From Yahoo News:
COVINGTON, La. – A Louisiana man accused of helping his father hide the body of a Ku Klux Klan recruit pleaded guilty Thursday to obstruction of justice and was sentenced to three years in prison, according to a prosecutor’s spokesman.
Prosecutors believe Shane Foster, 21, also helped his father clean the camp site in rural St. Tammany Parish in southeastern Louisiana where Cynthia Lynch, 43, was shot to death in November 2008, district attorney’s office spokesman Rick Wood said.
Foster’s father, Raymond Foster, 45, is set for trial April 5 on a second-degree murder charge.
What on earth? What year is this? Cynthia Lynch, 43, was shot to death in November of 2008. Her crime? She was trying to leave an initiation ritual and head for home. She had hooked up with the Louisiana KKK group run by Raymond Foster via the Internet. She was described as a troubled woman who was trying to fit in somewhere. That probably fits the description of many people who are attracked to the KKK. Just a group of misfits.
All too often groups like this are blown off. Do-gooders try to tell us that the KKK is irrelevant nowadays and that any concerns about this organizaton are simply an over-reaction. This killing doesn’t sound like an over-reaction to me.
Do these sentences sound a little on the lean side? If you shoot someone to death, why is that second degree murder? Another female, Danielle Jones, pleaded guilty to being an accessory. She spent a year in jail. Is Louisiana soft on crime or is it just soft on KKK krime? How much a part of the south is the KKK in 2010?
Just in case anyone forgets who the Klan hates, here is a pretty good reminder. 🙄
Creative Loafing Atlanta presents: The Georgia Knight Riders and Knights of the Ku Klux Klan rallied for a crowd of more than 500 on Feb. 20 in the town of Nahunta, Ga.
These good ole boys are all pleased with themselves.
It’s amazing that, in the 21st century, grown men would strip down to their underwear , put their bedsheets over their heads, and run around in the woods.
In answer to your question about the charge, I am assuming that the prosecutor did not think that they had evidence to support premeditation. I am not sure that in Louisiana a jury can find someone guilty of a lesser charge–I think that depends on the state law. So they go for the max they feel they can get.
Star, I agree that I am not sure about why people still do it. But I would amend your comment to grown men and women since it appears the victim was a KKK-in training.
The court is also considering whether the killer is mentally competent. Mental competency is obviously in question with respect to any suspect who attends a KKK rally. That goes without saying, but I’d hate to see this guy get off easy on a technicality like that.
Thank you, Moon-howler for reminding me of why I got involved in my community after finding hate literature dropped on three streets in my neighborhood in 2008.
Visit Not In Our Town at http://www.niot.org and you’ll see how people are standing up and speaking out against hate in communities across the United States, and sharing solutions for combating the fear and ignorance that allows hate groups to thrive.
Thank you Elena, Alanna and Moon-howler for standing up against hate in our community.
I would hate to see him get off also, El Guapo.
Thanks for the link, Cindy. Thank you for standing up for those less fortunate or who have less of a voice.
I think it is good to always refresh ourselves on the dangers of people and groups like the Klan. Its just too easy to mentally dismiss them because WE don’t think like that.
Rez you are probably right about the charges. I might not have questioned it until I saw the year, and 3 year sentence given out to those who helped.
I just love seeing the bubbas in the video. They take me back to another time. I should feel more contempt than I do. But they are caricatures and the ugliness in them is somehow dissipated by realizing how pathetic they are.
I really need to get over my facination with the bubbas. These ones look a little worse for wear than those clowns who used to tromp around the courthouse in sheets down in the Northern Neck. Just bubbas and good ole boys who were grand and glorious only in their own minds.
I find Cynthia’s last name ironic.
The KKK is a kind of cult. Cult’s traditionally draw in people who are displaced or feel isolated in some way. It’s a tragedy that anyone would choose a cult at all, but especially for these reasons.
And a 21 year old helping his father continue with hate. What does that say about the way we raise our children?
There probably is not much hope for that boy.
The name passed right on by me…you are right, Pinko. Good catch. Yes, ironic.
I think the Klan and like minded groups are definitely cults. And they feed off each other.
M-h, yes, it does seem like bubba redux to me as well. I never could understand why a bunch of ignoramuses wanted to parade around in dunce caps and say equally dumb things. Still you have to take them seriously enough to keep an eye on.
Ahhhh, a nice KKK video. Now you’re getting back to your roots! Concentrate on your core business, and you’ll do well in this life. Happy Days are here again!
Censored, you lived in Georgia. You saw them often I expect?
Capt. It was one of the better ones. Actually you don’t know how close you are to being right. I saw the Imperial Wizard when I was a girl in a downtown dept store in Atlanta. They scared me to death. They are probably dumber today than they were back then. BAck then there was some middle class seepage that you just don’t find nowadays.
M-h, yes, I saw them. My father was spying on them one time and the rest of our family was in the car watching them. I have pictures of a 1956(?) rally in Georgia complete with the names of the participants.
I knew of KKK well north of Atlanta, and figured it was south of Atlanta, too, but never heard of anything specific.
My encounter was before your time, Capt. It was during lunch counter desegregation…and I was in either Riches or Davidsons. I was a kid. I had had to dash through a picket line to get into the store. I went up the elevator with my friend and ran smack into the Imperial Wizard. I had no idea who or what he was. He even talked to me and gave me my lecture about what the “darkies” were trying to do. I excused myself and dashed off.
My mother must not have been aware of all those picket lines. If she had been she would have never let me go downtown. The blacks and whites sort of took turns making a picket line around the dept stores that had lunch counters. I didn’t see the Klan until years later in the Northern Neck when I was grown. When I moved to Manassas, there was a Manassas phone number that everyone called that was some sort of National Klan number. We all used to call and laugh at them. But I was young and foolish then….
The pics I have of the Klan are from a south Georgia rally, but our experience watching them was in north Georgia. Our family went to Atlanta only a few times a year. There was no interstate system at that time so the trip was time consuming. I remember the segregated fountains and restrooms in Davidson’s and Rich’s.
The rhetoric in the video sounds familiar in many respects to what we heard in PWC a couple years ago and to what is posted in the newspaper forum in the Georgia town where I spent most of my time. Give people a bogeyman and they can be riled up – their attention diverted from the real source of power in this country.
Oh, YES! Back to the good old days! We’re regressing sehr schell!! I LOVE IT!! Let’s throw some “everyone in support of the resolution is a Nazi” I miss that stuff sooooo much!!
I have a clip for everything. Here’s some compelling television where a Klansman tries to rate the various races in terms of which he feels are worse or better. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=walJjsqRrnc