Murderous skinhead leader said to be "reformed" and "pardoned" for his crimes even while recently uttering racist threats.
"Bill Riccio headed a Birmingham, Ala.-area racist skinhead network responsible for at least two murders during the early ’90s, became a Klan officer after being released from prison in 1994, and regularly attended racist rallies in the years after that. As recently as 2007, Riccio said openly that he was still working to recruit young men into the white supremacist movement.
But now he’s been pronounced officially reformed.
That’s according to the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles, which issued a “certificate of pardon” last year proclaiming that Riccio “has so conducted himself as to demonstrate his reformation and to merit pardon with restoration of civil rights.”
After his release from prison, Riccio periodically attended white supremacist rallies and served as national chaplain of the Northern Georgia White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. In 2007, a few months before Riccio was granted his pardon, he told the Intelligence Report that he was still recruiting young people into the movement.
At least one law enforcement official who investigated Riccio in the ’90s dismissed the notion that Riccio had changed. “To believe he is reformed would be naïve,” Supervisory Special Agent Bart McEntire with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms told Hatewatch in an E-mail. “He is a chameleon and will disguise his true colors of hatred and anti-government belief.”"
http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2009/05/07/dubious-declarations-department-long-time-neo-nazi-boss-officially-judged-reformed/
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