2: infer that it means is that the person whose DNA
Speaker 2: that was was there. In John Patler's case, there was
Speaker 2: eyewitness testimony from people who saw him fleeing the scene.
Speaker 2: But it's true, the strongest evidence in this case was circumstantial.
Speaker 2: No one saw the shooter, not in the act anyway.
Speaker 2: The sound of the gunshots in the parking lot brought
Speaker 2: people out of the laundromat and other stores at the
Speaker 2: shopping center, but no one actually witnessed the murder. No
Speaker 2: one saw a man fire a gun, and Patler never confessed.
Speaker 2: As far as I can tell, he has always maintained
Speaker 2: his innocence. But the circumstantial evidence really stacks up here.
Speaker 2: Within minutes of arriving on the scene after the shooting,
Speaker 2: officers with the Arlington County Police had a description of
Speaker 2: a man. Several witnesses told officers that when they came
Speaker 2: outside after hearing the gunshots, they saw a man running
Speaker 2: away from the shopping center, and within about a half
Speaker 2: an hour of the shooting and a mile away, officers
Speaker 2: saw a man who matched that description. The man was
Speaker 2: wearing the clothes the witnesses had described, and he was
Speaker 2: soaked in sweat, pacing anxiously back and forth at the
Speaker 2: bus stop as he wipes dirt and sweat from his
Speaker 2: face with a towel. Based on those eyewitness accounts and
Speaker 2: the fact that the officer already knew who Patler was
Speaker 2: and that he was a member of the American Nazi Party,
Speaker 2: he was taken into custody, but he didn't have a
Speaker 2: gun on him. The officers who arrested him suspected that
Speaker 2: if this is their shooter, he must have ditched the
Speaker 2: gun somewhere along his route between the crime scene and
Speaker 2: the bus stop, and that route would have taken him
Speaker 2: through a nearby park. So officers searched until nightfall on Friday,
Speaker 2: but it wasn't until Saturday morning that a gun was
Speaker 2: found in a creek under a footbridge in the park.
Speaker 2: The gun they found in that creek was a ballistic
Speaker 2: match to the bullet in Rockwell's body, but it was
Speaker 2: also a match to bullets that were dug out of
Speaker 2: a tree at the edge of some property owned by
Speaker 2: Patler's father in law. A witness testified to seeing Patler
Speaker 2: shooting at that particular tree for target practice a month
Speaker 2: before the murder. The serial number on the gun matched
Speaker 2: a sales record for a local gun shop, and the
Speaker 2: owner of the shop testified to the authenticity of records
Speaker 2: showing that he'd sold the weapon to a Missus Robert A.
Speaker 2: Lloyd Junior in nineteen six sixty two. Missus Robert A.
Speaker 2: Lloyd Junior had purchased the gun for her son, Robert
Speaker 2: Lloyd the Third. Robert Lloyd the Third is a member
Speaker 2: of the American Nazi Party who testified that he'd let
Speaker 2: Patler borrow the gun in nineteen sixty four, and when
Speaker 2: he asked for it back, Patler told him it was stolen.
Speaker 2: So just to recap what we have so far, people
Speaker 2: who heard the gunshots walked outside to see a man
Speaker 2: lying in a pool of blood and another man running away.
Speaker 2: A man wearing the same outfit and matching those physical
Speaker 2: characteristics described by the witnesses was found half an hour
Speaker 2: later a mile away, soaked in sweat and very anxious.
Speaker 2: The murder weapon was found in a creek under a
Speaker 2: footbridge that he would have crossed on his route between
Speaker 2: the crime scene and where officers encountered him, and the
Speaker 2: last known location of that weapon was in his possession.
Speaker 2: He claims to have lost it years earlier, but he
Speaker 2: was seen using it just a month before the murder.
Speaker 2: When the officers took Patler into custody. He wasn't just
Speaker 2: wet from perspiration. His shoes were soaking wet, and his
Speaker 2: pants were visibly wet from the knees down. Later examination
Speaker 2: of his shoes found roofing tar on the soles. A
Speaker 2: maintenance technician who worked for the property manager of the
Speaker 2: shopping center testified at trial that due to blocked drains,
Speaker 2: there was several inches of standing water on the roof
Speaker 2: that day because of heavy rain the night before, anyone
Speaker 2: who'd been climbing around on the roof that day would
Speaker 2: have gotten very wet. The trial lasted three weeks, and
Speaker 2: jurors were forced to come in on Saturdays to squeeze
Speaker 2: in testimony from nearly one hundred witnesses. After the jury
Speaker 2: was selected on November twenty seventh, each member of the
Speaker 2: jury was driven home by a sheriff's deputy who watched
Speaker 2: them while they packed a suitcase. For three weeks, those
Speaker 2: jurors were driven to and from a motel by deputies.
Speaker 2: They had no access to newspapers, magazines, radios, or TV.
Speaker 2: Any communication with their families had to go through the
Speaker 2: Sheriff's office. Now, if I hadn't read this transcript myself,
Speaker 2: I would have trouble believing that a judge would send
Speaker 2: a jury into deliberation at eight pm on a Friday night.
Speaker 2: I've never heard of such a thing. That is a
Speaker 2: wild choice. I mean, judges have very broad discretion when
Speaker 2: it comes to pretty much anything that goes on in
Speaker 2: their courtroom. But from what I've seen, there's a sort
Speaker 2: of unspoken understanding that if it's already past last dinner time,
Speaker 2: you should wait until the following morning to send the
Speaker 2: jury out. But it was almost Christmas, and these jurors
Speaker 2: had already endured a grueling three weeks of ten hour
Speaker 2: days of testimony. So on Friday night they deliberated. They
Speaker 2: deliberated for four hours, returning their verdict just after midnight.
Speaker 2: And in those four hours, they didn't just decide his guilt.
Speaker 2: The law changed a couple of years ago, but until
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one, jurys in Virginia made sentencing recommendations as well.
Speaker 2: At twelve twelve am, the jury foreman told the court
Speaker 2: that John Patler should serve twenty years for the first
Speaker 2: degree murder of George Lincoln Rockwell. At trial, his defense
Speaker 2: was obviously that he didn't do it. Not only did
Speaker 2: he not do it, he simply could not have done it.
Speaker 2: His wife and father in law testified that he'd spent
Speaker 2: the morning running errands with his wife, Alice, and their
Speaker 2: two sons, ages one and three. Alice testified that between
Speaker 2: ten am and eleven forty am, she and her husband
Speaker 2: and their two children were in the car together running errands.
Speaker 2: They went to the bank, and the post office and
Speaker 2: an office supplies door, and they stopped off at Safeway
Speaker 2: to pick up some chicken for dinner. The couple both
Speaker 2: testified that immediately upon arriving home around a quarter to noon,
Speaker 2: they got into an argument over how to appropriately discipline
Speaker 2: their three year old son. When John Patler took the stand,
Speaker 2: he said his wife had gotten angry with him after
Speaker 2: he quote got a little rough with the toddler, and
Speaker 2: after some heated words were exchange, he stormed out of
Speaker 2: the house and was just walking around the neighborhood. To
Speaker 2: calm down. All three of the adults who lived in
Speaker 2: that house testified that it was eleven forty five eleven
Speaker 2: fifty something like that for sure when he walked out
Speaker 2: of the house, and he didn't take the couple's only car.
Speaker 2: He didn't have a driver's license, although he did know
Speaker 2: how to drive, but he was on foot, and his
Speaker 2: defense was that it just wasn't possible for him to
Speaker 2: have walked the three miles from his house to that
Speaker 2: shopping center in the time between when his wife last
Speaker 2: saw him at eleven forty five and when Rockwell was
Speaker 2: shot at noon. And if all of that is true,
Speaker 2: I agree he could not have traveled over three miles
Speaker 2: on foot in less than fifteen minutes. Obviously, the jury
Speaker 2: was not convinced it was true, but it's hard to
Speaker 2: say which part of it they do don't believe. Before
Speaker 2: I found and read the transcripts, I thought it was
Speaker 2: pretty possible that the entire story was just a fabrication.
Speaker 2: You know. I'd saw these stories in the newspaper about
Speaker 2: his wife talking about, well, we were together running errands,
Speaker 2: and it's not that hard to believe that his wife
Speaker 2: might lie for him. And in nineteen sixty seven. It's
Speaker 2: not like there were digital bank records showing timestamped credit
Speaker 2: card transactions or security camera footage from the bank. You
Speaker 2: could just say stuff. But the transcript shows that the
Speaker 2: defense did put on witnesses who testified to seeing the
Speaker 2: Padlers at the various stops they made that morning on
Speaker 2: their errands. A gas station attendant, a bank teller, a
Speaker 2: postal clerk. They all saw the Pallors, but no one
Speaker 2: could remember exactly when, and despite his father in law's
Speaker 2: dead certainty by the time he got on the witness
Speaker 2: stand that the couple had arrived home at eleven to
Speaker 2: four on the day of the murder. When detectives first
Speaker 2: spoke to him on the day of the murder, his
Speaker 2: initial statement put that time closer to eleven, which would
Speaker 2: leave Patler nearly an hour to travel those three miles,
Speaker 2: either by foot or by bus. The other angle hammered
Speaker 2: by the defense at trial was how could Patler have
Speaker 2: even found Rockwell that day? How could he have known
Speaker 2: where the victim would be. For the defense, the argument
Speaker 2: is just he couldn't have known, therefore he did not know.
Speaker 2: Therefore he couldn't have been there and didn't do it
Speaker 2: for members of the movement who aren't satisfied with the
Speaker 2: official story. This is a huge question. Going to the
Speaker 2: laundromat at noon on Friday wasn't planned, It wasn't part
Speaker 2: of Rockwell's usual routine. He didn't even usually do his
Speaker 2: own laundry, So how can an assassin have known where
Speaker 2: to position himself to take that shot. The idea is
Speaker 2: that Patler didn't act alone, that Rockwell's death was part
Speaker 2: of a larger conspiracy, this grand act of betrayal, and
Speaker 2: this idea still has some purchase in the movement Nazis
Speaker 2: like Frank Colin, who you might recognize as the guy
Speaker 2: behind the Nazi march that led to the Supreme Court
Speaker 2: case National Socialist Party v. Skokie, Illinois. He believed that
Speaker 2: Patler was involved in some unspecified way, but that he
Speaker 2: wasn't the trigger man, and that ultimately he was just
Speaker 2: the fall guy. James Mason, the author of Siege, told
Speaker 2: one of Rockwell's biographers that he does think Patler pulled
Speaker 2: the trigger, but only as a pawn in a larger conspiracy,
Speaker 2: a conspiracy by whom he doesn't say. Carl Allen, the
Speaker 2: leader of a group that had splintered from the Nazi
Speaker 2: Party several years before Rockwell's death, was very sure that
Speaker 2: Patler was innocent and was himself just another victim of
Speaker 2: this Jewish conspiracy to kill Rockwell. Obviously, it makes perfect
Speaker 2: sense that Rockwell's friends would believe that there was some
Speaker 2: nebulous Jewish plot to kill their Nazi leader, but they're
Speaker 2: always a little thin on the specifics. To this day, though,
Speaker 2: there are young men in the white supremacist movement who
Speaker 2: don't actually know anything specific about this period of history,
Speaker 2: but they'll tell you with certainty that the Jews did it.
Speaker 2: When it comes to conspiracy theories with named players, the
Speaker 2: theory with a little heft to it, one that does
Speaker 2: make you ask a follow up question. There is a
Speaker 2: conspiracy that was much closer to home. This one's pretty straightforward.
Speaker 2: Hatler knew where Rockwell would be because someone told him,
Speaker 2: and the only people who could have told him were
Speaker 2: the people who were home that morning at the Nazi
Speaker 2: party barracks. Rockwell's mistress, Barbara von Getz, believed it. Frank
Speaker 2: Smith believed it until he died in twenty twenty. Robert Surrey,
Speaker 2: the head of the American Nazi Party, office in Dallas
Speaker 2: used the party's mailing list to send every member a
Speaker 2: copy of a letter he wrote outlining what he believed
Speaker 2: to be the evidence proving it. A twenty eighteen memoir
Speaker 2: by a former member calling himself Leon Dilios also advances
Speaker 2: this theory. Floyd Fleming, George ware Hal Kaiser, all men
Speaker 2: whose names I haven't bothered to tell you before, but
Speaker 2: who were high ranking members of the Nazi Party. They
Speaker 2: all believed that someone had masterminded this assassination, and pretty
Speaker 2: much all of them were pointing the finger at one man,
Speaker 2: Matias Cole. Now, like I said, as far as conspiracy
Speaker 2: theories go, at least this one has a sort of
Speaker 2: logic to it. Cole is often described as Rockwell's number
Speaker 2: two man, but he wasn't actually officially deputy commander. Rockwell
Speaker 2: had rather pointedly been keeping that position vacant. So even
Speaker 2: though Cole was in every way except title, functioning in
Speaker 2: secondest command, he didn't get to call himself that. At
Speaker 2: the party's convention in June, Rockwell had extended an offer
Speaker 2: of reconciliation to Carl Allen, and it's generally believed that
Speaker 2: he intends to name Allan as his successor if he
Speaker 2: agreed to return to the party, because he had successfully
Speaker 2: led a splinter group, the White Party for several years
Speaker 2: and that was impressive to Rockwell. That final meeting between
Speaker 2: Rockwell and Carl Allen was allegedly scheduled to take place
Speaker 2: at the end of August, just a few days after
Speaker 2: Rockwell died, and Rockwell's body was barely cold before Cole
Speaker 2: stepped up to take control of the party. One former
Speaker 2: member recounted to Rockwell's biographer a screaming argument between Rockwell
Speaker 2: and Cole the night before the murder, and claims that
Speaker 2: Rockwell said he was going to expel him from the
Speaker 2: party over this ongoing disagreement about whether Rockwell was betraying
Speaker 2: Hitler's legacy by ditching the swastika and focusing on a
Speaker 2: message of white power rather than aryan superiority. When you're
Speaker 2: digging around in this conspiracy muck, you'll often see claims
Speaker 2: that no one knew that Rockwell planned to go to
Speaker 2: the laundromat that day until just as he was leaving
Speaker 2: the house, which really narrows the window of time during
Speaker 2: which this conspiracy could have taken place. Right It just
Speaker 2: leaves mere minutes for this possible phone call to the
Speaker 2: shooter to have happened. But it turns out Matias Cole
Speaker 2: did know, and he'd known for hours because Rockwell's laundry
Speaker 2: was already in the back seat of the car when
Speaker 2: Cole took the car out that morning to run errands.
Speaker 2: So it's intriguing, it's got a little meat to it.
Speaker 2: Matia's coal was unhappy with the direction the party was going,
Speaker 2: and he had been very vocal about that for a year.
Speaker 2: Multiple sources reported that Cole was likely to be pushed
Speaker 2: out of favor or even out of the party entirely
Speaker 2: in the very near future, so he had a lot
Speaker 2: to gain if Rockwell died. But if motive is enough evidence,
Speaker 2: thousands of people must have shot George Lincoln Rockwell because
Speaker 2: a lot of people had a reason to want him dead.
Speaker 2: One of Rockwall's biographers, Frederick Simonelli, interviewed several former members,
Speaker 2: some of whom shared these theories with him, and he
Speaker 2: does give those theories some ink in his book, but
Speaker 2: he buries an important caveat in the footnotes writing quote.
Speaker 2: While Arlington police and prosecutors were aware of a growing
Speaker 2: hostility between Rockwell, and Coal in the months before Rockwell's assassination,
Speaker 2: they inexplicably did nothing to pursue that issue. In fairness, however,
Speaker 2: it must be kept in mind that the fractious radical
Speaker 2: right is fraught with feuds and vendettas, with the interactants
Speaker 2: alternating frequently between ally and enemy. The American Nazi Party
Speaker 2: was no ea exception, and He's right. These Nazi groups
Speaker 2: are always having these little power struggles. Everybody wants to
Speaker 2: be the Hitler, so this kind of feud isn't unique,
Speaker 2: and it doesn't even really stand out as a particularly
Speaker 2: egregious one. Overall, the theory of some last minute call
Speaker 2: from inside the house to John Patler just doesn't work
Speaker 2: for me. First of all, they had someone testify to
Speaker 2: phone records from the house that day, and there's no
Speaker 2: mention of any calls in the morning. Is it possible
Speaker 2: that Matius Cole made contact with the assassin while he
Speaker 2: was out running errands all morning? I guess so, But
Speaker 2: there's nothing more than insinuation and possibility here. The more
Speaker 2: likely scenario is really boring. No one called John Patler
Speaker 2: to alert him to Rockwell's movements. He probably didn't know
Speaker 2: that Rockwell would be at the laundromat. He didn't actually
Speaker 2: even need to know that Rockwell would be at the
Speaker 2: laundromat to have found him there. It didn't make sense
Speaker 2: to me at first looking at this area on Google
Speaker 2: Maps today, But the streetscape of Arlington, Virginia was very
Speaker 2: different in nineteen sixty seven. It was significantly less developed,
Speaker 2: and in the sixties, if you were standing outside the
Speaker 2: Nazi Party barracks, you could actually see this shopping center.
Speaker 2: It was just down the hill and across the street.
Speaker 2: So if Patler had gone to the house looking for Rockwell,
Speaker 2: he may have seen him leave, or he could have
Speaker 2: actually spotted the car already in the parking lot at
Speaker 2: the shopping center, which he would have had to pass
Speaker 2: if he was going to the house. All of the
Speaker 2: men living at the American Nazi Party Barracks only had
Speaker 2: access to a single working vehicle, and it was a
Speaker 2: pretty distinctive looking, older blue and white car, So if
Speaker 2: we saw it in the parking lot, No, there's far
Speaker 2: less intrigue in this explanation, but it's a very simple
Speaker 2: one that I've never seen addressed in any of these
Speaker 2: accusations against coal. Overall, reading that trial transcript. I was
Speaker 2: plagued with this particular anxiety that I always feel when
Speaker 2: I'm sitting through a trial in person. It's definitely worse
Speaker 2: in person, because they'll put you in jail if you
Speaker 2: shout in a courtroom. But I'm constantly fighting back this
Speaker 2: urge to interject. I just want to raise my hand
Speaker 2: and ask a question, because they're not asking the questions
Speaker 2: I would like answered. Sometimes it's because they can't. Right,
Speaker 2: A trial is meant to answer one question, did this
Speaker 2: defendant commit this crime? You can't just go probing around
Speaker 2: asking witnesses about anything you want and potentially unrelated matters,
Speaker 2: And sometimes they just don't want to ask those questions.
Speaker 2: A prosecutor comes into a trial with a particular theory
Speaker 2: of the case, and they're trying to solicit testimony that
Speaker 2: convinces the jury of that particular version of events because
Speaker 2: it is legally sound in their mind and likely to
Speaker 2: result in a conviction. So anything else, even more complicated
Speaker 2: versions of the truth, it just muddies the water and
Speaker 2: confuses the jury. So I understand what I'm looking at
Speaker 2: as I read this, but it doesn't mean I have
Speaker 2: to like it. I wish they'd gotten more on the
Speaker 2: record about exactly where everyone was at particular moments in
Speaker 2: time of days leading up to the shooting and what
Speaker 2: their phone records look like. Not because I think anyone
Speaker 2: called John Paller. I'm just nosy inside the courtroom. Though
Speaker 2: conspiracy theories aren't much use in a criminal appeal. Once
Speaker 2: he was convicted, Patler could only argue that the trial
Speaker 2: had been legally flawed in some specific way, and for
Speaker 2: years he did. He appealed his conviction to the Virginia
Speaker 2: Court of Appeals and then to the Supreme Court of Virginia.
Speaker 2: When both of those courts upheld his conviction, he tried
Speaker 2: appealing to the Supreme Court, but they declined to hear
Speaker 2: his case in nineteen seventy two. So after that he
Speaker 2: filed a rid of habeas corpus in the Federal Court
Speaker 2: in the Eastern District of Virginia, alleging that several decisions
Speaker 2: made by the trial court had violated his constitutional rights
Speaker 2: standard fair And when he lost that, he appealed that
Speaker 2: decision to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, and he
Speaker 2: lost again. So in December of nineteen sixty seven, at
Speaker 2: that original trial in Arlington. The jury found him guilty
Speaker 2: and sentenced him to twenty years, and at every stage
Speaker 2: of this appeals process, every court from Arlington County up
Speaker 2: to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals is upholding that
Speaker 2: conviction and that sentence. But he really only ever served
Speaker 2: about five He was released on bond in February of
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty eight, so about three months after his conviction
Speaker 2: when he filed his first criminal appeal, and he remained
Speaker 2: out on bond for three years until the Virginia Supreme
Speaker 2: Court ultimately upheld the conviction of the end of nineteen seventy,
Speaker 2: So he's three courts deep at this point and still guilty,
Speaker 2: and by the fall of nineteen seventy newspaper stories about
Speaker 2: Paller usually say he's changed his ways. One story published
Speaker 2: shortly before oral argument before the Virginia Supreme Court quoted
Speaker 2: him saying, it seems to shock people that I've changed
Speaker 2: from a hater of blacks to a lover of them.
Speaker 2: But it's really not all that strange. I finally realized
Speaker 2: just how close I am to blacks and browns and
Speaker 2: other depressed people. I'm Greek, I have dark eyes, dark hair,
Speaker 2: and here in America. That can work against you. You
Speaker 2: can grow up like the black to think you just
Speaker 2: don't fit in. That's the reason I became a Nazi.
Speaker 2: I hated my name, I hated my nationality, and I
Speaker 2: wanted to strike back at my hate. The Nazis seemed
Speaker 2: like a good place to do it.
Speaker 1: It was a.
Speaker 2: Special form of suicide. I guess the Nazis were out
Speaker 2: to eliminate alien stock. I was out to eliminate my
Speaker 2: alien past, so I put on the swastika. But now
Speaker 2: I know that all of them, myself too, were sick.
Speaker 2: He doesn't have the language quite right, but it was
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy But other than that, it sounds fairly genuine.
Speaker 2: I mean, I hope it was true. It's also the
Speaker 2: kind of thing you might say if you're hoping the
Speaker 2: State Supreme Court sees it right before they hear oral
Speaker 2: argument in your appeal. But I believe people can change.
Speaker 2: In June of nineteen seventy two, he'd been in jail
Speaker 2: for over a year and the Supreme Court had declined
Speaker 2: to hear his case, and he told the Washington Daily
Speaker 2: News that month that he was a changed man. He's
Speaker 2: learning and growing in prison. He just finished reading Charles
Speaker 2: Reich's The Greening of America and Jermaine Greer's The Female Eunuch.
Speaker 2: He was learning about feminism and counterculture, the kinds of
Speaker 2: things he spent the nineteen sixties trying to destroy. He
Speaker 2: told the reporter quote, I was committing a special form
Speaker 2: of suicide, trying to eliminate the things I cant hated,
Speaker 2: namely me noticed that is an almost identical quote given
Speaker 2: to a different reporter two years later. I don't know
Speaker 2: if that means it's from the heart or it was rehearsed,
Speaker 2: but it's a remarkably self aware assessment, and I think
Speaker 2: it's something that is true on some level for many
Speaker 2: of the men he marched within the sixties and their
Speaker 2: counterparts today. I want to believe that he believed it,
Speaker 2: but you can't know what's in a man's heart. In
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy four, his wife, Alice, divorced him. He'd been
Speaker 2: in prison for four years and it wasn't entirely clear
Speaker 2: when he might get out. One of his sons would
Speaker 2: later write that after the age of six or seven,
Speaker 2: he didn't see as far for decades, and that sort
Speaker 2: of lines up with this timeline. Alice must have stopped
Speaker 2: taking the boys to visit sometime around here, and in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy four he finally exhausted all possible avenues for appeal.
Speaker 2: The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the decision of
Speaker 2: the federal court in Virginia that had upheld his conviction
Speaker 2: the year prior. But it wasn't all bad news in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy four. I mean, his wife left him, and
Speaker 2: he has no more appeals, and he hasn't seen his
Speaker 2: children in a year. But in the fall of nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy four, he was allowed to leave prison during the
Speaker 2: day to attend art classes at nearby Radford University, although
Speaker 2: it was still just called Radford College at the time.
Speaker 2: He attended classes there for an entire school year. It
Speaker 2: appears before administrators of the college realized that the school
Speaker 2: was participating in the study release program. In August of
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy five, the Roanoke Times ran the headline College
Speaker 2: denies knowing student was assassin, although court records do show
Speaker 2: that he didn't actually legally change his name back to
Speaker 2: Patzalos until nineteen eighty eight. He'd reverted back to using
Speaker 2: his birth name in interviews around nineteen seventy, and he
Speaker 2: apparently gave that name when he enrolled at the college.
Speaker 2: I guess things were different in the seventies. You could
Speaker 2: just tell the registrar a fake name and they wouldn't
Speaker 2: notice that your address was prison. At the time the
Speaker 2: story broke, officials from the Department of Corrections said that
Speaker 2: the study Release program had been operating for years at
Speaker 2: state colleges, universities, and community colleges all over Virginia without incident,
Speaker 2: and according to the program guidelines, participating schools were notified
Speaker 2: about students enrolling through the program, and only people very
Speaker 2: close to their parole deay were eligible to participate. Inmates
Speaker 2: participating in the program had to meet strict guidelines in
Speaker 2: order to qualify, although the paper doesn't say really what
Speaker 2: those were, but the administrators at Radford College were adamant.
Speaker 2: They said nobody had told them that there was a
Speaker 2: murderer taking drawing classes on campus. There was a lot
Speaker 2: of publicity around this at the time, and the college
Speaker 2: responded to the public embarrassment by announcing that until they
Speaker 2: could conduct a thorough review of all of their policies,
Speaker 2: they were just going to enact a blanket ban on
Speaker 2: all inmates, parolees, and people on probation, and that seems
Speaker 2: like a huge overreaction. People on probation and parole are
Speaker 2: out in the world, they've served their time, and they've
Speaker 2: been released. It seems like a clear cut case of
Speaker 2: discrimination to prevent them from attending a state funded school.
Speaker 2: I think the same could be said about banning current
Speaker 2: inmates from the Study Release program, but the legal argument
Speaker 2: there is different than it was the seventies. But this
Speaker 2: put Patler personally in a pretty bad position, not just
Speaker 2: because he was getting close to completing his degree, he
Speaker 2: was also close to his parole date, but the parole
Speaker 2: board had indicated that if he wasn't enrolled in school,
Speaker 2: that would count against him in deciding whether or not
Speaker 2: he would be released. The ACLU stepped in quickly and
Speaker 2: the college backs down. Patler couldn't roll, but he couldn't
Speaker 2: live in a dorm. The college would continue to accept
Speaker 2: students from the Study Release program, but incarcerated students would
Speaker 2: face stiffer regulations. As a parolee, Patler was just bored
Speaker 2: from dormitories, but incarcerated students wouldn't be allowed to enter
Speaker 2: dormitories or the student center. They were restricted to a
Speaker 2: specific dining hall and were banned from participating in extracurricular activities.
Speaker 2: But with his enrollment assured, Patler was granted parole and
Speaker 2: he was released from prison in August of nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 2: He had served less than five years since he actually
Speaker 2: began serving that twenty year sentence. In December of nineteen seventy,
Speaker 2: after he lost his appeal, the ACLU announced their intention
Speaker 2: to sue the school over Patler's right to live in
Speaker 2: a dormitory, but by the end of nineteen seventy five,
Speaker 2: a spokesman for the ACLU announced, somewhat cryptically, quote, we
Speaker 2: have decided not to pursue it any further. The matter
Speaker 2: is closed. In later years, Radford College refused to disclose
Speaker 2: any records or even comment on Patler's time at the school,
Speaker 2: and accounts vary as to whether he even enrolled in
Speaker 2: the spring semester, but by the summer of nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: six he definitely wasn't in school anymore. I think the
Speaker 2: ACLU probably dropped their threat to sue because they weren't
Speaker 2: sure Patler would be a good plaintiff. If they couldn't
Speaker 2: guarantee he was going to stay enrolled in school. He
Speaker 2: has no standing and there's no reason to sue. A
Speaker 2: few months after he stopped going to school, he shows
Speaker 2: back up in the newspaper. This one knocked me on
Speaker 2: my ass. I mean, I'm usually pretty prepared for a
Speaker 2: strange twist. I'm literally looking for the stuff that makes
Speaker 2: these guys weird, right, I'm on the hunt for it.
Speaker 2: But clicking through newspaper archives is tedious work.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: You just pick a keyword and then you click through
Speaker 2: hundreds of pages of possible matches. Chronologically. A lot of
Speaker 2: the results are just the same story. They got picked
Speaker 2: up by twenty different newspapers. But nothing could have prepared
Speaker 2: me for the whiplash I experienced when I'm just halfheartedly
Speaker 2: clicking through mountains of wire stories I've already read, and
Speaker 2: suddenly I'm confronted with the headline Rockwell killer arrested after
Speaker 2: alleged orgy. Pardon me, arrested where and doing?
Speaker 1: What?
Speaker 2: You heard me? Rockwell killer arrested after alleged orgy. The
Speaker 2: body of that article goes on to specify that it
Speaker 2: was a nude orgy. I didn't know you needed to specify,
Speaker 2: but it does okay. I know that this is just
Speaker 2: cruel at this point, Like this piece of the story
Speaker 2: isn't even that important. It's just such a silly, little
Speaker 2: shocking piece that I have accidentally ended up teasing you
Speaker 2: with repeatedly. It's just a weird bump in the road
Speaker 2: that I had to write down the second I started
Speaker 2: writing the script for the first episode. And the problem is,
Speaker 2: I'm making this show in real time. There's no planning ahead,
Speaker 2: there's no backlog, there's no writing all of the parts
Speaker 2: before the first one comes out. The episode you hear
Speaker 2: on a Thursday was recorded Monday morning and edited by
Speaker 2: Wednesday afternoon. And I never know where I'm going until
Speaker 2: I get there.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: I spend all week reading and researching and making my
Speaker 2: little timelines and writing my little biography of side characters
Speaker 2: and translating Yugoslavian war tribunal records, and you know how,
Speaker 2: I get distracted. And then I sit down and start writing.
Speaker 2: And I probably shouldn't admit this, but I don't make
Speaker 2: an outline, and I'm not in control of where the
Speaker 2: story goes once I start writing. So sometimes the sun
Speaker 2: is coming up on a Monday morning, and I realized
Speaker 2: that I accidentally stopped writingading around three AM because I
Speaker 2: got distracted by something very exciting but entirely irrelevant. And
Speaker 2: my very patient editor is waiting on an audio file
Speaker 2: and I haven't even started recording yet. I think I'm
Speaker 2: going to end up having to spend my day off
Speaker 2: trying to figure out why Rockwell's number one guy in
Speaker 2: Dallas was called to testify in front of the Warren Commission. So,
Speaker 2: for Rory's sake, because I'm already late and this is
Speaker 2: already long, I have to leave you in nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 2: but I'm going to try and make it up to you.
Speaker 2: I think I guess I shouldn't make promises, but I'm
Speaker 2: pretty sure we can arrange for the second half of
Speaker 2: part three to come out before next week. So think
Speaker 2: of this as part three point one until then. For
Speaker 2: the love of God, if you're going to break into
Speaker 2: a guy's house, don't take your pants off there. Weird
Speaker 2: Little Guys is a production of fool Zone Media and iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: It's researched, written and recorded by me, Molly Conger. Our
Speaker 2: executive producers are Sophie Letterman, and Robert Evans. The show
Speaker 2: is edited by the wildly talented Ory Gagan. If the
Speaker 2: music was composed by Brad Dickard, you can email me
Speaker 2: at Wirdly Guys Podcast at gmail dot com. I will
Speaker 2: definitely read it, but I probably won't answer it as
Speaker 2: nothing personal. You can exchange conspiracy theories about the show
Speaker 2: with other listeners on the Weird Little Guys subreddit. Just
Speaker 2: don't post anything that's going to make you one of
Speaker 2: my weird Little guys want of time for it.