Woman Pleads Guilty in Killing of Vegas Anti-Racist Skinheads
On the night of July 3, 1998, two anti-racist skinheads — Lin Newborn, a black, charismatic body piercer, and his best friend, Daniel Shersty, a white, U.S. Air Force airman — were lured into the desert outside of Las Vegas by a woman promising a night of partying under the stars.
Instead, the young men were ambushed and shot to death in the sand. It was a pivotal event and a deadly escalation in the long civil war pitting racist skinheads against their anti-racist counterparts. Until that night, most of their clashes at music venues, on street corners and in back alleys ended in broken bones and bloodied noses, not bullet-riddled bodies.
John “Polar Bear” Butler, the leader of a Las Vegas neo-Nazi skinhead gang, was the only one arrested, charged and convicted of the killings. Butler was sentenced to death, although the sentence was overturned and he is now serving two life terms. But Newborn and Shersty’s grieving families and their comrades in the anti-racist movement always contended that there were others involved who should also be charged, including the woman who they said set the trap.
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