An avowed white supremacist whose tattooed chest is emblazoned with the words “Sabbath Breaker” was charged with murder Sunday in an arrest warrant as authorities continued to investigate a possible hate-crime spree stretching across two states.
Federal and local investigators were searching for Benjamin Smith, 21, a Wilmette native, in connection with weekend shootings in Springfield, Decatur, Urbana and Bloomington, Ind., that authorities believe are connected to the Friday night slaying of former Northwestern basketball coach Ricky Byrdsong in Skokie and the shootings of six Orthodox Jews in Chicago.
Bloomington police issued the warrant for Smith after the Sunday murder of Won Joon Yoon, a graduate student from South Korea who was shot twice outside his church.
Authorities believe his death was the latest bloodshed in a shooting rampage that has killed two people, injured nine and narrowly missed a handful of others, including an Asian-American couple driving Friday night in Northbrook. Most of the victims were ethnic or religious minorities.
Police had not officially labeled the shootings hate crimes on Sunday. But Chicago’s Belmont Area Violent Crimes Cmdr. William Hayes said: “If you’re going to look just at the victims that he’s targeted, I suppose you could consider it a hate crime. . . .
“This man is on a spree. He’s just shooting people all over the state–and out of state now.”
Smith, a 1996 graduate of New Trier High School who has studied at the University of Illinois and Indiana University, recently drew attention when he and a young woman blanketed Wilmette neighborhoods with literature from the World Church of the Creator, an East Peoria, Ill.-based group that advocates deportation of Jews and non-whites.
The group’s leader, Matt Hale, is best known for applying to the Illinois state bar in hopes of defending white supremacists. Last week a hearing board denied his application, contending that his views violate the bar’s “character and fitness” requirements.
In an interview Sunday afternoon, Hale confirmed that Smith had been a member of his group from May 1998 until May of this year, when he stopped paying dues.
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Hale said he knew Smith “fairly well” and that they last saw each other about 10 days ago in East Peoria. Hale said Smith had testified on his behalf before the hearing board.
He said that he would find it “hard to believe” that Smith had anything to do with the shootings. “But every person is still his own master,” Hale said. “Everyone has a free will.”
According to the organization’s creed, posted on its Internet Web site: “Unless the White Race soon becomes aware, aroused, organized and militant, we will soon be an extinct species.”
Despite those words, Hale said Sunday that he never has supported violence and that his organization would dismiss any member who committed a crime. He said the shootings were in no way connected with his organization or its teachings.
“Just as the pope in Rome isn’t responsible for some wacko who plants a bomb at (an abortion) clinic, our church and myself can’t be responsible for what anyone does with our policy,” Hale said. “We state we’re completely legal, nonviolent and peaceful.”
Police described Smith as 6 feet tall, 135 pounds, with the words “Sabbath Breaker” tattooed on his chest. Witnesses linked Smith to the crime through his car–a light blue 1994 Ford Taurus with Indiana license plate No. 53J919 and a broken passenger-side window.
On Sunday night, the FBI’s Indianapolis office was preparing a federal warrant to charge Smith with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.
“It gives federal agents the authority to search for him anywhere in the country,” said FBI Special Agent Doug Garrison.
Chicago detectives learned of Smith Saturday after receiving a tip concerning an unidentified associate of his, Garrison said. That associate told detectives that Smith owned a light-blue Taurus.
Though Bloomington authorities charged Smith with Yoon’s murder, police had not filed charges late Sunday in the death of Byrdsong, who was killed while walking with two of his children near their Skokie home.
“Right now all we know is, this guy is the registered owner of the car. Everyone wants to talk to him,” Hayes said. “We couldn’t ask for a warrant or anything now. I couldn’t get close to that without more concrete evidence.”
Smith’s car was last seen Sunday afternoon on Interstate Highway 65 near Bloomington, officials said.
Shell casings picked up from the crime scenes in Springfield, Urbana and Bloomington have yet to be matched with those found Friday night in Chicago and the north suburbs. But in all four cases, the suspect drove a light blue Taurus and left behind .22 and .380 caliber casings–the same sizes used in Friday night’s shootings.
The first shooting outside the Chicago area occurred around 1:15 p.m. Saturday as the victim walked down East Methany Street in Springfield. Minutes later, two African-American men were shot at as they walked on East Division Street, but they weren’t injured.
An hour and a half later, Rev. Stephen Anderson, an African-American pastor of a Decatur church, was shot in the arm by a gunman who pulled up in a car, stared at his face and pulled the trigger.
Just before midnight Saturday, Steven Kuo of Northbrook, a student of Taiwanese descent at the University of Illinois, was shot in the thigh after a gunman pulled up to six Asian-Americans standing on the Urbana campus. The man fired “three or four shots,” Hayes said.
Sunday morning, a blue Taurus pulled up outside the Korean United Methodist Church in Bloomington, where a small group of worshipers had just arrived.
The driver reached out the window and fired at least three times with a .380-caliber semiautomatic handgun. Two struck Yoon, a graduate of Southern Illinois University who recently moved to Bloomington after being admitted into an Indiana doctoral program.
With a witness chasing him, the gunman fled in the Taurus, heading east out of town on Highway 46 toward Nashville, Ind., about 15 miles east of Bloomington, said Bloomington Police Chief Jim Kennedy, whose department had been contacted by Chicago and federal authorities about Smith.
The Bloomington department had run-ins with Smith last year after he was spotted littering residents’ yards and doorsteps with literature targeting Jews and minorities, Kennedy said.
Kwang Chul Park, a church member, said Yoon was single and a faithful churchgoer, the son of an elder in the Korean church.
Pyung Ho Kim, 44, another church member and Indiana graduate student, said he heard gunfire but “thought it was kind of a firecracker because I just heard bop, bop, bop.”
Kim said he, Yoon and several other church members were walking through the parking lot toward the front entrance when the gunman started firing.
“Then (Yoon) suddenly fell on me and we both fell to the ground,” Kim said, adding that he saw blood on his friend’s back and opened his shirt and saw a gunshot wound.
“I didn’t think it was a bullet hole at first,” he said. “I just thought the firecracker was really strong.”
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After Yoon fell to the ground, Kim and others in the group administered CPR until an ambulance arrived about 10 minutes later. He and Yoon had been laughing and smiling on the way to church because they had just watched the men’s Wimbledon tennis final on television.
“How can you imagine this kind of instance happening in a church?” Kim said. “If a church is not safe, then I don’t know what is.”
Shooting victims from the Chicago area continued to recover Sunday. Gidon Sapir, 34, was upgraded from serious to stable condition at St. Francis Hospital in Evanston. Two other Orthodox Jews, ages 31 and 34, were still in fair condition at Illinois Masonic Medical Center, according to hospital officials.