White supremacist pleads guilty in shootings

Reprinted from Associated Press
By Linda Deutsch, Associated Press, 1/25/2001

LOS ANGELES - The white supremacist accused of killing a letter carrier and wounding five people at a Jewish community center pleaded guilty to murder and hate crime charges yesterday in a deal that spares him the death penalty.

Under the plea bargain, Buford O. Furrow, 39, will be sentenced to life in prison without parole.

He pleaded guilty to 16 federal charges stemming from the Aug. 10, 1999, rampage across the San Fernando Valley. The slaying of the letter carrier was a federal offense because he was a government employee.

Handcuffed and shackled, Furrow was thin and clean-shaven, a far cry from the pudgy, mustachioed man who was arrested last year. He answered softly, ''Guilty, your honor,'' 16 times.

Furrow sprayed the North Valley Jewish Community Center in the San Fernando Valley with more than 70 bullets, wounding three boys, a teen-age girl and a woman. Hours later, he killed Filipino-American Joseph Ileto, shooting him nine times as the man was delivering mail.

Furrow surrendered in Las Vegas the next day.

Furrow, of Olympia, Wash., had a long history of involvement with anti-Semitic groups operating in the Pacific Northwest, among them the Aryan Nations.

Authorities said he told them he shot up the community center to send a ''wake-up call to America to kill Jews.'' Prosecutors said he shot Ileto because the man appeared to him to be Hispanic or Asian.

Prosecutors had planned to seek the death penalty. But US Attorney Alejandro Mayorkas said prosecutors changed their mind after the defense submitted extensive evidence of Furrow's previous mental problems.

Mayorkas said the material showed Furrow sought psychiatric help for 10 years before the crime and complained of being plagued by homicidal and suicidal thoughts. Furrow's lawyers had planned to make his mental condition an issue at his trial.