SALON

Saturday, Jan 26, 2013 3:00 PM UTC

Kentucky neo-Nazis charged in gruesome murder, dismemberment

The accused killers are being held without bail for kidnapping, murder and abuse of a corpse among other charges

By

Topics: Southern Poverty Law Center, Kentucky, Nazis, Ku Klux Klan, Drugs, Nazism,

Kentucky neo-Nazis charged in gruesome murder, dismemberment
This article was originally published by The Southern Poverty Law Center.

The Southern Poverty Law Center The 25-point manifesto of the National Socialist Movement (NSM) makes several hyperbolic “demands,” such as “all non-Whites currently residing in America be required to leave the nation forthwith and return to their land of origin: peacefully or by force.’’

But it appears that two Kentucky members of the neo-Nazi group and an accomplice took at least one of the over-the-top mission statements deadly serious.

Point 17 says, “We demand the ruthless prosecution of those whose activities are injurious to the common interest. Murderers, rapists, pedophiles, drug dealers, usurers, profiteers, race traitors, etc. must be severely punished, whatever creed or race.”

On Jan. 9, according to the authorities, the men lured a white, 19-year-old alleged small-time drug dealer into the back seat of their car, choked him, beat him with fists and a metal pipe, dragged him out of the car, slit his throat, stabbed him in the chest, rolled his body down a hill and left him dead in the bushes, covered in brambles, in a field in Boone County, Ky., essentially a suburb of nearby Cincinnati.

The next day, the men returned to the field and began dismembering the body with knives and a hatchet, apparently scattering the body parts in the field and a landfill. “The head, hands, feet and legs,” Detective Jeremy Rosing of the Boone County Sheriff’s Office testified at a court hearing last week.

The accused killers – Anthony Baumgartner, 23, Stephen Harkness, 22, and Jeffrey Allen, 21 – are being held without bail on charges of kidnapping, murder, tampering with physical evidence and abuse of a corpse.

The men told investigators that they disliked drug dealers and that is why they targeted their victim, who was identified by a tattoo of a cartoon character on his severed torso as Daniel Delfin, of Walton, Ky.

“Their thing was, we know he deals drugs, we’re against that,” Deputy Tom Scheben, a spokesman for the Boone County sheriff, told Hatewatch today. “They said he was a drug dealer and, in essence, a blight on society.’’

Both Baumgartner and Harkness are admitted members of NSM and can be found on the group’s social media forum discussing their interests and dislikes.

“Stormtrooper First Class Baumgartner NMS Kentucky” wrote on the forum that he dislikes “race traders [sic], greed, ignorance, drugs, jews, niggers, spikes, gooks and chinks and anybody that hates National Socialism.”

In the “About Me” section, he says that he was part of the Ku Klux Klan but left a long time ago on good terms and now wants “to get back in the race war so me and a few other boys in my area are starting to clean up area of drugs and so called street gangs.”

Harkness’s dislikes include: “Drugs, Gangs, Hippies, Faggots, All other races, People who think Jews deserve our pity.” As hobbies, he listed farming and gardening, and re-reading the works of “Herr Hitler and Commander Rockwell,” as in George Lincoln Rockwell, the former Navy commander who founded the American Nazi Party in 1959.

It is unclear if Allen is a neo-Nazi. But, “they’re all pretty tatted up with that stuff,” Scheben said.

The deputy said Allen told investigators that he had planned the attack on Delfin a week before. “I’m sure he’s not the only drug dealer they’re familiar with,” Scheben said. “But he wore the real baggy pants, the baggy clothes. In a small town like Walton, Kentucky, you stand out dressing like that.’’

Scheben said the men lured Delfin into their car on Jan. 9 by saying they wanted to buy heroin. Delfin was arrested last May for trafficking heroin in the area. “I would say we have a very definite heroin problem,” Scheben said. “It is the drug of choice in the tri-state region. It’s much cheaper than your pain killer pills.”

Harkness was driving. Baumgartner was in the passenger seat. Allen was in the back, sitting next to Delfin, who he “proceeded to physically assault” with his fists and a pipe, Rosing told a Boone County courtroom.

Rosing said Delfin suffered “severe head trauma” during the attack and apparently slipped into unconsciousness or death. The men drove to a field next to Allen’s home where Allen slit Delfin’s throat and stabbed him, the detective said, “underneath the ribcage, up into the heart and twisted the knife and then pulled it out.”

The next day, the men returned to dismember the body.

On Jan. 13, Delfin’s sister reported him missing. On Jan. 14, authorities got a tip, leading them to the three men, who were arrested on Jan. 15.

“Allen was the first to admit it,” Scheben said. “The others followed suit. Allen walked us to where the torso was.”

The authorities found Delfin’s torso and legs in the field. They searched a nearby landfill, using four pieces of heavy equipment for six hours before calling the search off without finding the rest of the teenager.

The owners of the landfill “told us up front, you’re pretty much looking for a needle in a haystack,” Scheben said.

The three men are being held in the Boone County Jail without bail, waiting to go before a grand jury in the next few weeks. “Their story now is that they were just going to assault him and work their way up the chain until they found the drug kingpin,” Scheben said.

Calls today to the men’s public defenders were not returned.

On Thursday in Verona, Ky., nearly 100 people attended Delfin’s closed-casket funeral. Two songs were played at the service: “Amazing Grace” and “It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday.”

More Don Terry.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • This photo. President Barack Obama has a laugh during the unveiling of the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas, Tx., Thursday. Former first lady Barbara Bush, who candidly admitted this week we've had enough Bushes in the White House, is unamused.
    Reuters/Jason Reed

  • Rescue workers converge Wednesday in Savar, Bangladesh, where the collapse of a garment building killed more than 300. Factory owners had ignored police orders to vacate the work site the day before.
    AP/A.M. Ahad

  • Police gather Wednesday at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to honor campus officer Sean Collier, who was allegedly killed in a shootout with the Boston Marathon bombing suspects last week.
    AP/Elise Amendola

  • Police tape closes the site of a car bomb that targeted the French embassy in Libya Tuesday. The explosion wounded two French guards and caused extensive damage to Tripoli's upscale al-Andalus neighborhood.
    AP/Abdul Majeed Forjani

  • Protestors rage outside the residence of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Sunday following the rape of a 5-year-old girl in New Delhi. The girl was allegedly kidnapped and tortured before being abandoned in a locked room for two days.
    AP/Manish Swarup

  • Clarksville, Mo., residents sit in a life boat Monday after a Mississippi River flooding, the 13th worst on record.
    AP/Jeff Roberson

  • Workers pause Wednesday for a memorial service at the site of the West, Tx., fertilizer plant explosion, which killed 14 people and left a crater more than 90 feet wide.
    AP/The San Antonio Express-News, Tom Reel

  • Aerial footage of the devastation following a 7.0 magnitude earthquake in China's Sichuan province last Saturday. At least 180 people were killed and as many as 11,000 injured in the quake.
    AP/Liu Yinghua

  • On Wednesday, Hazmat-suited federal authorities search a martial arts studio in Tupelo, Miss., once operated by Everett Dutschke, the newest lead in the increasingly twisty ricin case. Last week, President Barack Obama, Sen. Roger Wicker, R.-Miss., and a Mississippi judge were each sent letters laced with the deadly poison.
    AP/Rogelio V. Solis

  • The lighting of Freedom Hall at the George W. Bush Presidential Center Thursday is celebrated with (what else but) red, white and blue fireworks.
    AP/David J. Phillip

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 23 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

Salon is proud to feature content from The Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit civil rights organization dedicated to fighting hate and bigotry, and to seeking justice for the most vulnerable members of society.

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: "The Shelter Cycle": Raised in a cult

Recommendations