We’ll let this speak for itself:
In a court filing days before the murders of U.S. District Judge Joan Lefkow’s relatives, jailed white supremacist Matthew Hale contended authorities owed him and the judge apologies for causing Lefkow and her family “to think that her life was in danger needlessly and wrongly.”
Saying he had “devoted my life to legal and peaceful change,” Hale denied soliciting Lefkow’s murder and called his incarceration a “Kafkaesque nightmare.”
Hale, who is representing himself, filed the court paper last week, but it only became public after Lefkow’s husband, Michael, and mother, Donna Humphrey, were found slain in the judge’s home Monday. While Hale’s conviction has made him and his followers of interest to investigators, authorities have cautioned it is too soon to conclude that any hate group is behind the murders.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for an apology just yet.
UPDATE: Hale (not to be confused with Nathan) denies he was in any way involved:”“There is no way that any supporter of mine could commit such a heinous crime,â€? Hale said in the statement, released through his mother after her weekly telephone call to him at Chicago’s Metropolitan Correctional Center. “I totally condemn it and I want the perpetrator caught and prosecuted….“I only hope they sincerely wish to apprehend the animal instead of railroading the innocent…Only an idiot would think I would do this.â€?â€?
Meanwhile, Judge Lefkow says the murders will not stop her:”Nobody is going to intimidate me off my duty…I think we all sort of go into this thinking it’s a possibility, but you don’t think it’s going to happen to you because it’s so unthinkable.â€?
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.