Kidnapper’s Gun Killed Skinhead

Ballistics tests have confirmed the man who took a 7-year-old girl hostage last week in a 100-mile freeway chase was the man who killed a skinhead gang member two days earlier in a Salem park.

Lance Alexander, 25, was killed by a police sharpshooter last Thursday after he kidnapped the girl from a Salem day-care home.

Tests on Alexander’s gun show it was used to kill William Jason Mowdy last Tuesday in Bush Park near downtown Salem, Lt. Roger Vinyard of the Salem police department said Tuesday.

Mowdy, 23, was a member of a skinhead group called the American Front.

Alexander’s clothing and appearance matched witness descriptions of the shooting suspect, and Alexander boasted during the kidnapping two days later that he had killed somebody in the park.

Based on the evidence, Salem police consider the case closed in the Mowdy killing, Vinyard said.