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Bombing suspect had supremacist history in Missouri
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KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) -- The white supremacist charged in a 2004 mail bombing in Arizona has a history of hate group activity in Missouri and Oklahoma, including claims that he sent a note of support to Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh in 1996 but condemned the killings, an expert says.
Dennis Mahon, who was arrested in Illinois with his twin brother, Daniel, on Thursday in the 2004 bombing, ran unsuccessfully for a seat on the board of aldermen for the suburban Kansas City community of Northmoor, promising to keep the community "white." He also ran for mayor of Tulsa, Okla., under the slogan "Help the White Working Man."
He created the Missouri White Knights in Kansas City in 1988, after he and his brother joined David Duke's Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s, said Leonard Zeskind, a Kansas City expert on hate groups.
Mahon moved to Tulsa, Okla., where he tried to make a living selling Klan paraphernalia at gun shows, and he later set up camp in Arizona among a group of skinheads, Zeskind said.
"Mahon had long associated himself with the most violent aspects of white nationalist ideology," Zeskind said. "His arrest may signal a new turn towards tougher law enforcement policies in the wake of recent high-profile murders by racists and anti-Semites."
Mahon, 58, and his brother were arrested at their home in Davis Junction, Ill., where authorities said they found assault weapons, hundreds of rounds of ammunition and white supremacist material. They are charged in the 2004 bombing of a city office in Scottsdale, Ariz., that promoted racial and cultural diversity. Three people were injured.
Dennis Mahon is accused of helping construct the bomb five days before delivery.
His attorney, Robert M. Fagansaid, told the Kansas City Star that his client is innocent and a "veteran and a contributing member of society." Daniel Mohan's attorney, Dennis Ryan, said his client denied any knowledge or participation in the bombing and "believes this is more about his views and his persona. He's at a loss of how he could have gotten to this point."
After the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, Dennis Mahon told The Kansas City Star that he never met McVeigh but often visited a white supremacist compound in Oklahoma that McVeigh called a couple of weeks before the bombing at the Murrah Federal Building that killed 168 people.
Mahon told the newspaper then that he sent a message to McVeigh in 1996 supporting him, but also added, "You should've done it at 2 in the morning. You don't kill innocent people. That's not the way to run a revolution."
McVeigh's attorney filed court documents in 1997 naming Mahon as a possible suspect, and was mentioned later that year by a witness testifying before an Oklahoma grand jury investigating claims of a wider conspiracy. Mahon appeared before the grand jury and pleaded the Fifth Amendment on everything.
He was fired in 1999 from his job as an avionics mechanic at American Airlines in Tulsa after he and others attended a company diversity fair and allegedly passed out a pamphlet that company officials said contained racial rhetoric.
In a 2005 interview, he accused many supremacist groups of turning into "wimps."
"After the bomb went off in Oklahoma City, the White Knights completely collapsed," Mahon said then.
Information from: The Kansas City Star, http://www.kcstar.com
Dennis Mahon, who was arrested in Illinois with his twin brother, Daniel, on Thursday in the 2004 bombing, ran unsuccessfully for a seat on the board of aldermen for the suburban Kansas City community of Northmoor, promising to keep the community "white." He also ran for mayor of Tulsa, Okla., under the slogan "Help the White Working Man."
He created the Missouri White Knights in Kansas City in 1988, after he and his brother joined David Duke's Knights of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s, said Leonard Zeskind, a Kansas City expert on hate groups.
Mahon moved to Tulsa, Okla., where he tried to make a living selling Klan paraphernalia at gun shows, and he later set up camp in Arizona among a group of skinheads, Zeskind said.
"Mahon had long associated himself with the most violent aspects of white nationalist ideology," Zeskind said. "His arrest may signal a new turn towards tougher law enforcement policies in the wake of recent high-profile murders by racists and anti-Semites."
Mahon, 58, and his brother were arrested at their home in Davis Junction, Ill., where authorities said they found assault weapons, hundreds of rounds of ammunition and white supremacist material. They are charged in the 2004 bombing of a city office in Scottsdale, Ariz., that promoted racial and cultural diversity. Three people were injured.
Dennis Mahon is accused of helping construct the bomb five days before delivery.
His attorney, Robert M. Fagansaid, told the Kansas City Star that his client is innocent and a "veteran and a contributing member of society." Daniel Mohan's attorney, Dennis Ryan, said his client denied any knowledge or participation in the bombing and "believes this is more about his views and his persona. He's at a loss of how he could have gotten to this point."
After the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, Dennis Mahon told The Kansas City Star that he never met McVeigh but often visited a white supremacist compound in Oklahoma that McVeigh called a couple of weeks before the bombing at the Murrah Federal Building that killed 168 people.
Mahon told the newspaper then that he sent a message to McVeigh in 1996 supporting him, but also added, "You should've done it at 2 in the morning. You don't kill innocent people. That's not the way to run a revolution."
McVeigh's attorney filed court documents in 1997 naming Mahon as a possible suspect, and was mentioned later that year by a witness testifying before an Oklahoma grand jury investigating claims of a wider conspiracy. Mahon appeared before the grand jury and pleaded the Fifth Amendment on everything.
He was fired in 1999 from his job as an avionics mechanic at American Airlines in Tulsa after he and others attended a company diversity fair and allegedly passed out a pamphlet that company officials said contained racial rhetoric.
In a 2005 interview, he accused many supremacist groups of turning into "wimps."
"After the bomb went off in Oklahoma City, the White Knights completely collapsed," Mahon said then.
Information from: The Kansas City Star, http://www.kcstar.com
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