A sordid story of a state unwilling to stop a KKK reign of terror in 2019

By Nate Thayer

September 3, 2019

The Ku Klux Klan showed up at the Hillsborough, Orange County, North Carolina court house on Saturday, August 24 dressed in robes and conical hats and donning wrap around sunglasses, carrying racist placards, confederate flags, white supremacist messages, hand-drawn signs quoting Donald Trump ‘Make America Great Again,’ and illegally brandishing guns in full view of law enforcement.

An investigation has identified the true identities of the 15 Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, who came from at least 6 states, members of the most extremist and violent Klan in America headquartered in Yanceyville, Caswell County, North Carolina. 

Of those in attendance in Hillsborough on August 24, most have extensive criminal records, several are convicted felons, and many have been charged with violent crimes, including rape, indecent liberties with a minor, attempted murder, domestic violence, weapons charges, assault and battery, communicating threats, arson, intimidation, and numerous other criminal offenses, court records show. 

Together, the 15 Klansmen at the event have accumulated more than 50 drunk driving related charges, according to court records. 

Some of the Klansmen at the August 24 Orange County courthouse demonstration carried guns in violation of North Carolina law. 

Orange County Sheriff’s Department said this week that two arrest warrants had been issued for “one man who lives in another county and another who lives out of state,” according to Orange County Sheriff Charles Blackwood, for being “armed at a parade”, according to other North Carolina Law enforcement. But not until community outrage forced local authorities to take action.

The two members of the Loyal White Knights ar North Carolina Grand Dragon—or state leader—Roger Dale Renick of Hope Mills, North Carolina, and an Ohio LWK state leader Chester M. (CM) Jenkins of Middletown, Ohio, North Carolina law enforcement sources confirmed. 

As of Tuesday, September, 2 no arrests have been made, despite law enforcement being aware of the home addresses of both suspects.

Both men were photographed carrying handguns strapped to their waists at the August 24 Klan rally at the courthouse.

Orange County prohibits guns — concealed or openly carried — on courthouse property, a county spokesman, Todd McGee, said. In addition, North Carolina state law prohibits any guns at demonstrations and protests.

“Although North Carolina allows people to openly carry weapons, this right is limited in certain situations, such as at parades, protests or demonstrations,” Orange County officials said in a statement.

Counter demonstrators were critical of law enforcement present at the Klan rally who they said failed to intervene despite the Klan members openly carrying weapons.

Orange County, North Carolina sheriff Charles Blackwell claimed after the demonstration that his deputies took photos of the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan at the Orange County Courthouse and identified at least two gun toting Klansmen. But the evidence shows that local law enforcement did nothing until anti-racist community members, dozens of whom showed up spontaneously to object to the gathering, provided law enforcement with pictures of the armed Klansmen and the license plate numbers of the vehicles they arrived in.

“They’ve done a remarkable job [identifying] these people without anything other than the photographs that we had, intelligence that we’ve gathered from other agencies, and vehicles that they were supposedly driving, some of them rental vehicles,” Blackwood said, referring to his deputies.

“The thought process that we’re not doing anything or that we’re somehow trying to assist somebody in violating the law is ludicrous,” Blackwood said. “There are a lot of moving parts, and we do have to be diligent in making sure we’re not just looking out for public safety but for everyone’s rights who’s (sic) involved.”

But County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Alicia Stemper said they identified the gun-toting Klansmen after photographs were provided by anti-Klan citizens who spontaneously appeared to counter protest.

“We were monitoring from a distance and did not see anybody with any weapons,” Stemper said, referring to the deputies. “As they were getting in their cars, people started telling us they had weapons, but we hadn’t seen it, and at that point they were leaving, so it made sense at that point to pursue the investigation with a cool head.”

Photographs also show the armed Klansmen, their weapons visible, standing next to and speaking with the Hillsborough and Orange County uniformed officers during the demonstration.

North Carolina Roger Dale Renick

North Carolina LWK Grand Dragon–or state leader–Roger Dale Renick, of Hope Mills and Red Springs, North Carolina was identified by photographs as carrying a handgun during the demonstration and by the vehicle he used to arrive and depart Hillsborough. Renick has been arrested at least 18 times in North Carolina, court records show.

Renick was photographed with a hand gun holstered to his waist at the Hillsborough, Orange County, North Carolina August 24 demonstration. As the demonstration ended, he was photographed entering the driver’s side of a 1997 GMC Suburban with Sons of Confederate Veterans speciality license plate number ‘AKIACV.’

AKIA is Klanspeak for “A Klansman I Am.” The CV stands for ‘Confederate Veterans’, an official speciality license plate approved by the state of North Carolina.

The vehicle is registered to Roger Dale Renick of Hope Mills, North Carolina whose birthdate, address, drivers license photograph, and social security number match that of the North Carolina state Klan leader.

Renick’s wife, Jennifer Marie Renick, also a longtime member of the Loyal White Knights, who also holds a senior position on the “Imperial Board”—or national leadership body—of the LWK, according to LWK sources, is also a convicted felon, according to court records. 

The couple have appeared publicly at dozens of Klan events in recent years, including in Roxboro, North Carolina in December 2016, Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017, in Hanover, Virginia in July 2019, at a demonstration organized by the LWK to support the convicted terrorist Dylan Roof who murdered 9 elderly black church parishioners in Columbia, South Carolina in June 2015, and numerous other public demonstrations held in North Carolina, Georgia, and elsewhere, this investigation shows.

The Renick’s: A Long History of Hate Activity in North Carolina

The Renick couple are also responsible for campaigns of racial intimidation, surreptitiously distributing hate literature at schools and in predominantly black neighborhoods on numerous occasions in recent years, often in and near Fayetteville, North Carolina, according to internal messages on the Loyal White Knights members-only discussion boards and chat rooms leaked to this reporter during an investigation.

In the suburbs of Fayetteville, North Carolina in October, 2017, racist fliers were found on vehicle windshields parked at Gray’s Creek High School during a Friday night football game.

The hateful leaflets covertly left during Friday night football, a sacred ritual throughout North Carolina and elsewhere in small-town America, sparked high decibel local objection and widespread national media attention—a perfect storm for the Loyal White Knights of the KKK, who seek media publicity as a central recruiting tool.

“How the KKK is targeting high school students in white supremacy recruitment,” wrote Newsweek magazine. 

“KKK tries to recruit members by posting flyers outside high school football game,” headlined the New York Daily News.

“The #KKK Are Recruiting Right Here In Wake County, NC!” said K95 radio.

“KKK distributes flyers outside North Carolina football game,” said USA Today. “The Ku Klux Klan chose to target a high school football game for its defense of Confederate statues, sending a North Carolina school district scrambling to determine why the racist organization chose a high school football game as the ground on which to spread targeted racist propaganda.”

According to internal Loyal White Knights documents, the flier distribution, where leaflets were placed on the windshields of those attending the game in the parking lot on school property, were the work of the Renick’s, who took credit for the illegal, racist flier drops and live nearby.

“We are aware of the unapproved distribution of material on the campus of Gray’s Creek High School Friday night during the football game which is currently being investigated,” Gray’s Creek principal Lisa Stewart said at the time.

Stewart said “James Spears, the groups great titan”, had confirmed that the LWK had distributed the leaflets. 

“James Spears” is an alias used by Loyal White Knights Imperial Wizard—or national head—Christopher Eugene Barker of Yanceyville, Caswell County, North Carolina, according to several LWK members.

Barker was in attendance at the August 24 demonstration in Hillsborough, Orange County.

Other times Barker has used the name Robert Jones, telling media in Illinois, Alabama, South Carolina, and more than a dozen other states that he is the Grand Dragon–or state leader–living in their state.

In truth, there is no James Spears or Robert Jones, the latter the name of an historical North Carolina Klan leader who died in the 1980’s.

The success of the media blitz of the Fayetteville high school leafleting in 2017 was roundly applauded by Barker. “N.C. Grand Dragon pisses off whole community LOL, hitting a football game smart thinking,” Barker wrote to members in documents obtained by this reporter, referring to Roger Dale Renick, attaching a Charlotte Observer news story. “I did news report with female reporter she sounded MAD LOL.”

The local Cumberland County Sheriff’s criminal intelligence division, responsible for the high school jurisdiction, investigated the leafleting and concluded they were distributed by “just some people trying to make trouble” and there was no organized KKK activity in the county.

The Sheriff was mistaken, according to Loyal White Knights documents and members only chat logs on their online discussion board obtained during this investigation.

According to these internal Loyal White Knights documents, there are at least five active members of the Loyal White Knights of the KKK in the Fayetteville area.

Three months later, in January, 2018 over the Martin Luther King holiday weekend, more leaflets were placed in mail boxes in the Roslin Farms development, also in Grays Creek, North Carolina.

“A reader sent me an email on Sunday, Jan. 14 with the message: ‘Found these by my mailbox. I live in Roslin Farms in Grays Creek,’” wrote Myron Pitts, a columnist for the  Fayetteville Observer, on being alerted to the racist literature by a distraught citizen. “The next day was the holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday.”

What Pitts did not know was the “distraught citizen” reader was the Imperial Kilgrap–or national secretary–for the Loyal White Knights, Jennifer Renick, of Hope Mills and Red Springs, North Carolina who, with her husband Roger Dale Renick, had distributed the leaflets the night before she emailed Pitts posing as an outraged recipient of the hate fliers in an attempt to gain media publicity for the Klan group.

Loyal White Knights Members near Fayetteville, North Carolina

“The Fayetteville cops said the leaflets were not the work of the Klan,” wrote Justin Adams, the LWK Klailiff–or vice president–for Pennsylvania.

Referring to the Fayetteville, North Carolina leafletting and local law enforcement reaction, Kevin Beair, the Exalted Cyclops for Pennsylvania, said “That’s great, clever too, that means we have friends in the police department.”

Adams was later arrested in Roxboro, North Carolina in February 2018 for distributing hate literature he placed on vehicles in the town. Adams was attending a national gathering of the Loyal White Knights that weekend at the home of Christopher Eugene Barker of Yanceyville, Caswell County, the national leader of the extremist Klan faction. Adams has distributed Klan literature in Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, and other states prior, according to LWK internal documents.

In August 2018, at Adams trial, Person County, North Carolina Chief District Judge Mark Galloway, said Klan members “had come to help us understand how we need to lead our lives. The phrase that comes to mind from my youth, when Klansmen were walking in towns in uniforms, and others were demonstrating for different purposes, the phrase I always heard was … out-of-town agitators. That’s what I heard locals say in another day. I need it to be known that … this man didn’t do it, but someone else wasted a perfectly good spray can to write ‘KKK’ and a slogan or two on the courthouse square in (nearby) Yanceyville.”

Roxboro police charged Adams with littering, saying some of the fliers ended up on the ground. “We do not support the message of the KKK. We have historically demonstrated that and will continue to take appropriate actions. I commend the citizen for calling 911,” Roxboro Police Chief David Hess said at the time. “See Something Say Something is what allowed this arrest. I commend officers for taking appropriate actions. We support people exercising their constitutional rights. Littering is not a protected right and I commend our officers for taking appropriate action.”

Person County Judge Galloway told Adams attorney “Your client has made a choice, and I’m going to do what I can to let others know that’s not a good choice for them to make.”

In December 2016, a caravan of Loyal White Knights members drove through Roxboro flying KKK flags and yelling racial slurs.

“The phrase I always heard was, we don’t need any – and you want to know what I’m getting ready to say? – out-of-town agitators,” Judge Galloway told Adams in court.

But the Roxboro law enforcement approach appears to stand in stark contrast to many other law enforcement agencies in North Carolina.

Both men have attended numerous Loyal White Knights demonstrations and gatherings in Virginia, North Carolina, and elsewhere. Both men are responsible for numerous clandestine leaflet drops of racist, homophobic, and anti-semitic literature in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina and elsewhere in the dead of the night. Both men have been photographed carrying weapons at white supremacist public demonstrations.

“Yay me and Roger made it again,” wrote Jennifer Renick on January 23, 2018, attaching a link to the Fayetteville Observer article written by Mr. Pitts which denounced her Martin Luther King leaflet excoriating the civil rights icon.

Ms. Renick boasted to other members of her success in generating media attention. “It took them long enough to report it lol. He got my email after all hahaha.”

Ms. Renick also sent an email to Mr. Pitts in October, 2017 posing then, also, as an offended recipient of the bigoted pamphlets, and alerting Pitts to her own leafletting at the High School football game.

Ms. Renick and her husband, the North Carolina Grand Dragon for the LWK, Roger Renick, also of Hope Mills and Red Springs, were responsible for the fliers at both the October 2017 Friday night football game at  Gray’s Creek High School and those distributed on MLK day 2018, as they are for many other clandestine flier drops in the area surrounding Fayetteville. The husband and wife team have long been confederates of Mr. Barker.

Earlier, leaflets were distributed by the Renick husband and wife team targeting the integrated neighborhood of Massey Hills in Fayetteville. The incendiary leaflet pictured a black man and read “TO ALL NIGGERS!: Anyone of you black apes caught ‘making eyes’ at a white girl will be beaten with bats and your mothers won’t get anymo’ bananas–that’s a promise!”

“This is serious business, man. They are talking about killing people, man,“ Antonio Smith, a black man from Fayetteville told a local TV news affiliate. “My friends were very, very upset. They wanted to go and hurt somebody because they figured that everybody would just point at the blacks.”

Chester M. Jenkins

The other armed man who attended the August 24, 2019 Klan rally in Hillsborough, Orange County North Carolina and now has an outstanding warrant for his arrest for being “armed at a parade” is Chester M. Jenkins, 54, of Middletown, Ohio, a welder attached to the Ironworker Union local 290 who has a government security clearance to work at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base just east of Dayton, Ohio, according to court and records and Loyal White Knights sources. 

Mr. Jenkins is also a longtime leader of the Loyal White Knights and holds the position of Grand Klailiff—or Christian pastor—for the Klan group in Ohio.

Mr. Jenkins has a criminal history that includes arrests for domestic violence and endangering a child. In addition, both the state of Ohio and the federal Internal Revenue Service have charged Jenkins with failure to pay more than $50,000 in back taxes since 2016.

Jenkins, a tall, lanky man with a long, prominent beard has been a regular attendee of numerous Klan events in recent years, including in Charlottesville, Virginia, Ohio, South Carolina, Georgia, North Carolina, and elsewhere, according to photographs and Loyal White Knights sources.

KKK Imperial Wizard Christopher Eugene Barker

Also in attendance at the August 24 Loyal White Knights event in Hillsborough, Orange County, North Carolina were LWK Imperial Wizard Christopher Eugene Barker of Yanceyville, Caswell County, North Carolina; Barker’s wife Amanda Barker; New Jersey Grand Dragon Carl Clark; New York State Grand Dragon Douglas Gary Munker; Loyal White Knights ‘Imperial Knighthawk’–or chief enforcer–Christopher Shiver of North Carolina; and others.

Mr. Barker created the Loyal White Knights in 2011 after being expelled from several other Klan organizations for criminal and drunken behavior and is widely reviled by other Klan groups.

The evidence shows Imperial Wizard Barker, 40, of Yanceyville, Caswell County, North Carolina, is the alcoholic, violent, wife-beating, career criminal, white racist equivalent of a late night television religious huckster, and his Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan as much akin to a motley, dysfunctional social club of angry, disenfranchised petty criminals as it is an organized group of coherent domestic terrorists.

But that doesn’t mean that Barker or his LWK aren’t dangerous.

What the Loyal White Knights sell is unfiltered hate and intolerance and business is booming.

Barker is a rogue white supremacist with a long criminal record that includes multiple DUI charges, numerous arrests for violence, at least nine arrests for violent assaults on his wife, malicious arson, communicating threats, assault and battery with a deadly weapon, attempted murder, burning down a perceived enemies home, assault with a deadly weapon, and illegally trading “a shotgun for a fifth of liquor.” Barker has twice been arrested, on both federal and North Carolina state charges, for “possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.”

Barker has such a loathsome reputation that even other Klansman regularly denounce him. Barker has been expelled from at least three other Klan groups for his drunken and criminal behavior.

Barker remains a key suspect in a 2011 defacing of a synagogue in Danville, Virginia, an incident that led to him getting kicked out of one Klan group and a crime which remains an open FBI ‘hate crime’, according to law enforcement sources.

During the July 4, 2011 weekend, four then members of the Rebel Brigades of the Ku Klux Klan attended a cross burning in rural southeastern Virginia, got drunk, drove to Danville, and desecrated the Beth Shalom Synagogue by painting a swastika on the front door, according to three Klansmen with direct knowledge of the incident. 

Danville police opened a criminal investigation and the FBI was notified immediately that a hate crime had occurred. 

“Chris Barker has been very high on the list of suspects for the synagogue incident since the get-go,” said Danville police chief Philip Broadfoot in an interview at the time. 

Multiple Klan officials, others with knowledge of events that night, and four law enforcement officials confirmed that Barker was the ringleader behind the hateful vandalism. Two months after the incident, one of the Klansman who committed the crime confessed to the Imperial Wizard of the Rebel Brigades of the Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard and named Barker, his wife Amanda, himself, and one other Klansman as responsible. That KKK group promptly expelled the four members, including Barker and his wife. 

“You do not deface houses of worship—ever,” said Rebel Brigades of the KKK leader Billy Snuffer. “We kicked them out in the third week of September, 2011 when we found out. Chris Barker gives the Klan a black eye.” 

Members of the Beth Shalom congregation remain upset about the lack of communication on the part of federal law enforcement regarding the hate crime. The FBI did send a document to the synagogue on March 6, 2013, but it said that “a criminal investigation can be a lengthy undertaking and, for several reasons, we cannot tell you about its progress at this time.”

“If the FBI told me, ‘We can’t do anything with it, but I can’t tell you why,’ as a taxpayer I would find that less objectionable than what appears to be the case that the evidence is being ignored,” said Peter Howard, a longtime leader of Beth Sholom. “How much patience should I have before I conclude I am being ignored?” 

Detailed messages about the 2011 incident were left with several different FBI agencies, including the FBI Special Agent who is in charge of this hate crime case, but went unreturned.

“God said you should always find something good in someone, but I don’t think God has ever met Chris Barker,” said Rebel Brigades KKK head Snuffer.

No one has been arrested for the crime, though in July 2015 the FBI listed the case as “investigation closed,” according to public records. 

KLAN LEADER CHRIS BARKER AND THE LAW

Christopher Barker has been arrested over 50 times on an extravagant plethora of charges in recent years, but has never been to prison. These charges have included several assaults, assault with a deadly weapon, possession of stolen weapons, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, illegal possession and sale of a firearm, innumerable alcohol related offenses, possession of a stolen firearm, forgery, larceny, burglary—forcible entry, possessing stolen goods, malicious arson, making threatening phone calls, aggravated assault, illegal purchase or possession of firearms, larceny, burglary—forcible entry, possessing stolen goods, threats/intimidation, “assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill” (North Carolina’s version of attempted murder charges), at least nine arrests for assaulting or threatening to kill his wife, and trying to “trade a shotgun for a fifth of liquor”, among many others, according to North Carolina law enforcement documents and various police and court records. These are in addition to more than 20 alcohol related offenses.

On Christmas eve, 2008 Barker was arrested and charged with “maliciously burning the dwelling house inhabited by” a man he was angry with. “We found Barker’s electronic discount card—the kind you swipe at the cash register at Wal-Mart each time you buy something—at the fire scene, which traced back to Barker,” said Rockingham County, North Carolina Fire Marshal Robert Cardwell in an interview. “When we went to talk to him, he was so drunk we couldn’t understand half of what he was saying. He was popping open new beer cans through the whole interview. He was very upset and said the man deserved it because he had been sleeping with his wife.”

“I think Mr. Barker has a problem with alcohol,” the fire marshal concluded.

Barker was arrested for robbing and destroying a non-profit church thrift store that donated goods to the elderly and needy in his home town of Eden, Rockingham County, North Carolina.

Barker has the distinction of being arrested by three separate law enforcement agencies on the same day–while on federal probation for a conviction for ‘possession of a firearm by a convicted felon’–and not having spent the night in jail.

On the occasions when Amanda Barker called the cops to stop her husband from killing her, she always eventually refused to pursue charges or cooperate with the court, forcing the state of North Carolina to drop the charges.

North Carolina law enforcement have kept Mr. Barker on their radar screen since he became an adult two decades ago when the then 18-year old broke into a church funded charity store in Eden, Rockingham County, North Carolina. After stealing a few cheap electronic devices, Barker ransacked and destroyed thousands of dollars of clothes and food items intended for the poor and needy in his small hometown of Eden, according to the Eden police chief in an interview.

Barker has been arrested more than 25 times on alcohol related and domestic violence charges alone, according to law enforcement documents from North Carolina and Florida.

But Barker has never been to prison, North Carolina and Federal law enforcement say, and court documents confirm.

Evidence suggests that Christopher Barker’s remarkable history of simultaneously thumbing his nose at the law and staying out of jail may be related to his other role as an undercover informant for the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force.

The Barker family forward themselves and their LWK as good examples of God fearing Christian Americans. The public record says otherwise.

“I remember, at the end of the 2015 Klonvocation, he told all the members to ‘on your way home, find yourself a nigger and kill him’,” recalled former LWK member Richard Dillon of Indiana, referring to the annual gathering of Loyal White Knights members from across the country held on Barker’s property in Yanceyville, North Carolina. “He was dead serious. He meant it. No smile. No laughing. He meant it. He said ‘Because you won’t be from there, no one will know and you won’t be a suspect.’ I said to myself ‘no way, he didn’t just say that.’ Barker didn’t even know half the people in that room. You never forget it when you hear those kind of words. I will remember them until the day I die.”

Mr. Dillon, a former Loyal White Knights Klansman, was stabbed “three times in the upper chest” in Christopher Barker’s house at three in the morning on December 3, 2016, hours before Barker’s Loyal White Knights Klan group was to march through Caswell County and nearby Roxboro in a self declared “Trump Victory Parade” shortly after the presidential election.

At the time of his 2016 arrest for the pre dawn stabbing in his Caswell County North Carolina home on charges of using “a deadly weapon with intent to kill causing serious injury”–North Carolina’s equivalent of attempted murder–, Barker was on federal probation after pleading guilty to “possession of a firearm by a convicted felon” after the FBI was alerted to Barker’s involvement in a “conspiracy to build a nuclear weapon of mass destruction” targeting New York City.

On December 13, 2016, a North Carolina grand jury indicted Christopher Eugene Barker, 38, of Yanceyville, North Carolina and William Earnest Hagen, 50, of Orange, California on attempted murder related charges. The indictment said Barker “did aid and abet William Ernest Hagen in unlawfully, willfully, and feloniously assaulting Richard Dillon with a fixed blade hunting type knife, a deadly weapon with intent to kill and inflict serious injury.”

While on federal probation, Barker was arrested three times in one day by three separate North Carolina law enforcement agencies on drunken driving related charges, but never spent even that night in jail.

“Barker is protected by the FBI and their Joint Terrorism Task Force, specifically two Greensboro officers,” said one North Carolina law enforcement officer. “There is nothing we can do about it. When he is arrested, they make sure he gets out.”

Federal court documents show that Barker was a confidential informant for the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, which includes local, state, and federal law enforcement agents under the supervision and authority of the FBI

At the time of the stabbing of Dillon in Barker’s house, Barker was on federal probation after pleading guilty to “possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.” It was then he cut a deal with Greensboro Police Department officers secunded to the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force to become an FBI JTTF informant.

“If  I got arrested for what Barker has done, I would have been locked up a long time ago and I’d still be locked up now,” said Paul Peck, a former member of Barker’s Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in charge of 11 Midwestern states until he resigned in protest after the December 2016 stabbing incident. “After all the things Barker has been arrested for, and then be busted for trying to kill someone, why is he still free? What else does he have to do to be locked up, kill someone?”

But Barker’s supervised federal probation was not revoked after he was arrested on charges of trying to kill a fellow Klansman and he was not remanded into federal custody. Instead, in what law enforcement sources say was a highly unusual request, two days after Barker was indicted by a North Carolina grand jury on the state charges in December 2016, the U.S. Office of Federal Probation successfully petitioned a federal judge to retroactively “terminate” his probation— and to make it effective starting before his arrest for attempted murder.

Shortly after the Middle District of North Carolina federal court approved this request on January 10, 2017,–the same day Barker first appeared in state court on the attempted murder charges–Barker’s attorney filed a “motion for bond reduction” arguing “the defendant does not appear to have a significant criminal record.”

Caswell County North Carolina Superior Court Judge W. O. Smith III reduced Barker’s $200,000 bond, and the Klan leader was released from custody on February 16, 2017 on the condition he have “no contact or communication with Richard Dillon,” the man Barker was accused of trying to kill.

Immediately after his release from the Caswell County lock up to his home, Mr. Barker began waging a coordinated campaign to threaten and intimidate the stabbing victim and potential witnesses at Barker’s then scheduled upcoming trial, according to emails sent by Barker and his Klan loyalists obtained during this investigation, and interviews with law enforcement and others.

“Fuck you fat whore, the only one about (to) be charged for murder now is Richard Dillon,” Barker wrote to Theresa Taylor, about the man he is alleged to have tried to kill. “And then we will focus our attention on you.”

The conditions for Barker’s pre-trial release stated he must have “no contact or communication with Richard Dillon,” according to Caswell County North Carolina court and law enforcement documents. “You may be arrested without a warrant if you violate any condition of release in this Order,” according to the February 16, 2017 document. Intimidating or threatening victims or potential witnesses are felony crimes in North Carolina.

“Hell, maybe you can help Richard (Dillon) pay for him and his buddy who is about to also be charged for attempted murder,” Christopher Barker wrote to another recently former member of the Loyal White Knights who resigned in protest immediately after the stabbing incident in another message sent March 1, 2017.

The man referred to as the “buddy” of Richard Dillon is David Winebrenner of Hammond, Indiana, an eyewitness to the December 3 stabbing incident and a named witness for the prosecution in Barker’s then scheduled upcoming trial.

Richard Dillon, a union pipe fitter from Hammond, Indiana, was attacked and stabbed with a knife “three times in the upper chest, penetrating the rib cage” during the early morning alcohol fueled dispute December 3 at Barker’s house as several dozen members of the LWK Klan faction from around the country gathered in Caswell County, North Carolina to hold a “Trump Victory Parade” scheduled for later that morning.

“Spread all the lies you want, you know how the LWK works,” Barker wrote to the former LWK member again on March 1, 2017.

“When Chris gets out (of jail) I am letting you know now he knows what you and James are up to and he is going to start taking action. So just be ready,” wrote Barker’s wife, Amanda to Theresa Taylor, a senior LWK official from Illinois, on December 15, 2016 two days after Barker was indicted by a North Carolina grand jury. “I would be very careful.” Taylor was the then #2 under Ms. Barker and resigned in protest of the stabbing shortly afterward.

Dillon and other former members of Barker’s Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan contend they do know how the LWK works which is why several expressed fear for their safety after Christopher Barker was released from jail and began threatening those who he suspected of cooperating with law enforcement.

“Your damn right I fear for my life!” said Dillon in a March 7, 2017 interview. “Believe me, I know these people as well as anyone and I know what Barker is capable of.”

Barker mobilized members of his Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan as surrogates in a coordinated campaign of intimidation and threats at those most likely to testify at Barker’s trial in Caswell County, North Carolina Superior court, according to documents and interviews.

Neither the Caswell County Sheriff’s Office, who were the investigators in the case, other law enforcement agencies, or the County district attorney’s office, took any action against Barker, despite being provided with numerous documents that Barker was intimidating witnesses for the prosecution in the then scheduled attempted murder trial. Both offices were given copies of what other criminal defense attorney’s say are clear violations of laws prohibiting threatening or intimidating victims or witnesses in a criminal case.

The Caswell County District Attorney’s office and Sheriff’s office did not return numerous calls and emails asking for comment.

In a March 7, 2017 interview Dillon said he had never been contacted by the Caswell County district attorney, the sheriff’s office, or the North Carolina victim’s rights system, SAVAN, which automatically inform crime victims if their alleged assailants have been released from custody, since Barker was released on pre trial bond on February 16, 2017.

But the Caswell County District Attorney’s office Victim/Witness coordinator said in an interview March 6, 2017 “I spoke to the victim last Friday and I am not aware he had any concerns.”

“That is a damn lie!” said Dillon when informed what the district attorney’s office had told a reporter. “I had a deep conversation with the assistant district attorney who called me on Monday February 13 to ask me if I opposed bail reduction for Barker. I have the text messages and phone calls recorded on my phone,” said Dillon in an interview. “I told her in no uncertain terms I am in fear of my life and was very concerned about him getting out of jail and opposed any bond reduction. We talked for at least 30 minutes. That was the last I have heard anything from the prosecutors office.”

“Barker’s threats make me very nervous about going down there to testify,” said Dillon in another interview on March 3, 2017 from his Indiana home. “Especially because the Sheriff and prosecutors office aren’t doing anything about them. They have fancy lawyers and they say if I go down there to testify I will be arrested and charged for something and it will be me going to jail.”

The stabbing victim, Richard Dillon, eventually refused to return to North Carolina because “you’re damn right I fear for my life, brother. I think those cops are working with Barker. I do not feel safe ever returning to Caswell County, or North Carolina for that matter,” he said in an interview.

“If I go to testify, they will not let me leave North Carolina alive if they can get away with it” added Dillon. “I look over my shoulder everyday here in Indiana because I know those boys. I was one of them, I hate to admit.”

Dillon appears to have good reason for his concerns. Barker’s campaign of threats and intimidation do not come as a surprise to anyone who knows Barker or reviewed his recent criminal history. Barker has been arrested for “communicating threats”, “intimidation”, “assault with a deadly weapon”, and “malicious arson” for burning down the home of a rival—all charges connected to people Barker had conflicts with at the time.

Because the witnesses and victims in the attempted murder case declined to cooperate further out of fear of Barker, the attempted murder charges against Barker were eventually dropped.

The media publicity generated from the Loyal White Knights national, coordinated leafleting campaigns and public rallies attended by a handful, such as the August 24, 2019 rally in Hillsborough, Orange County, North Carolina, gives these isolated Klansmen an empowerment they have never experienced otherwise in life–and inevitably results in a spike of calls to their 1-800 telephone hotline and website from people seeking to join. That, in turn, has generated at least tens of thousands of dollars that the Barker’s pocket for their personal use, numerous current and former LWK members said in interviews.

“LOL JEW! You lost once again to the L.W.K. We are building our movement thanks to your stories,” wrote Barker in response to a request for an interview from this reporter. “Continue PLEASE!!!!!!!!!”

In March of 2018, Imperial Wizard Barker was drunk when he attempted to flee out his back door, when the Caswell County deputy sheriff knocked on his front door. His wife, Amanda Barker had called 911 saying Barker was trying to kill her. Barker was “wearing pink underwear, Spiderman pajama bottoms, and a sleeveless leather biker vest” adorned with Ku Klux Klan patches, and “wearing no shoes,” according to North Carolina law enforcement sources. The deputy sheriff was responding to a 911 call from Barker’s wife for punching her in the face, grabbing her around the neck, and choking her, according to North Carolina law enforcement. She feared for her life and called the cops, law enforcement said.

Barker was arrested and charged with resisting arrest, after he was apprehended, drunk and half-naked, in the woods behind his house and assaulting his wife by “grabbing her by the neck and choking her and holding her down using his forearm,” according to Caswell County sheriff deputy Julie B Harrison in court documents.

Barker was jailed for “assault on a female” and “resisting a police officer,” according to North Carolina law enforcement familiar with the incident.

It was at least the ninth time Barker had been arrested for assaulting his wife

But after Mr. Barker was arrested on March 20, 2018 and jailed, things went from bad to worse for him.

The following morning of March 21, Barker was taken from jail to court in front of a Caswell County judge who ordered Barker held on $5000.00 bond or $500 in cash and told to have “NO CONTACT WITH VICTIM” (emphasis in the original court document).

Barker was returned to the Caswell County jail where he promptly placed four calls from the jailhouse telephone to his wife, who he had just been ordered by the court not to contact.

All inmate telephone calls are recorded by law enforcement and monitored to intercept illegal activity or incriminating information.

The first call began at 1:10pm and 48 seconds in the afternoon of March 21, 2018 and the last ended by 1:45PM. According to partial transcripts of the recorded calls obtained from North Carolina law enforcement, Mr. Barker was quoted as saying a lot of things he was soon to regret.

“My time’s up until I can come up with $500 bond. But I am trying to get out before people recognize who the fuck, what is going on ‘cause if Nate Thayer (finds out), you can guarantee that everyone will resign—everything,” Barker told his wife referring to the members of Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan faction he heads, according to the jailhouse recorded phone calls.

The transcript of the jailhouse calls only lists Mr. Barker’s comments and not those of his wife.

At one point, the Imperial Wizard tells his wife “Maybe we need to see a shrink.”

His wife then tells him of Klan subordinates who were trying to get in touch with him that day. “Where did you tell them I’m at? If this shit slips out, I’m going to lose the organization I helped build up,” he says referring to the Loyal White Knights. “You are fucking too because the money coming in to help pay your bills will be gone.”

“I am going to lose the organization I helped build. You are fucking, too because the money been coming in to help pay your bills will be gone,” the Imperial Wizard of the Loyal White Knights told his wife, Amanda, from his jailhouse telephone according to transcripts of audio recording made by North Carolina law enforcement. “The drugs, smoking pot here and there, it’s just flipping my mind out, a little bit of everything. I woke up this morning and shit myself. don’t know how I done that.”

Barker admits on the recorded jail phone to having assaulted his wife. “Look baby, I’m sorry if I hit you, if I did something wrong to you, I really am,” he says.

In the recorded conversation, Barker admits to slapping her and throwing her to the ground. “I am tired of you beating on me,” Amanda Barker told her husband, according to law enforcement sources present at the arrest scene the previous night.

He also admits to using illegal drugs. “I’m sorry about all this stupid shit. The drugs, smoking pot here and there, it’s just flippin’ my mind out, a little bit of everything,” he laments.

Barker “in direct contravention of the court’s order, outside the presence of the court, attempted to make contact with the alleged victim, Amanda Barker, where the defendant made the following recorded statements which are presented to the court…” reads a document from the county district attorney’s office to the judge.

Barker then reverts to his version of trying to sweet talk her. “Look, we had fun the other day, rubbed on each other. I’m trying to find out where a fifth of wine and a fifth of beer came from. Last thing I remember…”

“I want to work on our marriage. Maybe we have to see a shrink,” he says at one point.

But his primary purpose for calling his wife was to convince her to lie to the court that the incident was a simple misunderstanding, so he could be released from jail soonest, and to do that, he tells her, he needs her to lie that he never assaulted her—a fact that he just admitted on the audio taped telephone call, which was provided to both the prosecution and the Judge later that same day.

“My lawyer says he has it all taken care of” but “he said that you’ve got to be there” and to tell the judge “that you and me just got into an argument and that was it.”

Barker devotes much of the calls trying to convince his wife to come to court and follow his choreographed strategy to have him released. Barker said his lawyer “told me that if you come up here you can probably get it all dropped today” but “I can’t go back to the house, I’ll probably have to go to my Daddy’s.”

“Just ride up here. He told me if you could get here by this afternoon” he might be released. “You got $500 bucks?” he asks. “I would call him because he said be up here by two if you can’t reach him in the building then call him.”

“You gotta be here at two, and the guy’s name is Seagal (Barker apparently meant to say ‘Seiglie’, Barker’s court appointed attorney), like Seigelman. He’s a white guy with glasses… and he’s got like a black suit on but his undershirt is real bright blue you get what I’m saying?”

“Well, you gonna come get me out, hun?” he asks the woman he has been married to since they were high school sweethearts more than 20 years ago. When he asks his wife again “You gonna be able to come get me?” he apparently did not like her answer. “Well, who you gonna be with? Who the Hell you talking to now? What did you come up here for yesterday? I would like to know why you come up here yesterday? Why did you ride all the way up here in front of me?”

“I woke up this morning and I had shit myself, don’t know how I done that,” he says at one point about his first night sleeping in jail.

He ends the call with “Say I love you.”

The jailhouse telephone calls were recorded by the Caswell County sheriff’s Office who informed the judge that Barker had violated a court order. Barker was hauled back into court and reprimanded and the judge doubled his bail from $5000 to $10,000.

“The defendant was given a $5000.00 bond and was ordered no contact with the victim. Victim was called at least four times from the jail. (Caswell County Sheriff’s Office) Captain (Michael) Adkins brought down documentation,” Deputy Vincent Corbetti, who works at the Caswell County jail and listened to Barker’s call wrote in another court document

Deputy Sheriff Corbetti copied the tape and made a partial transcript and informed the prosecuting district attorney that Barker had violated the Judge’s order. The Prosecutor called Barker’s lawyer for an urgent meeting and the two agreed to recommend modifying Barker’s bond conditions and take it to the judge.

“The state received this recorded statement at approximately 3:00 on the 22cd of March,” said Brent Groce, the lead Assistant District Attorney for Caswell County

Once the prosecution “received information concerning a violation of the second condition of the defendants pre trial release conditions, held a conference with the defendant’s attorney” reached a consent agreement to increase the Defendants bond from $5000 secured to $10,000 secured and continuing with the condition of no contact with Amanda Barker, the alleged victim,” reads a statement presented to the Judge.

Following the meeting between his lawyer and the judge, and appearing in court in front of the judge again where the prosecutor submitted “the state offered exhibit A…into evidence which was four pages in length and listed four phone calls made by” Barker. The prosecution then produced documents showing Barker had called his wife four times after the court hearing the morning of March 21^st where he was admonished not to do so. The Judge ordered Barker’s bond doubled to $10,000 for violating of the initial “no contact” order.

“The court issued an order modifying the Defendants pre-trial release conditions at approximately 4:45PM on the 21^st of March to a secured bond of $10,000 and “(2) NO CONTACT WITH VICTIM WHATSOEVER (emphasis in original)” reads a court document.

After Barker had his bond doubled for calling his wife at 4:45PM on March 21st, he was returned to the Caswell County jail.

And then things went from worse to much worse for Mr. Barker.

He immediately proceeded to call his mother from the same jailhouse telephone and, again on recording, asked her to contact his wife, Amanda, and set up a three-way call between them.

Since the court’s order “on the afternoon of the 21^st of March, 2018, outside the presence of the court, in direct contravention of the Court’s order, the defendant has enticed his mother to make contact with the alleged victim, Amanda Barker, where the Defendant made the following statements to his mother, where the defendant made the following recorded statements which are presented to the court,” reads a document submitted by the prosecution to the judge.

Barker was still desperately trying to get his wife to come to the court and have her explain to the judge it was all a misunderstanding so he could be released from jail that day.

“What is Amanda doing? Can you tell me?” asked Barker of his mother. “Can you tell Amanda to put money on my account, and tell her to call up here and tell me something like ‘my daddy’s in the hospital’ that way I know everything is all right. Can you tell her to do that?”

“Can you put some minutes on your phone real quick? Can you put minutes on your phone so I can call you? Do you know how to do a three-way call? Which by the time you’ve done a three-way call it will be too late,” Barker asked his mother.

“The defendant has displayed a pattern of behavior, following multiple orders from two judicial officials, wherein the defendant will continue to use the most readily available means to make direct or indirect contact with the alleged victim in this matter,” the assistant district attorney told the judge.

The judge agreed.

“The defendants new conditions of release are…the defendants release is not authorized without further orders of the court,” wrote Judge Stultz. “The defendant shall have no contact direct or indirect with Amanda Barker. Any further attempted direct or indirect contact, or any further direct or indirect contact by the defendant towards Amanda Barker may be the basis for other criminal charges or contempt violations before this court,” wrote District Court Judge J Hoyte Stultz, III. “BOND REVOKED; NO BOND EXCEPT SET BY DISTRICT COURT JUDGE 3/28/18 (emphasis in original court document)

Not incidentally, at the time of Barker’s arrest for punching his wife in the head and choking her, he was awaiting trial in Caswell County on attempted murder related charges for a December 3, 2016 incident where he and another Klansman, William Hagen of California, got into a drunken dispute with a third Klansman, Richard Dillon of Indiana and “stabbed him three times in the upper chest penetrating the interior of the rib cage,” according to hospital documents. Barker and Hagen, the LWK California Grand Dragon, were arrested and charged with North Carolina’s equivalent of attempted murder.

At the time of his arrest for beating his wife, Barker was out of jail on $75,000 bond awaiting trial for “aiding and abetting assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill.”

His Klan co-defendant, William Earnest Hagen, who was also still awaiting trial, had been released on $350,000 pre-trial bond from Caswell County in December 2016. At the time, Hagen was out on $500,000 bond on other charges for attempted murder for stabbing a Mexican American in a Denny’s restaurant parking lot in California. He has since been convicted and sentenced to eight years in a California penitentiary, where he currently resides. That was his third conviction for stabbing a minority in California.

Barker had been previously arrested and charged in North Carolina with “malicious arson” for burning down an Eden North Carolina man’s house he suspected was sleeping with his wife, Amanda. On another occasion he sent another North Carolina man a letter threatening to “blow his head off” the next time he saw him and was charged with “communicating threats.” He was arrested for assaulting his wife on another occasion and ripping out the pipe to their wood stove and threatening to burn his own home down.

Earlier he had been arrested for placing a loaded shotgun in his wife’s mouth and cocking the weapon and threatening to blow her head off. At the time Barker had been convicted of possession of stolen firearms, possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, and trying to trade a rifle “for a fifth of liquor,” according to North Carolina police documents.

But despite having been arrested more than 50 times, Christopher Eugene Barker has never been to prison.

Mr. Barker has a remarkable reputation for managing to wiggle out of seemingly impossible adversarial encounters with law enforcement.

North Carolina law enforcement sources, who are familiar with Barker and the assault on his wife in March 2018, correctly predicted that Mr. Barker would be released after his court hearing in March of 2018. “We think he will likely be released tomorrow,” one said in an interview.

Mr. Barker appeared in court along with his wife Amanda who “refused to prosecute,” said a North Carolina law enforcement source who was present.

The charges were dropped and Mr. Barker left the courthouse with his wife and returned to his Yanceyville North Carolina home, having reinforced his reputation as the “Teflon Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.”

One reason that Christopher Eugene Barker has managed to stay out of jail is he is an informant for the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force since at least August 2012, confidential FBI documents, federal court records, and interviews with law enforcement sources familiar with Barker show.

The FBI recruited Mr. Barker in August 2012 after arresting him on weapons charges which called for a mandatory ten years in prison and offered Barker a deal he could not refuse.

In the summer of that year, a New York man, Glenn Scott Crawford, joined Barker’s Loyal White Knights seeking support for building a mobile nuclear device he planned to use to terrorize Muslim communities in the United States.

The authorities had been watching the would-be super villain since earlier in 2012 when he approached the Israeli consulate in New York City, showed up at a synagogue and Jewish community center in upstate New York, called his Congressman, and joined another Ku Klux Klan faction asking each for their support for his plan to build a deadly X-ray device. All of these parties immediately contacted law enforcement—except Christopher Barker who invited Crawford to North Carolina to discuss his terrorist plot.

“Crawford came down to an event we had in Tennessee in 2012,” said United Northern and Southern Knights of the Ku Klux Klan Imperial Wizard Cole Thornton, an entirely separate KKK faction, said in an interview. “Some of my members came to me and said this new fellow was talking about his plan to build a nuclear bomb and he was making them very uncomfortable. They thought he might be a FBI agent,” said Thornton, who has been active in the Ku Klux Klan for decades. “I listened to the guy and said ‘Hold on. I think I know who can help you. Don’t say anything to anybody until I get back with you.’ I then went and called the FBI and said ‘we have this nut case here talking about making a nuclear bomb and we don’t want anything to do with him. He is your problem.’ That was the last I heard of him.”

Crawford then contacted Barker seeking financing and support for his terrorist plot. Barker, documents show, welcomed him and invited him down to North Carolina to meet.

Glenn Scott Crawford approached Christopher Barker and joined his Klan group hoping for support. Crawford contacted Barker, “unbeknownst to the government,” according to the FBI, and the two began to collaborate. “Between July and August 2012, (Crawford) sought the assistance of” Barker and “presented his plan to weaponize an industrial strength X-ray system to his Klan group in the hope that his Klan organization would provide him the funding necessary” in a “plan to kill human beings by insidiously poisoning them with lethal doses of radiation….,” according to FBI documents.

On July 2, 2012, Crawford, who worked as an engineer for General Electric, was invited by Barker to attend two upcoming Klan events in Maryland and North Carolina, according to a series of email exchanges between Crawford and Barker obtained during this investigation.

On July 19, Crawford sent a reply email to Barker writing he would be unable to attend either “get together, but if possible, may I visit you and share the things I wanted to at the meeting?” according to copies of the email exchange obtained by this reporter.

On July 25 Barker replied to Crawford’s email, writing, “call me”, and listed two of his private cell phone numbers.

Two days after speaking with Barker, by phone, Crawford emailed an undercover FBI agent in upstate New York who had infiltrated Crawford’s inner circle at 6:55 pm on July 27, 2012: “Get a hold of (Chris Barker) of the Loyal White Knights, 1-336-xxx-xxxx. The Knights [Barker’s group] may have the resources to invest and bring the project to fulfillment,” wrote Crawford, according to emails obtained from now unsealed Northern District of New York federal court records.

That caught the attention of the FBI.

It was the first the FBI was aware of Barker’s connection to the terrorist conspiracy, and they acted immediately to take Barker into custody. An arrest warrant was issued and Barker was taken into custody my agents of the Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) on years old charges of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.

On July 30, 2012, an earlier unconnected indictment against Barker for illegal weapons possession was activated. That charge was a pretext to take Barker into federal custody.

The next day, July 31, a sealed federal arrest warrant was issued, and on August 7, 2012, Barker was arrested by the United States Marshall Service on federal charges of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and held as a “federal prisoner” at Forsyth County, North Carolina county jail.

Three days later, Barker called up the FBI from jail and he made the FBI an offer they did not refuse, according to law enforcement sources directly familiar with the case. The FBI intervened with the Federal Middle District Court of North Carolina to seal all of the court records in the case.

Six days after his August 7, 2012 arrest on charges of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, Christopher Barker was released from jail into the custody of the FBI JTTF, to whom Barker offered a deal the FBI chose not to refuse—to work as a FBI JTTF undercover informant to avoid a mandatory ten years federal prison sentence on the federal charges of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. At the request of the government, a Middle District Court of North Carolina federal judge immediately sealed court records and released him into the custody of the FBI.

On August 13, 2012, the same day Barker was released from a Forsyth County, NC jail where he was held as a “federal inmate”, Barker was equipped with audio recording devices by the FBI, and placed a call to Crawford inviting him down to North Carolina.

Christopher Barker did exactly six days in a county lockup on federal charges that carry a mandatory 10 years in federal prison.

The FBI’s ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card for Chris Barker

Ever since then, Imperial Wizard Christopher Barker has had a seemingly revolving ‘Get out of Jail Free’ card.

At the request of the government, “the defendant is ordered released upon procession August 23, 2012,” wrote U.S. Magistrate Judge for the Middle District of North Carolina Jo Elizabeth Peake.

That same day or the following day, Barker met Crawford, who had driven down from New York state, at an Eden North Carolina restaurant to further discuss plans to build a weapon of mass destruction, according to FBI documents. Barker is “a CW (confidential witness), who is involved in the second branch of the investigation, (and) is a high-ranking member of the Ku Klux Klan (“KKK”),” reads a FBI affidavit from 2013. “On August 23, 2012, Crawford met with CW (Barker) in a small town in North Carolina and described the radiation emitting device he wanted to acquire. During the conversation, Crawford solicited financial support for acquiring the device, and requested that the CW meet with other KKK groups and officials to solicit them to acquire financial assistance to build his device.”

Five days later, Barker sent an email to Crawford on August 28, 2012: “Everything went well hope things are good on your end… great plan,” Barker wrote. ” Would love to see this once great nation in our hands again. Back in the hands of White Christian Americans just like our founding fathers planned it to be. Take care Brother keep in touch Hail Victory.”

In the following weeks, Barker recorded multiple conversations with Crawford, and then arranged for Crawford to meet with two men he said were wealthy KKK members who wanted to finance the nuclear weapons plot, but in fact were undercover FBI agents. In the following months the agents provided cash, bought components, and even constructed a fake terror device, according to court documents.

Barker’s videotaped and other testimony was central to the conviction of Glendon Scott Crawford in a federal court in upstate New York and Crawford was sentenced to several decades in prison.

In exchange for Barker’s full cooperation to work covertly for the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force, the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force promised Barker they would use their considerable powers to keep Christopher Barker out of jail.

“At the original sentencing, the court departed from the applicable guideline range of 12 to 18 months to a sentence of 2 months as a result of the defendants substantial assistance,” one 2016 federal court document reads. “The original sentence was below the advisory guideline system for reasons other than those identified as authorized departures.”

Barker has been held on a short leash by the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force ever since, according to federal court records and federal and other law enforcement familiar with Barker’s arrangement.

Christopher Barker served only six days in a county lockup—and later an additional 9 days in another North Carolina county jail—after pleading guilty to the federal charges sentencing guidelines say carry a mandatory 10 years in a federal penitentiary.

At the request of the government, “the defendant is ordered released upon procession,” wrote U.S. Magistrate Judge for the Middle District of North Carolina Jo Elizabeth Peake on August 23, 2012. That same day, “August 23, 2012, Crawford met with CW (Barker) in a small town in North Carolina and described the radiation emitting device he wanted to acquire. During the conversation, Crawford solicited financial support for acquiring the device, and requested that the CW meet with other KKK groups and officials to solicit them to acquire financial assistance to build his device,” read FBI documents presented to the Northern District of New York Federal court during Crawford’s trial in 2015.

Because most of Barker’s federal court records for the 2012 possession of a firearm by a felon arrest remain sealed, many of the details of the courtroom arguments by the U.S. Attorney’s Office on behalf of the FBI and Barker to the judge remain somewhat opaque.

However, court records show Barker never was incarcerated in a federal facility—or anywhere else beyond a few days.

Barker’s “original sentence” of “2 months imprisonment followed by three (3) years supervised release” for Possession of a Firearm by a Felon was imposed on August 27, 2013, according to federal court documents. Federal Middle District of North Carolina court records show Barker was ordered to surrender at 2:00pm on October 18, 2013. “Upon release from imprisonment, the defendant shall be on supervised release for a term of three (3) years.”

But other records from the same court show that Barker never spent even two months incarcerated. “Mr. Barker was released from custody on October 27, 2013, and his term of supervised release began on that date,” wrote his federal probation officer James Long in a report to the federal judge.

His supervised probation “commenced (on) October 27, 2013” read another federal court document–9 days after he turned himself in to serve his jail sentence. Further, court and federal probation office reports show his probation officer visited him at home in Eden, North Carolina three days after that on October 30, 2013, indicating Barker served no more than nine days in a North Carolina county lockup. This is confirmed by other federal Probation office documents that show Barker’s three-year probation “supervision expires (on) October 26, 2016.”

But what happened after Barker was freed on strict conditions of federal probation at the end of October 2013 illustrate his remarkable ability to convince law enforcement and federal authorities that he should not be locked up for the series of crimes and violations of his supervised probation since then.

Strict terms of Chris Barker’s federal probation were set by judge James A Beaty of the Middle District of North Carolina federal court, federal documents from 2012, 2013, and 2016 show.

These conditions included Barker could “not associate with or be in the company of gang member/ security threat group member, including the Ku Klux Klan”; “not frequent any locations where gangs/security threat groups congregate or meet”; not “wear or display, use or possess any clothing or accessories which have any gang or security threat group significance;”; “not commit another local, state, or federal crime”; was required to “abstain from any use of alcoholic beverages”; “not leave the judicial district without the permission of the court or probation officer”; “work regularly at a lawful occupation”; “notify the probation officer within 72 hours of being arrested or questioned by a law enforcement officer”; and “not enter into any kind of agreement to act as an informer or special agent of a law enforcement agency without the permission of the court.”

Barker has violated each of these conditions—altogether on at least one hundred occasions documented by this investigation–in the three years he has been under the supervision of the U.S. Federal Probation Office, according to his federal probation officer, federal court documents, North Carolina law enforcement records, and members of Barker’s Loyal White Knights Klan group, and other data, interviews, and documents compiled in this investigation show.

Since he began his federal probation, Barker has been accused of assaulting his wife on at least six occasions, according to federal court documents, North Carolina law enforcement, Barker’s own probation officer, and other Ku Klux Klan members.

In 2012, Barker was charged with “assault with a deadly weapon, a rifle by putting the gun to her head while threatening to kill her. The defendant also assaulted her by hitting her on the shoulder knocking her to the floor causing her to hit her head,” according to Eden North Carolina police incident reports obtained in this investigation.

On December 12, 2014, the Caswell County Sheriff’s Department responded to a 911 call from Amanda Barker “who reported that Mr Barker had assaulted her by pulling her hair” and “had gone outside and jerked the exhaust pipe off their wood stove and threatened to burn down their house,” federal court documents from 2016 say.

Since he began work for the FBI in 2012, he has been arrested many more times, and violated numerous conditions of the supervised federal probation imposed by the court on Barker, but has never been to prison.

Mr. Barker has not been receptive to numerous requests for interviews by email and telephone messages in recent years. “I could care less what you think of me. My legacy was written before I knew you, since the day I met true Nazi war criminals and true Klansman (Edgar Ray) Killen and (Thomas Edwin) Blanton,” wrote Barker in a message to this journalist. Killen planned and directed the murders of the three civil rights workers James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, in Mississippi during the Freedom Summer of 1964. Blanton is a convicted domestic terrorist currently serving a life sentence for the 1963 bombing of the Birmingham, Alabama 16th street Baptist Church which killed four young African American girls. “To those of old, it was written by the man on top of the mountain. So continue your trash journalism while the L.W.K continues.” Barker said.

Along with his wife, Amanda, the #2, or “Imperial Kommander” of the Loyal White Knights, the Barker’s forward their family and their Klan as good examples of God fearing Christian Americans.

The public record says otherwise.

“I remember, at the end of the 2015 Klonvocation, he told all the members to ‘on your way home, find yourself a nigger and kill him’,” recalled former LWK member Richard Dillon of Indiana, referring to the annual gathering of Loyal White Knights members from across the country held on Barker’s property in Yanceyville, North Carolina. “He was dead serious. He meant it. No smile. No laughing. He meant it. He said ‘Because you won’t be from there, no one will know and you won’t be a suspect.’ I said to myself ‘no way, he didn’t just say that.’ Barker didn’t even know half the people in that room. You never forget it when you hear those kind of words. I will remember them until the day I die.”

The media publicity generated from the national, coordinated leafleting campaigns and small public rallies of the LWK gives this handful of isolated Klansmen an empowerment they have never experienced otherwise in life–and inevitably results in a spike of calls to their 1-800 telephone hotline and website from people seeking to join. That, in turn, has generated at least tens of thousands of dollars that the Barker’s pocket for their personal use, numerous current and former LWK members said in interviews.

“LOL JEW! You lost once again to the L.W.K. We are building our movement thanks to your stories,” wrote Barker in response to a request for an interview by this reporter. “Continue PLEASE!!!!!!!!!”

The disproportionate public reaction to Klan efforts to incite community anger stands in stark contrast to the numbers of members in the Loyal White Knights of the KKK itself.

Some of the rank and file of the Loyal White Knights are law-abiding citizens. Others are not. Many have defected from the rogue Klan group over the last two years in objection to Mr. Barker’s personal behavior. An estimated 90% of those who were members in 2016 have defected since then, only to be replenished by an equal number almost exclusively recruited over the Internet.

A majority are unemployed or living on various government funded welfare schemes, notably social security and disability programs.

Mr. Barker has not been receptive to requests for interviews. “I could care less what you think of me. My legacy was written before I knew you, since the day I met true Nazi war criminals and true Klansman (Edgar Ray) Killen and (Thomas Edwin) Blanton,” wrote Barker recently to this reporter. Killen planned and directed the murders of three civil rights workers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner, in Mississippi during the Freedom Summer of 1964. Blanton is a convicted domestic terrorist currently serving a life sentence for the 1963 bombing of the Birmingham, Alabama 16th street Baptist Church which killed four young African American girls. “To those of old, it was written by the man on top of the mountain. So continue your trash journalism while the L.W.K. continues.” Barker wrote.

New York State Grand Dragon Douglas Gary Munker

One such member who was in attendance August 24, 2019 in Hillsborough, Orange County, North Carolina is Douglas Gary Munker, 38, originally from Long Island, New York.

Munker joined the LWK over the Internet in 2014 and soon homophobic, racist, and anti-Semitic Klan literature began popping up around the small Long Island town of Hampton Bays.

“A lot of people think it is illegal to be a member of the KKK. But guess what? It is all protected under the first amendment (to the constitution), Freedom of Association, free press, and freedom of assembly,” said Munker in a LWK recruitment video he posted on YouTube. “If you feel your rights are being taken away, we are the only organization fighting for white civil rights. If you are white and proud and want to join the crowd and you want to save our land, join the Klan.”

“A lot of our rights are being stripped from us and a lot of people don’t know their rights,” he added.

Munker is less concerned about the rights of others.

He advocates halting all non-white European immigration, implementing a “shoot to kill” policy at U.S. land borders, making homosexuality illegal, a return to segregation laws, and the annihilation of all Jews.

Munker posts signs reading “No Coloreds Allowed” and “Diversity=Genetic Problems=White Genocide.”

In 2011, Munker wrote to his high school classmates in Shirley, New York that he was “retired/disabled” at age 29 and is “the missing link to my family, who I never get to see. What can I say? I just need to chill.”

Loyal White Knights members say Munker is one of the most active members and has attended almost all LWK public and private gathering over the last four years.

According to LWK sources and public documents, Munker has been committed to both prison and mental health facilities. Rarely ever seen without his dark sunglasses, Munker has two teardrops tattooed below his eye, a prison tattoo usually associated with gangs.

Between 2001 and 2015, Munker was arrested at least eight times.

In November 2012, the then 30-year old Munker was arrested at 10:35 p.m. in the parking lot of a  shopping mall after closing hours in Hampton Bays, New York in his parked car with an underage girl, oxycodone pills, and marijuana.

He was charged with criminal possession of a controlled substance, endangering the welfare of a child, and providing drugs to an underage female.

Munker was arrested again in September 2015  in Hampton Bays with a black powder antique pistol and brass knuckles and charged with felony weapons possession.

In early 2017, after a handful of unemployed high school friends in Fulton County joined the Loyal White Knights over the Internet, Munker moved to Gloversville in upstate New York, where he and the small group instantly became the nucleus of what was until then a largely dormant New York chapter of the Loyal White Knights.

Since then, the New York members of the Loyal White Knights began a reign of terror in the rural upstate community where thousands of racist, homophobic, and anti-Semitic leaflets were dropped by the group in a string of villages, towns, and small cities in Fulton and neighboring Montgomery Counties causing fear and outrage among residents who do not know if hundreds in their communities are members of a secret society of anonymous, violent racists.

Residents of the economically depressed former textile manufacturing area describe a small town terror campaign that was waged for more than a year by a gang of extreme right wing Nazi sympathizers and white supremacists, who spread their angry message against neighbors and strangers alike.

In 2017, a lesbian couple was targeted by these LWK members based in Gloversville with online threats of “slitting dykes’ throats.” Other messages of intimidation were sent saying they would “hang niggers and spics in trees.”

Gloversville residents say that they routinely see these white youth strut down the street defiantly displaying racist Klan imagery and wearing swastikas.

Rodney Schuyler of Johnstown said he was taken aback last summer when he “witnessed two people with white supremacist clothing out in public. One was a man sporting a ‘White Pride World Wide’ T-shirt at a local gas station, and the other was a young man in a camouflage jacket prominently featuring KKK and swastika patches on the shoulders. These open displays of hate indicated to me that white supremacists feel comfortable in our community.”

Schuyler was referring to the Loyal White Knights group of about 8 members under Douglas Munker.

In 2017, local residents of Gloversville described a small-time terror campaign waged against neighbors of the local Klan leader, Nate Coty, because they have biracial children.

Ku Klux Klan fliers first began appearing in Fulton County, New York in early 2017. In nearby Fort Plain in Montgomery County, where a Gloversville man, Loyal White Knights local leader Nate Coty, was charged around Valentine’s Day. The man, who was charged with peddling without a permit, did not have his name released “for his own safety”, according to law enforcement sources. In Northville, in Fulton County, the group left Ziplock bags weighed down with kitty litter announcing a Klan rally in Charlottsville, Virginia in the summer of 2017. Similar Loyal White Knights leaflets were left around Halloween in October 2017, Martin Luther King Day in January, and Valentine’s day in February 2018 in Saratoga Springs.

Loyal White Knights internal records show that all were distributed by the small group of members in Gloversville.

“They threatened to use my kids as ‘human speed bumps’ and posted their pictures on the Internet,” Nicole Martish of Gloversville said in an interview. “We all went to high school together. They lived down the street from me.”

In 2018, outrage in the New York state communities drove the LWK members, all unemployed, out and several relocated to North Carolina in the tiny hamlet of Providence, in Caswell County, hugging the Virginia border just south of Danville where the LWK had purchased a house on a small rural plot of land with enough room to hold cross burnings, other Klan gatherings, and display the Nazi flag in the front yard.

On February 26, 2018, a house on New Walters Mill Road in Providence, North Carolina was sold for $55,000 all paid in cash up front, with no mortgage. The deed for the property is in the name of Loyal White Knights New York Grand Dragon Douglas Gary Munker. But Mr. Munker is, according to records, 100% disabled, unemployed, and his income is federal disability benefits, and, according to law enforcement and other sources, was not present at the real estate transaction.

According to North Carolina law enforcement and other sources, the real estate transaction in February 2018 was made by the seller in person to Loyal White Knights Imperial Wizard Christopher Eugene Barker and his wife, Amanda Barker, who handed over $55,000 in cash for the purchase.

The unusual all cash transaction from the unemployed Barker’s drew the attention of federal law enforcement who opened an investigation into potential money laundering, according to North Carolina law enforcement.

In court papers after his arrest the following month for assaulting his wife, Mr. Barker declared in Caswell County court documents that he had no assets, no employment, and survived on “0” dollars of income.

What is known, is that immediately, in March 2018, a group of Loyal White Knights from New York State who had been driven out of their town and evicted from their homes by outraged community members, moved to the rural hamlet of Providence, North Carolina and immediately began waging a campaign of terror.

In early April 2018, New York LWK Exalted Cyclops Nate Coty and New York Grand Knighthawk–or chief enforcer–Joseph Marriott were arrested for the first of a string of times that month for intimidating, harassing, and threatening local residents in Providence, North Carolina.

In the early morning hours of April 5th, 2018 Marriott and Coty were arrested for throwing racist, anti-semitic pamphlets “in plastic bag containers containing rocks, a construction material, and paper pamphlets” on to the lawns of residents in the tiny, unincorporated North Carolina village.

On April 15, 2018, both men were arrested on felony charges of “placing an exhibit with intent to intimidate.” According to Caswell County, North Carolina court documents, Coty and Marriott “placed on the premises of 424 New Walters Mill rd, Providence, NC a rope noose, an exhibit, with the intention of intimidating” their next door neighbors, a lifelong white resident who runs a small business tow truck operation.

The newly arrived Klan members were charged with “Leaving harassing pamphlets in the victims driveway, hanging a noose in defendants yard and making noise to draw the victims attention to it when the victim comes out in the yard,” according to Caswell County court records. The Klan members were “yelling and cursing at the victim.”

On April 26, 2018, during a Klan gathering on the property where Loyal White Knights members from several states gathered to burn crosses, fly the Nazi flag, and give incendiary racist speeches over a loudspeaker, both Coty and Marriott were arrested again and charged with two counts of stalking. The pair were released $5000 bond Condition of release: “Not assault, threaten, harass, communicate with, have contact with or otherwise interfere with the peaceful living of” their neighbors.

On May 2, they were arrested again for “2cd degree trespass and (2) violation of court order” for entering the property of another neighbor and “violating a court order for threatening their neighbors.

Joseph Marriott was also charged with 2cd degree trespass and communicating threats” to their neighbors.

The defendants were released on $7500 bond and the court noted the “defendant has pending charges communicating threats to same victim.”

Court papers show the Klan members threatened to kill the neighbors and their livestock and pet dogs, recording them as “verbally stating ‘I hope you like a dead horse’” on May 2, 2018.

Other threats included “Your day is coming” and “We’re going to get you” and “I’m going to cut your throat’ and responsible for “Threats, threaten plaintiff and family with injury, cross burnings, and signage.”

The “defendant permits his children to threaten” victims” and to damage the plaintiffs property. Defendant permits his guests and occupants to urinate in public and wear uniforms of a threatening nature. Cross burnings and noose hangings are permitted,” reads the Caswell County court documents.

The victim requested that Caswell County authorities “Not to permit occupants to create a nuisance” and “Not to permit his children or guests to shout, cause disturbances, threaten by word or deed.” The victims complained that “Law enforcement has been called and after they leave they always retaliate against us” saying “This family moved in in late February from New York.”

“The adults in the house were as many as 15 at times,” he wrote in the complaint. “They all verbally harass me and my wife when we walk in the yard. We have been in fear of our lives for some time now and it is taking its toll on my health. I have pictures of cross burnings, noose hangings, Nazi flags and warnings thrown in my yard that I am being watched. On April 28 they had a huge gathering for 12 or 16 hours of foul language and going to the rest room in public” and “Watching our property in ways of evil doing and a cross burning, terrorizing my livestock, horse, cats, dogs etc with gunfire.”

Before arriving in North Carolina, both Coty and Marriott had a long history of similar harassment of their community in upstate New York, and worse.

In 2014, Marriott was arrested and charged with 52 counts of animal cruelty for torturing dogs in an illegal dog breeding business he operated on hsi parents rural upstate New York property.

In 2013, Marriott was charged with aggravated harassment for threatening the life of a local animal shelter worker who reported his animal abuse to law enforcement. Marriott ran a business he called the “Sickpuppyz pit bull kennels” which sold dogs over Facebook, which prompted public outrage for posting disturbing pictures of pit bulls in poor health or chained up on short leashes. 

New York state police seized 51 dogs that had been living in cold and squalid conditions, many of them caked in their own feces, others with open sores and internal parasites. Another dog was found dead at the scene during the police raid.

The dogs, ranging in age from puppies to adults, were mostly pit bulls and many suffered from frostbite, open sores and worms.

Within a month of the arrests, three arson fires were set on the property owned by Marriott where he ran his pit bull breeding operation, burning down the facilities where Marriott had kept dozens of dogs chained with no food or water or heat in the sub zero New York winter. Law enforcement found several dead dogs, still chained, evidence of other animals that had died, and had to euthanize others that were rescued but too sick to be saved.

Local New York State law enforcement and animal rights workers suspect Marriott had burned down the scene of the crime to destroy evidence, but no charges were ever filed.

When New York state police Investigator Thomas Gibney, after receiving a tip, went to Marriott’s property and saw the squalid conditions and sheer number of animals living in the cold building, he got a warrant to remove the 51 dogs, he said.

“It was so cold at the time,” he said, “we thought the dogs would die if we didn’t get them out. We had essentially 51 victims. We had to assign numbers, collect medical information, take pictures and type up a complaint for each one.”

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