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THE LONG SHADOW OF BILL RICCIO

Bill Riccio with an unidentified member of the Aryan Youth Front

Deep in the woods outside of Birmingham, Alabama, there is a compound. Little more than a house and a few adjoining structures, this otherwise nondescript building has become the nesting grounds for the Neo-Nazism in the American South. Forty-four years after the Allied victory in World War II and the suicide of Adolf Hitler, this building acts as a glimpse as to what might have been and, for Bill Riccio, a vision of what will come.

In 1992, documentary cameras came to the compound, known as the WAR (White Aryan Resistance) House and interviewed Riccio, the leader of an organization known as the Aryan National Front and its youth-wing, the Aryan Youth Front. On camera, we saw Riccio and a collection of teenagers perform the Nazi salute, watch video of the Nuremberg rallies, eat Swastika-adorned birthday cake. Riccio, then in his mid-thirties, spoke to the documentarians about how he envisioned WAR House: “This house here has been a springboard for the skinhead movement in this area. They can hang out here, bring their dates here, we cookout, you know, they can drink, we have a good time. As we began to fellowship here, our numbers grew and we began to use it as a recruiting station.”

The Riccio of Skinhead USA saw himself as a savior for disaffected white youth: “We want the broken toys. Send us your broken toys, and we’ll fix ‘em for you. These kids received a lot of material things in life: they had a car at sixteen, a stereo in their room, a tv in their room, but their father never gave them love. We have people in our ranks that were abused by their parents. They’ve run away because they could not stand living at home. They were living on the streets, they had no food, no shelter; we go to ‘em and we approach ‘em and say, ‘Look, we’ll feed you. Come in here and we’ll take care you of you. You’re white, you’re of our people, you have a home now.”

  1992 was a pivotal moment for the Aryan National Front and Aryan Youth Front. Not only were they the subject of a ground-breaking documentary, they organized a 150 man-strong protest in Birmingham and established key ties with other white nationalist organizations, such as the Hammerskins and the Ku Klux Klan. Then, as always in such situations, violence broke out. On April 18, 1992, three young men and one young woman involved with the Aryan National Front encountered Benny Rembert, a homeless black man living on the streets of Montgomery Alabama. Rembert was stabbed then placed in the way of an oncoming train. Rembert’s death, carried out in celebration of Hitler’s birthday, led to the end of the Aryan National Front.

The death of Rembert and the ensuing investigation saw Bill Riccio arrested and placed under eight years of supervised probation. It was not Riccio’s first brush with the law. Born William E. Davidson, Riccio was first arrested in 1979 for possession of a sawed-off shotgun, and received probation. In 1985, he was convicted of the same crime and possession of marijuana. In 1989, he was convicted of misdemeanor assault for attacking a protest organized by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. In 1992, following the protest in Birmingham and the death of Rembert, Riccio was convicted on a range of charges including the illegal possession of firearms, the possession of grenades, and employing armed bodyguards. In total, Riccio spent a year in prison for his life of crime, all while ricocheting between membership in his own organizations, the Hammerskins, and the Ku Klux Klan.

Now, in 1999, there is a second chapter in the story of Bill Riccio that can be told. Two of those disaffected teens who came to Riccio for leadership have made national headlines: Howard Cleves and Peter Robins, the two men responsible for the attempted lynching of thirteen year old Thomas Ross, whose chance at posthumous justice was thwarted when the trial of his attackers was ended by Judge Mike McCormick. Both men were members, according to sources within the FBI, of the Aryan Youth Front.

With this long history of organized violence against black Americans, his grooming of white teens with no one else to rely on, and a consistent history of violating the law in the pursuit of a Nazi America, the ambush killing of the Ross family must be viewed in a new light: they were victims not of spontaneous attempted lynching and a retaliatory ambush, but a concerted effort by an organized group to inspire hatred and fear. Bill Riccio is a free man, and now it seems that those he trained to continue his war against minorities in this country might go free as well. As a member of the Aryan Youth Front said in the 1992 documentary, “I can’t say that we’re not violent. We are violent. But we’re violent for our race.” As long as men like Bill Riccio are free, the violence will not stop.

The FBI has refrained from pursuing hate crime charges because Thomas Ross was not ‘engaged in a federally protected act.’ What does it say of our country in 1999 that life is not something that is federally protected?

An online journal published and written by Quinlan Sartoris. Further details forthcoming.

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