Road Trips with the Imperial Wizard: booze, buffoonery, and behavior unfit for polite society

(This is part two of a three part series profiling the Loyal White Knights of the KKK, the largest and most extremist Klan group in America. For the first story in this series, please go here www.http:/nate-thayer.com/unmasked-inside-americas-violent-ku-klux-klan/

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By Nate Thayer

March 21, 2018

During a Loyal White Knights rally and cross burning in Georgia, Imperial Wizard Chris Barker was caught in a cheap motel on the outskirts of town engaged in a sex romp with a Go-Go club stripper other than his wife, seven of Barker’s former loyalists independently detailed to a reporter. They described him assaulting his wife when she objected. Four of them detailed his trashing of that motel room while drunk. Two of them provided photographic documentation.

His wife, Amanda Barker, fled back to North Carolina, alone, in the family car. This was a problem for a few reasons. Barker had no money to pay the motel bill and his poor credit precluded him from possessing a credit card, rendering him unable to rent a vehicle. Even if he did, Barker did not have a valid drivers license due to it having been suspended as a result of nearly two dozen arrests for alcohol related charges while operating a motor vehicle. But even if neither of these things were true, the Loyal White Knights Imperial Wizard had an even bigger problem: He was on strict supervised federal probation with special conditions prohibiting him from engaging in any Ku Klux Klan activity, fraternizing with other Klansmen, or leaving the state of North Carolina without prior permission from his probation officer.

It was far from the only time Mr. Barker, like he has his wife, abused a motel room.

Mr. Barker and motels he stayed in while presiding over Klan events and cross lightings, have a long, sordid, sometimes comical relationship, according to numerous LWK current and former members.

Chris Barker in a motel room in Rome, Georgia in 2015 (photo provided by anonymous LWK member)

Six LWK members detailed Mr. Barker urinating in front of other people’s pre pubescent children at three Klan cross burnings while intoxicated. “You might disagree, but I consider myself a good Christian and family man. That is just not right and I said ‘enough is enough’ and took my family home and left the Klan,” said one former LWK Grand Dragon of a Southern state. “My daughter was six years old. She did not need to see Barker’s penis.”

Another LWK member in charge of another state graphically described Barker showing up drunk at 4:00 AM December 3, 2016 with his California Grand Dragon, William Ernest Hagen, both covered in blood, banging on doors, and demanding alcohol at the Days Inn motel in Yanceyville, North Carolina. The two, according to Caswell County police documents, had just stabbed an Indiana based Klan member, Richard Dillon, in Barker’s dining room moments before and were looking for someplace to hide out until they could come up with a strategy.

Many Loyal White Knights members, who had driven from more than a dozen states to the annual LWK national gathering, got in their vehicles and headed home in disgust while the cops were looking for the two Klansmen.

The stabbing took place only hours before a scheduled KKK “Trump Victory Parade” for which more than 50 Klansmen had driven from around the country to attend. “Barker was covered in blood banging on doors demanding alcohol,” said one former LWK Grand Dragon who was guest at the motel and has since joined another KKK faction. “I was there with my wife and children. I didn’t know what was going on but they are lucky I didn’t shoot them because I was fully strapped up,” said the Klan official who is legally licensed to carry firearms.

Photo mugshot of Loyal White Knights California Grand Dragon William Hagen taken December 3, 2016 by the Caswell County, North Carolina Sheriff’s Department after he was arrested for stabbing another Klansmen hours before a scheduled public “Trump Victory Parade.”

That former Grand Dragon provided a recording of a telephone call from the Days Inn motel made by the two Klan leaders trying to convince him to not leave the Klan group. “Hey brother, this is Billy,” said William Hagen with Barker in the background. “I don’t know who is getting in your ear or who is telling you what, but you guys need to come back because this whole thing with Richard just blew up like a bomb.”

“You know, with my fractured wrist and bruised ribs,” continued Hagen, referring to when he and 5 other Loyal White Knights attempted to demonstrate at a public park in a largely hispanic neighborhood in Anaheim, California earlier in 2016 and were not well received. “I mean my face, I’ve got two black eyes, a slice in my forehead, a broken nose…”

Mr. Barker and the California Grand Dragon William Hagen were both arrested and charged with attempted murder later that day.

Recording of Chris Barker and his California Grand Dragon pleading with another Klansman to not resign after the former two stabbed another Klansman in December 2016

Barker and his California Grand Dragon, William “Billy” Hagen, are heard begging the very unhappy and, shortly afterwards former, LWK state Klan leader not to resign. He declined.”I took my family and we got in my truck and drove the ten hours back home.”

Another LWK member staying at the Days Inn confirmed the account. “Barker and Hagen showed up at 4:00 o’clock in the morning  at the Days Inn where a lot of us were staying. Barker and Hagen were very drunk and covered in blood, and making a ruckus and needed some place to hide. Then they asked for more alcohol. Barker likes rum. Hagen likes whiskey. They kept on drinking until they passed out and woke up at around 9:00 am,” he said in an interview. “There were children and families there. Enough is enough.” He, too, resigned that morning from the Loyal White Knights.

William Hagen after the largely Hispanic residents near a public park in Anaheim, California made clear he was not welcome to visit in February 2016

At a motel in Pensacola, Florida in February 2015, where a KKK cross burning and regional get together was being held “Barker was wearing an ankle bracelet and so drunk he got a tattoo,” said a former Grand Dragon from Georgia who also has since left the LWK. “When he woke up, he didn’t remember getting it.”

“‘Where did that come from?’ he asked looking down and itching his arm. Since he didn’t remember getting the one on his arm, I told him he also got one on his butt. ‘You don’t remember getting the ‘Tramp Stamp’ on your butt, either?’ Barker didn’t have his belt on so the whole time his pants were falling down below his butt crack, but he couldn’t see back there. He kept turning his head trying to see it.”

On the first night of the weekend event Barker’s wife “Amanda kept banging on doors looking for him, so he was hiding out in my room. He was very drunk, as always, and kept coming at me with an unloaded gun and he smacked me on the forehead with it leaving a big lump. I had to lay him out on the floor.”

Chris Barker, who was wearing an ankle bracelet while in Florida so the U.S. federal government could ensure he not leave the state of North Carolina without permission from his probation officer, is not legally allowed to be in possession of any firearm, which was the reason he was wearing the ankle bracelet in the first place after being convicted on federal charges of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.

Imperial Wizard Chris Barker’s necked butt without a “Tramp Stamp” tattoo. The red rash is from Barker being dragged by a car he was trying to stop after he stabbed the occupant, a former Klansman, in Barker’s dining room in North Carolina (photo courtesy of a former member of the LWK of the KKK)

Later that weekend, another LWK member “was blowing off fireworks and the cops came and Barker crawled under my bed in the room because he was on federal probation and not allowed to leave North Carolina.”

In another incident at another LWK cross burning and regional get together “he kept urinating in front of the alter at the cross lighting in front of kids. He was drunk the whole time and insulting everyone,” said another former Grand Dragon who later left and formed his own Klan faction. “He trashed the motel room, fought with Amanda the whole time, and left without paying his motel bill. I had to pay it.”

In 2014, the Loyal White Knights held a rally and cross burning ceremony “at a chicken farm near Eljay, Georgia. That was the one where Barker got lit on fire,” said another former member of the Loyal White Knights. “Aubrey decided to use a mixture of racing fuel, diesel, and kerosene to soak the burlap on the cross to be lit. For some reason, we were having a hard time lighting the cross, so this guy climbed up a 12 foot ladder with a can of bug spray  to use sort of like a flame thrower to help light the cross,” said the former member of the LWK, who was standing nearby watching the spectacle. “Chris Barker is standing there in his purple robe on top of ground soaked in racing fuel. When they got the cross to light flames went everywhere and Barker almost got burned up.”

Chris Barker (far right) in the white robes at a LWK cross burning

Two other Klan members detailed Barker fleeing another motel in Georgia, also drunk and still wearing an ankle bracelet while on federal probation, without paying his bill. They, too, provided both videos and photographs of Barker’s attendance at that 2016 Klan event which his probation conditions still forbid at the time.

At another event in Rome Georgia in November 2016 “Barker was drunk and there was this homeless Jigaboo and Barker took off his shoe and threw it at the guy,” recalled one former LWK member. “The guy picked up the shoe and just walked away with it, leaving Barker standing in the street with just one shoe. They had to take him to the Dollar Store to buy him a pair of prison slippers.”

At a public rally in Troy, North Carolina in 2015, members of the Loyal White Knights convened from a number of states to extol the superiority of the white race outside the county courthouse. They gathered at a nearby motel where out of town members had rented rooms. “That was when JT pissed on the chair cushion,” recalled one former member, referring to James Seay who uses the false name James “J.T.” Moore and is the national Christian chaplain for the Klan group. “JT was passed out on the bed, drunk, and there was one guy who had a pair of handcuffs. I have no idea why he had handcuffs, but he handcuffed one of JT’s arms to the bedpost. JT had a .40 caliber handgun on the bedside table. I told the guy ‘you better take those off because if JT wakes up he is liable to shoot you’. Then the guy takes the cushion off the chair to make a pillow on the floor where he was going to sleep and JT wakes up, stands up, and pisses all over the chair cushion on the floor next to his bed and then got back in bed and went to sleep again.”

March 30, 2013 – KKK Christian pastor James “JT” Moore, center, rallies fellow members of the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nation, National Socialist Movement, and the Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club during a protest outside the Shelby County Courthouse Saturday afternoon to condemn the renaming of three parks in Memphis. (Jim Weber/The Commercial Appeal)

“The next day,” recalled the former Loyal White Knights official, “JT was running around at the event all hungover and holding a bible and reciting Christian passages.”

Another former senior Loyal White Knights imperial officer- the Klan equivalent of a member of the board of directors– said Mr. “Barker would poop in his pants if he had to ever go to war. He hid in the motel room in Charlottesville (Virginia) last year and sent his wife and that Mike and Wendy dressed in Barker’s Imperial Wizard purple robes trimmed in gold so that if the niggers shot at him it would be Mike who was killed.”

That former top LWK official was referring to the former LWK then Grand Dragon for South Carolina. The couple lived at Mr. Barker’s house in Yanceyville, Caswell County North Carolina until recently when they were kicked out of the KKK group. They are now homeless living in a tent in a nearby public park, according to four Klan sources and confirmed by law enforcement agencies.

That former LWK official added “Barker is a coward. If anyone would be the target it would have been the leader and he was too chicken shit.  He was his usual self–drunk on his ass at every rally, but he has never put his face in public because he said it would have been a parole violation. There are no excuses now that he is off federal probation.”

Employees of three motels, after being contacted by a reporter, confirmed they called the cops as a result of Barker being a guest.

“Once Barker told me ‘If the cops come you tell them you are Chris Barker’,” said one former Grand Dragon. “He then ran and hid in the woods.”

In Fulton County, Georgia there is one citizen who has been very supportive of the Loyal White Knights.

Douglas Hay purchased a 24-acre parcel of land intending to build 15 expensive homes in the elite, high priced Six Hills Subdivision in Milton, Georgia, but the local zoning board refused to issue a permit to build an access road to the property. Mr Hay has waged a years long battle to annoy his neighbors, the elected county zoning and building permit officials, and the subdivision Homeowners Association, all who blocked his development plans.

First he threatened to have a Christian group bring in prison parolees as agricultural labor and set up a chicken, goat and cattle farm and said he would have to “clear the land to grow organic produce,” according to the Atlanta Journal Constitution

The Loyal White Knights million dollar farm in Milton Georgia (Photo credit: Atlanta Journal-Constitution)

New initiates in the Loyal White Knights

Hays then publicly threatened to replace the prisoners and bring in convicted sex offenders from Florida as farm laborers.

His next door neighbor said a logging truck was parked near her window and the driver was instructed to crank it up early each morning. Local officials managed to cite laws that put a halt to these plans.

So property owner Hays employed the First Amendment of the constitution. Hays began flying Confederate, Nazi and Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan flags along the perimeter of his property.

He renamed his Farm the Loyal White Knights Farm and offered it for the use of the Klan group to hold cross burnings and other Klan events in the tony neighborhood.

“My goal is to make peace between the Loyal White Knights and the Six Hills HOA. The Klan just wants to enjoy their new religious retreat,” Hays told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, clearly enjoying his Walter Mittyesque strategy for revenge..

Roy Pemberton, also a now former member of the Loyal White Knights, complained to the Atlanta newspaper in 2016 that people kept stealing the Loyal White Knights flag, saying “every time we put one up, it comes down.”

“We go out there, it’s open for our members to camp out, to target practice, to have our meetings because we’re a religious organization,” Pemberton told the paper. “If we lit a 30-foot cross up there you could see it for miles and miles,” he said. “It’d be a beautiful sight.”

Hays answer to the flag stealing problem is threatened to bring in neo-Nazis next to “set up a mini ‘concentration camp’ style area at our entrance to guarantee the safety of their flags and signs.”

Hay says he understands that his property has brought down values of the homes in the Homeowners Association but added “the good news is your property values will rebound when my land sells and the feud ends.”

He is offering the city the opportunity to buy his land for two million dollars.

See here for official minutes of the city official meeting reacting to Mr. Hays out-of-the-box strategy for dealing with frustrations from City Hall.

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This was the second in a three part series on the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. The final article “Profiles In Hate” will be published Thursday March 22.

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