Neo-Nazis consider a mysterious potato farmer referred to as “Scary Larry” is the infiltrator who prosecutors say shacked up with Southern Poverty Legislation Heart boss Heidi Beirich.
Former Nationwide Alliance member Lawrence W. Myers — an Arabic-speaking, guitar-strumming, “paranoid” man — was even kicked out of the racist group for being a spy, sources stated.
A number of ex-members informed The Publish they consider Myers is the particular person labelled with the pseudonym “F-9” in a latest federal indictment, who feds declare was paid $1.2 million from SPLC donor funds.
“Many individuals, particularly [former National Alliance chairman] Erich Gliebe consider that Myers was a federal agent,” one supply informed The Publish.
“[Gliebe] as soon as stated he acquired [Myers’s] telephone data and he had a number of calls to the FBI and the SPLC. That’s how [Gliebe] bought the smoking gun on Lawrence.”
Myers was, at one time, near Gliebe inside the typically paranoid and accusatory world of white energy racists and had a very menacing facet, in line with sources.
“I feel he was listening to my telephone calls. He would know issues I talked to different folks about on the telephone,” one former member of Nationwide Alliance informed The Publish, noting he additionally had an aggressive demeanor.
“I had an amazing feeling of hazard [in his presence]. I felt like he might have killed me.” The Publish couldn’t discover any document of Myers being violent.
In April the SPLC was indicted on costs of wire fraud, financial institution fraud, and cash laundering as Feds alleged the Alabama-based anti-hate nonprofit defrauded donors by secretly utilizing over $4 million in contributions to gas the teams they had been combating towards, embedding informants inside white supremacist teams just like the Ku Klux Klan.
In August, Beirich who was a director on the nonprofit, was arrested for her function within the alleged scheme. She had pleaded not responsible and is at the moment awaiting trial.
The indictment towards her claims she was paying the F-9 informant whereas being concerned in a romantic relationship with them — sharing a home and two financial institution accounts, with $140,000 of donor cash used to pay for the couple’s residing bills.
Myers is now stated to reside a reclusive life on a North Carolina farm only a brief drive from a house owned by Beirich, The Publish can completely reveal. Each he and Beirich couldn’t be reached for remark.
The indictment reveals refined clues concerning F-9’s id, amongst those who they had been engaged in “fundraising for the Nationwide Alliance.”
“There have been few particular fundraising efforts made. The one one that explicitly raised funds was Lawrence Myers, who would run a fundraising assembly phase at each annual management convention. He was excellent at it,” one Nationwide Alliance member informed The Publish.
The indictment states F-9 had been an informant for the SPLC since a minimum of 2003, and had infiltrated the Nationwide Alliance on the instruction of the nonprofit.
Sources described Myers as a girls’ man who by no means fairly slot in.
“He was a member of some odd Christian spiritual sect that obeyed all of the bizarre Outdated Testomony legal guidelines and festivals. He as soon as stated he attended some massive assembly known as the Feast of Tabernacles yearly,” a longtime member informed The Publish.
That alone put Myers at odds with a core Nationwide Alliance perception, because the group’s members reject Christianity resulting from its “Semitic roots” and largely observe a faith known as Cosmotheism, developed by Alliance founder William Pierce.
One reformed ex-member informed The Publish how Myers, 68, as soon as secretly helped him depart the group, privately providing recommendation and monetary help whereas publicly trashing the defector as a traitor.
“He supplied to assist me. He informed me learn how to preserve knowledge on everybody in case they got here after me,” the ex-member stated. “He’s completely an informant. Lawrence is extraordinarily clever, in all probability one of the vital clever males I’ve ever met. Once I first heard about [F-9], Lawrence was the primary individual that popped into my head.
Outdated message board conversations shared with The Publish add gas to the flames.
Gliebe — who, extremely, additionally later turned out additionally to be an SPLC informant —”was mentored by none apart from the identified FBI informant and SPLC mole, Lawrence Myers,” Nationwide Alliance stalwart and upkeep man Fred Streed, who handed away in Feb., claimed in a submit to members in 2003.
Gliebe, a former boxer referred to as the Aryan Barbarian, was unmasked by Fox Information in July as being informant F-42, allegedly paid $155,000 by the SPLC between 2016 and 2023.
Gliebe didn’t reply to a number of requests for an interview.
Bizarrely, simply earlier than becoming a member of the Nationwide Alliance within the early 2000s Myers discovered himself twice on the middle of the most important information story within the nation—the approaching Oklahoma Metropolis bombing trial.
In 1996 Myers was a reporter for Indiana-based different information journal Media Bypass, which catered to anti-government and right-wing militia teams and was one among solely two journalists to land a sit-down interview with bomber Timothy McVeigh as he awaited trial. (McVeigh was later convicted of killing 168 folks within the deadliest act of home terrorism in US historical past).
The fawning write-up known as McVeigh “neither monster nor madman,” and fawned: “He smiles simply and sometimes […] His sapphire blue eyes are expressive, and when talking, he appears straight into your eyes.”
Myers then grew to become accountable for getting a juror sympathetic to McVeigh kicked off the grand jury, igniting conspiracy theories he was working for the Feds and had uncovered the juror on goal.
Federal grand juror Hoppy Heidelberg was dismissed in October 1995 after Myers printed an interview with the juror alleging authorities cover-ups and suppressed proof within the case.
Following the juror saga, Myers was reportedly fired in 1996 resulting from readers “cancelling subscriptions due to their views on Myers” being a fed, which his bosses stated they discovered no proof of, in line with a Nov. 1996 report in Conspiracy Nation.
Sources who had been unaware of Myers’s journalistic previous informed The Publish he spoke Arabic and was Nationwide Alliance’s workers photographer, recurrently bringing his digital camera to gatherings and photographing members.
Myers additionally printed three books on spying and bomb-making — successfully how-to manuals disguised as “for data solely.”
Considered one of them, “Improvised Radio Detonation Strategies,” particulars learn how to “modify a cordless or mobile cell phone… to detonate explosives,” in line with the e book’s description.
One other, titled “Spycomm: Covert Communication Strategies of the Underground,” tells readers learn how to “use improvised microfilm, steal telephone service, create unbreakable codes and extra.”
Whereas The Publish couldn’t independently affirm F-9’s id, clues peppered by way of the indictment match up with Myers. The indictment reveals that F-9 had a base in North Carolina. Feds additionally say the informant had a private checking account with First Residents Financial institution, which has a department within the tiny North Carolina city the place Myers lives, pop. 1,608.
Beirich, who by no means remarried after her English professor husband Kevin Ray Hicks handed away in 2011, owned two properties throughout the years coated by the indictment, data present: her main residence in Montgomery, Ala. and a second house 250 miles away in Ellijay, Ga.
Since a minimum of 2008 Myers has lived in a North Carolina border city that’s a one-hour drive from Beirich’s Georgia house. Curiously, data obtained by The Publish present Myers, a North Carolina resident, obtained a Georgia fishing license. Though Beirich moved to California lately, her Georgia house sat straight on the Coosawattee River, a neighborhood hotspot for black bass and trout.
Following her departure from the SPLC in 2019, Beirich returned to her hometown of Palm Springs, the place her father, Russ Beirich, had as soon as been mayor.
“The title Beirich just isn’t unknown in Palm Springs” a household pal of Beirich’s informed The Publish. “Heidi has devoted her complete life to struggle for the underdog and individuals who have been wronged. As a youth she was by no means one who was imply. She all the time went and sat subsequent to the unpopular pupil.”
The SPLC — who didn’t reply to a request for remark — pleaded not responsible, sustaining confidential subject sources had been normal investigative instruments to observe extremist threats. The trial is scheduled to start subsequent month.
“I completely love that man. He was sane in a sea of nuts. He was form,” one other reformed ex-Nationwide Alliance member informed The Publish of Myers.
“He went again to farming and rising potatoes. That’s all I do know.”
