White Supremacist Pleads Guilty to Shooting Spree
January 24, 2001 5:03 pm EST

By Jill Serjeant

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - White supremacist Buford O. Furrow pleaded guilty on Wednesday to shooting up a suburban Jewish center in 1999, as prosecutors disclosed his initial target had been the international headquarters of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a prominent Jewish organization.

But the 39-year-old mechanic was deterred by stringent security at the Wiesenthal Center and sought the easier target of the Jewish community center in the quiet suburbs of the city.

He later fled to Las Vegas and scoured phone books for synagogues to continue his avowed "wake up call to America to kill Jews".

"There is a sense of irony here ... this is a man who set out to do our institution harm but at the last minute was deterred by God," Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean and founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told Reuters.

Los Angeles is the international headquarters of the Center, a research and educational institute aimed at combating bigotry and anti-Semitism and a leading campaigner in the fight to bring former Nazi leaders to justice.

Prosecutor Michael Gennaco told reporters Furrow considered the center his "crown jewel."

New details of the August 1999 shooting were revealed by prosecutors following a plea bargain in which a smiling Furrow admitted 16 charges, including the murder of a Filipino-American mail man, but avoided the death penalty in exchange for life imprisonment without possibility of parole, release or pardon.

"He will never walk the streets again. Today Furrow admitted he committed these heinous crimes with the insidious motive of racial bigotry and religious intolerance," U.S. Attorney Alejandro Mayorkas told a news conference.

Mayorkas said the plea agreement had the full support of the family of murdered mail man Joseph Ileto and the victims and families of the Jewish center shootings. Furrow, from Olympia, Washington, will be formally sentenced on March 26

Mayorkas said the decision not to seek the death penalty was motivated by Furrow's history of psychiatric illness dating back 10 years and three hospital stays for problems including homicidal and suicidal tendencies.

Relatives of Ileto sobbed quietly at the back of the courtroom on Wednesday as prosecutors described how Furrow had shot the mailman more than nine times "because he was angry that Mr. Ileto was enjoying federal employment without discrimination on account of race, color, religion or national origin."

Furrow was seen smiling and chatting with his lawyers, his hands and ankles shackled.

"We are extremely relieved that there is closure in this case and we will not have to go through a (trial)," Ileto's brother Ismael told reporters afterward.

Ileto also called on President George W. Bush to take the lead in ensuring the passage of hate crime laws "so that no other family or community will ever have to go through the sorrow and loss that we have."

Jewish leaders said justice had been served by the decision. "He's going to spend the rest of his life behind bars...Here is a person who is going to be deprived of the fullness of life. He will have more than an ample opportunity to reflect on his deed," said Rabbi Hier.

"The Simon Wiesenthal Center was the primary target he (Furrow) had selected," prosecutor Gennaco told reporters. "When he got there he was concerned at the tight security and then undertook to find a new location."

Furrow fled to Las Vegas after the shootings. "The next morning, in Las Vegas, (he) looked up 'synagogues' in the phone book and considered continuing his crime spree," court documents released on Wednesday said.

"However because his picture was being broadcast on national television stations and because he believed he had already succeeded in making the statement he wished to make, (he) decided to 'get it over with' and turn himself in to the FBI."

After his arrest law enforcement officials documented Furrow's history with white supremacist and anti-Semitic groups.

-- Anonymous, January 25, 2001