Hucks: He Didn’t Steele My Heart

As a reporter assigned to cover the human-rights movement in Kootenai County back in the day, I dealt with racists, too. One gave me a swastika tiepin. Another crashed his junker into my parked car in the S-R Coeur d’Alene office lot. An erstwhile Aryan Nations security chief claimed I had incited a lethal attack against a German shepherd belonging to the late racist leader Richard Butler. Vincent Bertollini emailed. So did Edgar Steele, the ex-Aryan Nations lawyer convicted Thursday of trying to hire hits on his wife and mother-in-law. I dusted off a gem that Steele sent April 1, 1999. Addressed to “Oliveria-rhymes-with- diarrhea,” it reads in part: “You have done your best, bully that you are, to shut me up and silence others that feel as I do. You, of course, have a forum that we are denied. Don’t you ever wonder how you might do in a fair fight?”/ DFO , Huckleberries. More here.

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