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"Christian Identity is for pantywaists"
Right-wingers debate Buford Furrow's goals and his organizational ties.
By Jeff Stein
[08/12/99]

Guns and money
The owner of the firm that made the assault rifle used in the L.A. shooting was, until recently, a key George W. Bush fund-raiser.
By Jake Tapper
[08/11/99]

America the armed
Today anti-Semitism is virulent but rare, while guns are everywhere
By Harold Meyerson
[08/11/99]

L.A. killer's "wake-up call to America to kill Jews"
Anti-Semitism was the motive in Tuesday's shooting at a Jewish day-care center in Los Angeles.
By Vivienne Walt
[08/11/99]

Bill Bradley: The next black president?
His campaign purports to make race a central issue, but so far it's more style than substance.
By Keith Moore
[08/11/99]

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"You're looking for me," he told officers at the FBI field office in Las Vegas, just before 9 on Wednesday morning. "I killed the kids in Los Angeles."

It scarcely seemed possible that Furrow, 37, had missed the blitz media coverage on television and radio, and the news that he had not in fact killed anyone when he walked into the North Valley Jewish Community Center in the San Fernando Valley and fired about 70 shots from an AR-15 Bushmaster. Incredibly, only one of the five people who were shot, a 5-year-old boy, was critically injured, with four bullets in his stomach and leg. Four others -- two boys, a 16-year-old student counselor and a 68-year-old staff member -- were treated for injuries and listed in good condition by Wednesday.

Equally amazing, Furrow had managed to slip the dragnet thrown down by Los Angeles police officers, FBI agents and the city's entire SWAT team for 12 hours on Tuesday. Hundreds of officers scoured Southern California looking for him on Tuesday night. After fanning out through the streets, searching house to house with police dogs, the force descended on the 7 Star Suites Hotel in Chatsworth, a few miles from the shooting. Furrow had carjacked a green Toyota Corolla shortly after the shooting and parked it in the hotel lot. The massive police contingent was convinced its prey was inside.

But Furrow had fooled them all. The Washington state ex-con committed an act so banal that no one thought about it as a possibility -- he took a taxi, and headed to Las Vegas, 231 miles from here. After spending the night at a hotel somewhere in that city, he turned himself in to the FBI. Although it was not confirmed on Wednesday, an FBI agent told the Associated Press that Furrow had wanted Tuesday's shooting to act as "a wake-up call to America to kill Jews."

Furrow was extradited to Los Angeles Wednesday, where he will face federal charges of murder and illegal possession of a firearm in the death of Filipino-American letter carrier Joseph Ileto, in addition to attempted murder charges for the Jewish center shooting. If authorities find Ileto was targeted because he was Filipino, Furrow will be charged under federal hate crime laws, which could earn him the death penalty.

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