Double-murder trial to probe racial motives

More than 200 potential jurors completed questionnaires last week as lawyers prepared to kick off a federal trial involving the racially motivated shooting deaths of two men in 1998.

Facing murder charges in the Las Vegas case are Ross Hack, who is suspected of being the leader of a Las Vegas-based white supremacist gang, and Leland Jones, who was a juvenile at the time of the killings.

Michele Lefkowith, southwest regional investigator for the Anti-Defamation League, praised Las Vegas police and FBI agents last week for aggressively pursuing the cold case.

“Victims of extremist violence should never be forgotten,” she said.

The defendants are accused of killing Lin Newborn, 25, and Daniel Shersty, 21.

A federal grand jury in Las Vegas indicted Hack and Jones in 2012.

Also indicted was Hack’s sister, Melissa, who pleaded guilty in May to one felony count of conspiracy to commit murder and agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors against her co-defendants.

Prosecutors have indicated they intend to introduce evidence at trial that all three defendants were associated with racist, neo-Nazi skinhead groups at the time of the slayings.

Melissa Hack was accused of helping lure the victims to a remote desert site on federal land near Powerline Road and Centennial Parkway between July 3 and July 4, 1998, before they were ambushed and fatally shot. The two men were expecting to party.

Prosecutors have theorized that Newborn, who was black, and Shersty, who was white, were killed because they were members of a skinhead group that opposed racial prejudice.

Melissa Hack is the former girlfriend of John “Polar Bear” Butler, a neo-Nazi who was convicted in Clark County District Court in the double-murder case.

Butler, the leader of the Independent Nazi Skins at the time of the slayings, has been serving two life sentences in the Nevada prison system. He was given a death sentence, but it was overturned.

Federal prosecutors sought permission to pursue the death penalty in their case against the Hacks, but U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder denied the request.

Jones was not eligible for the death penalty because he was 17 at the time of the killings.

The murder investigation remained open after Butler’s conviction, and the FBI eventually took a leading role.

Mandie Ables, who helped Melissa Hack lure the victims to the desert, secretly pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit murder in February 2012 and agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors.

Senior U.S. District Judge Philip Pro sentenced her in May 2012 to 15 years in prison, but he kept the case sealed for two more years.

Prospective jurors are scheduled to appear in Pro’s courtroom Tuesday, when lawyers will proceed with the selection process for the murder trial.

The case is being prosecuted jointly by the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and the Nevada U.S. attorney’s office.

Lefkowith has been monitoring and tracking white supremacists for the Anti-Defamation League for the past 15 years.

She alerted authorities in January 2008 after noticing an email address with the name “Hack” on a flier advertising what she described as a “white power concert” in Las Vegas.

“For years I thought Ross Hack was out of the country,” she said.

Ross Hack was arrested in March 2008 in a passport fraud case. He later pleaded guilty to a felony charge of making a false statement on a passport application, and a federal judge in Los Angeles sentenced him in December 2009 to three years in prison.

He was on the verge of being released when he was indicted in the murder case. At a 2012 hearing, a Las Vegas prosecutor described him as a leader of the racist Christian Identity movement in Las Vegas.

Lefkowith said the federal murder case sends a message to neo-Nazis and other extremists that “justice will be served.”

“It also sends a message that your form of intimidation, your form of sending fear into a community, your culture of violence will not be tolerated in our community, and we will pursue you, and we will track you down.”

Contact reporter Carri Geer Thevenot at cgeer@reviewjournal.com or 702-384-8710. Find her on Twitter: @CarriGeer.