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FUGITIVE NEO-NAZI FROM GERMANY IS CAPTURED IN W.VA.
DAVID A. VISE
After secretly trailing a German neo-Nazi fugitive on his journey from
Washington state to West Virginia, the U.S. Marshals Service arrested
the convicted murderer near the 200-acre property of white separatist
William Pierce, author of "The Turner Diaries," authorities announced
yesterday.
Hendrik Albert Viktor Moebus was convicted in Germany in 1994 with two
accomplices of murder and kidnapping. He was apprehended Saturday near
Lewisburg, W.Va., about 20 miles from Pierce's property, where he had
been living for several weeks, officials said.
Moebus, 24, was convicted as a minor of luring another teenager,
described as "non-Aryan," into an apartment and strangling him. Paroled
in 1998 after serving two-thirds of his sentence, Moebus violated the
terms of his release by making extremist comments about the murder
victim and giving a Nazi salute during right-wing gatherings in Germany.
He publicly declared his intent to avoid arrest and questioned whether
the killing he committed was a crime, officials said. Last December,
Moebus entered the United States while a warrant for his arrest was
pending in Germany. The German Federal Ministry of Justice soon asked
the U.S. Marshals Service for help in locating and arresting him.
The marshals determined that Moebus had entered the United States
through Seattle without using an alias and had gone to Spokane, Wash. At
some point he began using an alias and had help from various people,
federal officials said.
"He left a trail," said Chris Dudley, the senior inspector who headed
the investigation for the Marshals Service.
Moebus traveled from Spokane to Richmond, parts of Ohio and ultimately
to West Virginia, where he lived in one of the buildings on Pierce's
200-acre compound. Pierce, founder of the National Alliance, wrote "The
Turner Diaries," a novel that received national attention after it was
revealed that Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh avidly read and
promoted the book's white supremacist message.
There are similarities between the 1995 bombing of the Murrah federal
building and a scene in "The Turner Diaries" describing the preparation
of a bomb to destroy FBI headquarters. The novel includes the violent
overthrow of the U.S. government and the systematic killing of Jews and
nonwhites to establish an "Aryan" world.
Last Saturday, as a group of deputy marshals watched, Moebus left the
Pierce property as a passenger in a car. He got out of the vehicle about
20 miles away and was arrested immediately near Lewisburg. Moebus did
not resist arrest and no weapons were found in the vehicle, Dudley said.
An arrest warrant was issued in federal court in Spokane in early July
after marshals located a man they believed to be Moebus living in Loon
Lake, Wash.
"We had corroboration from a couple of sources he was up there," Dudley
said. The marshals kept him under surveillance and followed him to
Pierce's property, where they waited about two weeks before making the
arrest to ensure they had the right man, Dudley noted.
"Patience paid off," Dudley said, adding that he was pleased the
Marshals Service cracked a case that the German government regarded as
"important."
"The U.S. marshals did a great job," a spokesman for the German Embassy
said yesterday. "We have very close cooperation with U.S. authorities
regarding fighting right-wing extremism."
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