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Internet chat with the president
Clinton hosts the first-ever presidential Webcast.
By Anthony York
[11/08/99]

The long shot
Gary Bauer talks about why he's running for president.
By Susan Crabtree
[11/08/99]

Together at last
Now that Buchanan is taking his followers over to the Reform Party, the extreme right and extreme left can finally be united in their isolationist vision of the world.
By David Horowitz
[11/08/99]

The thin black line
Black liberal Democrats plan to rally behind white centrist candidates to help bring the party back into the majority in the House.
By Ethan Wallison
[11/08/99]

Killer: Shepard didn't make advances
A just-unsealed confession demolishes the "gay panic" defense. Too bad the media wasn't around to hear it.
By Dave Cullen
[11/06/99]

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He did it, he said, because they were gay and God told him to.

When asked if he had killed the pair, Williams answered, "Absolutely."

During his jailhouse confession Thursday, Williams said the only regret he has about the murders is that they didn't inspire others to emulate him. And he insists his actions do not constitute a crime.

"I'm not guilty of murder," Williams said. "I'm guilty of obeying the laws of the creator."

Williams and his younger brother, James Tyler Williams, face two counts of first degree murder in the July 1 double slaying of Gary Matson, 50, and Winfield Mowder, 40, a prominent gay couple who lived near Redding in the rural community of Happy Valley, about 180 miles north of Sacramento. The elder Williams now says his brother had nothing to do with the crime.

Williams' confession puts his court-appointed defense attorney, Frank J. O'Connor, in an unenviable position. While Williams wants the attorney to argue that he is innocent of murder, even though he admits killing the pair, because he answers to a higher power, O'Connor doubts that argument can win over a judge or jury in California.

"The defense that he has is a religious defense, and he is saying the Bible says that homosexuality is wrong and they should be killed and the blood is on their heads," O'Connor said. "But as a practical matter I don't think the judge is going to allow that defense, as opposed to one using the laws of the state of California."

O'Connor is not taking the matter lightly. Two days before his client admitted to the killings, he received notification from Shasta County's district attorney indicating that he had tentatively decided to seek the death penalty in the case.

But Williams insists that because the Bible holds that homosexuality is a sin that must be punished by death, the responsibility for the slayings rests with the victims.

"You obey a government of man until there is a conflict," Williams said. "Then you obey a higher law."

"It's part of the faith," he added. "So many people claim to be Christians and complain about all these things their religion says are a sin, but they're not willing to do anything about it. They don't have the guts."

Such bizarre reasoning might be dismissed as the rantings of a lunatic. But Williams has become a celebrity of sorts, partly because of the murders and partly because he is also the prime suspect in the June 18 firebombing of three Sacramento-area synagogues.

He is revered in jail by his fellow white supremacists and misanthropes. And he is sought after by the biggest stars in the media world. Initially, he tried to engage a press agent to make money off his story, but when those efforts failed, he simply began negotiating to tell his story to whoever might listen.

Calls went out to "60 Minutes," "Dateline NBC," whoever might listen. And the media dutifully trouped to Redding to hear his tale.

HBO interviewed him in the jail, as did two reporters from NBC. He spent an hour on the phone with NBC anchorman Tom Brokaw until, Williams says, the two got into an argument over whether the nation was founded on the principle of love for fellow citizens.

He clearly enjoys his notoriety, spending time in the interviews gushing about his favorite Web sites. (The Nationalist Observer is the best because of its links to other racist sites, he told HBO, according to transcripts of the interview.)

But he refused to directly discuss his alleged crimes until Thursday, when he admitted to the Sacramento Bee that he had killed the pair. And although he stopped short of claiming credit for the synagogue arsons, he added that he "kind of regretted they didn't burn to the ground."

Williams said his decision to hold back on whether or not he set the fires stems in part from his desire to not give away his whole story too soon.

Next page | Comparable to "gay panic" defense?