Neo-Nazi Bill White Found Guilty of Extortion-Related Charges
A Roanoke jury convicted former neo-Nazi leader William A. White on Friday of extortion-related felony charges, delivering another dose of justice to a man who has racked up multiple convictions for fearsome threats against a variety of targets.
The 36-year-old White, already serving prison time for soliciting violence against a juror, glanced down as the verdicts ended a three-day trial at the Poff Federal Building. He looked a short time later at his mother, seated in the gallery.
The verdict by a rare anonymous jury was the latest of a string of courtroom defeats for White, a real estate owner in the Roanoke area since 2004 who first came to official attention as a vocal white supremacist bent on building a national following for his racist views.
In spring 2012, while living in Rockbridge County, he fled from probation supervision to a Mexican island with plans never to return to the United States, according to proceedings in U.S. District Court.
But life on the lam on the touristy Yucatan Peninsula wasn’t cheap, and he needed cash, prosecutors said. His estranged wife, Meghan, then living in Staunton, had earlier agreed to furnish White with $400 in monthly support but stopped payment on a check shortly after the U.S. Marshals Service called and told her White had fled.
White was furious about the stopped check, assistant U.S. Attorney Laura Rottenborn told jurors, and lashed out in emails sent from his personal Yahoo account in May and June 2012 that were designed to instill fear. “I would very much like to avoid an incident in which something violent potentially happens to you around the baby,” one of four emails warned. The couple has a daughter who is 5.
Another email told Meghan White to pay “or you will probably be hospitalized.”
The saga ended with White’s arrest and the confiscation of his laptop June 8 at a Mexican Wal-Mart. Meghan White and the child were never harmed. He’s been in custody ever since.