Judge Finds Husband & Mother Murdered

By Rachelle Bowden in News on Mar 1, 2005 6:40PM

US District Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow came home from work last night and found her husband and her mother shot to death. And that's about all the police are saying about the case. But there's been a lot of speculation that the deaths are somehow related to Lefkow's involvement with Matthew Hale, a white supremacist who was convicted in 2004 of trying to have her killed. US Marshal's Service had provided protection for the judge in the past but after Hale's conviction law officials and the judge agreed to end it.

In 1999, Hale's white supremacist buddy Benjamin Smith went on a shooting rampage in IL and IN targeting minorities and killing 2 people, including former Northwestern basketball coach Ricky Byrdsong. He wounded 9 other people and then killed himself. Smith was a follower of Hale's and Hale apparently found the whole thing funny. His reaction to Smith's 3-day shooting spree was to laugh and imitate gunfire on secretly recorded tapes.

Lefkow first came in contact with Hale in a case where she ruled that he could no longer use the name "World Church of the Creator" for his white supremacy group because another organization had a copyright on the name. A group that looks like it's actually a church. The supremacist group seems to be called Creativity World Wide now. Check out the cute screensaver banner ads on their hateful website.

Hale's father, a retired police officer, says there's no way his son could have been involved because he is under constant surveillance while awaiting sentencing.

Image via AP