Agent: Osceola neo-Nazi biker gang talked about targeting Obama officials, Orange County Sheriff
By Henry Pierson Curtis, Orlando Sentinel
KISSIMMEE — Brian Klose and his fellow members of the 1st SS Kavallerie Brigade Motorcycle Division organization thought their club was a creation of the Aryan Nations hate group.
They were wrong.
A member of the Orange County Sheriff's Office intelligence squad duped Aryan Nations' leader August Kreis III into founding what he believed would be the militant arm of white supremacists across the country, according to court records.
This week, the story of the 1st SS Kavallerie Brigade was told for the first time in detail at the Osceola County Courthouse, where one of several agents with the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force described living undercover for months as a renegade bomb maker and probationary member of both the Outlaws and the neo-Nazi biker gang.
Deputy Kelly Boaz, the undercover agent, testified Wednesday that the domestic terrorism case began in 2008-09 in part because bikers at the St. Cloud clubhouse had been talking about targeting members of the Obama administration, as well as then newly elected Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings, the first black sheriff in Central Florida.
Klose, 51, and Carlos "Gino" Dubose, president of the Outlaws' Osceola chapter, were scheduled to be sentenced at the end of Wednesday's hearing on drug trafficking and bomb-related charges. But lengthy testimony prompted Circuit Judge Jon B. Morgan to reschedule the sentencing for next month.
In separate plea agreements, Klose faces 15 years in prison and Dubose, 56, faces up to 35 years. They'll be sentenced on Feb. 7.
During his testimony, Boaz told how JTTF members likely averted two killings, including a member of the Hell's Angels — mortal enemies of the Outlaws — who walked into the St. Cloud clubhouse one night thinking it was a white supremacist bar without ties to any other group.
"Klose put a gun to his head and cocked the gun," Boaz said, describing how he grabbed and roughed up the Hell's Angel and ran him out of the clubhouse to save his life.
The other incident involved a motorist high on cocaine who struck and killed Klose's 78-year-old father, Richard, in July 2009 while the retired butcher from Albany, N.Y. walked across Old Canoe Creek Road in St. Cloud. Afterward, Dubose was accused of, but not charged with, planning a contract murder of the motorist then being held in the Osceola County Jail, records show.
"We were very nervous he was going to lose his life," Boaz said. Someone from the JTTF called in an anonymous tip to Crimeline, which prompted Osceola County law enforcement to provide motorist David Lanier with protection to keep him alive. "This was a very real situation."
After the hearing, Klose told the Orlando Sentinel he did nothing to harm Lanier because he promised his mother, Ann, who died two years after her husband, that he would not retaliate.
The majority of Boaz's testimony discussed how he was sent undercover partly to keep the 1st SS Kavallerie Brigade from finding a bomb maker willing to build them remote controlled explosives. In his role, he obtained remote-control detonators from Quantico, Va. — the site of the FBI National Academy — and built several demonstration bombs with as much as 1-pound of black powder.
On April 28, 2009, court records state Boaz detonated a remote-control bomb to show Klose what he could do. The blast so excited Klose, he fired a pistol and told Boaz "he had a target for him to use the explosives on and that was the [rival] Warlock motorcycle gang's clubhouse."
Undercover agents had become so entrenched in the biker gang by then that three of them traveled with Klose to Chicago to meet with national leaders of the Outlaws about opening Kavallerie Brigade chapters in the Midwest, records state. The outcome of the discussions was not disclosed.
Another defendant, Harold "Hippie" Kinlaw, faces trial next month on charges that he asked Boaz to build a bomb so he could kill his brother in law, a black police officer.
The neo-Nazi group's demand for white racial purity was so strong that Dubose was not allowed to join the 1st SS Kavallerie Brigade because his mother was Cuban, Boaz testified.
After the arrests began in 2012, then Orange-Osceola State Attorney Lawson Lamar said the case was the most complex undercover investigation in decades in Central Florida.
"The underlying aspect through all of it was that they were obtaining explosives and explosives expertise, and they intended to use them to kill people in the United States," Lamar said. "We have a duty to stop what they were doing."
In the spring of 2010, the Joint Terrorism Task Force began investigating the American Front, another Nazi-influenced group of white supremacists rumored to be conducting combat training in rural Osceola County for a race war. Records show the FBI paid a former drug dealer who had sold cocaine in the 1st SS Kavallerie Brigade's club house to infiltrate the group.
The case against 14 accused members of the American Front has mostly fallen apart, with just three convictions without lengthy sentences. The only member awaiting trial is accused leader Marcus Faella.
hcurtis@tribune.com or 407-420-5257
Source http://touch.orlandosentinel.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-79018383/
KISSIMMEE — Brian Klose and his fellow members of the 1st SS Kavallerie Brigade Motorcycle Division organization thought their club was a creation of the Aryan Nations hate group.
They were wrong.
A member of the Orange County Sheriff's Office intelligence squad duped Aryan Nations' leader August Kreis III into founding what he believed would be the militant arm of white supremacists across the country, according to court records.
This week, the story of the 1st SS Kavallerie Brigade was told for the first time in detail at the Osceola County Courthouse, where one of several agents with the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force described living undercover for months as a renegade bomb maker and probationary member of both the Outlaws and the neo-Nazi biker gang.
Deputy Kelly Boaz, the undercover agent, testified Wednesday that the domestic terrorism case began in 2008-09 in part because bikers at the St. Cloud clubhouse had been talking about targeting members of the Obama administration, as well as then newly elected Orange County Sheriff Jerry Demings, the first black sheriff in Central Florida.
Klose, 51, and Carlos "Gino" Dubose, president of the Outlaws' Osceola chapter, were scheduled to be sentenced at the end of Wednesday's hearing on drug trafficking and bomb-related charges. But lengthy testimony prompted Circuit Judge Jon B. Morgan to reschedule the sentencing for next month.
In separate plea agreements, Klose faces 15 years in prison and Dubose, 56, faces up to 35 years. They'll be sentenced on Feb. 7.
During his testimony, Boaz told how JTTF members likely averted two killings, including a member of the Hell's Angels — mortal enemies of the Outlaws — who walked into the St. Cloud clubhouse one night thinking it was a white supremacist bar without ties to any other group.
"Klose put a gun to his head and cocked the gun," Boaz said, describing how he grabbed and roughed up the Hell's Angel and ran him out of the clubhouse to save his life.
The other incident involved a motorist high on cocaine who struck and killed Klose's 78-year-old father, Richard, in July 2009 while the retired butcher from Albany, N.Y. walked across Old Canoe Creek Road in St. Cloud. Afterward, Dubose was accused of, but not charged with, planning a contract murder of the motorist then being held in the Osceola County Jail, records show.
"We were very nervous he was going to lose his life," Boaz said. Someone from the JTTF called in an anonymous tip to Crimeline, which prompted Osceola County law enforcement to provide motorist David Lanier with protection to keep him alive. "This was a very real situation."
After the hearing, Klose told the Orlando Sentinel he did nothing to harm Lanier because he promised his mother, Ann, who died two years after her husband, that he would not retaliate.
The majority of Boaz's testimony discussed how he was sent undercover partly to keep the 1st SS Kavallerie Brigade from finding a bomb maker willing to build them remote controlled explosives. In his role, he obtained remote-control detonators from Quantico, Va. — the site of the FBI National Academy — and built several demonstration bombs with as much as 1-pound of black powder.
On April 28, 2009, court records state Boaz detonated a remote-control bomb to show Klose what he could do. The blast so excited Klose, he fired a pistol and told Boaz "he had a target for him to use the explosives on and that was the [rival] Warlock motorcycle gang's clubhouse."
Undercover agents had become so entrenched in the biker gang by then that three of them traveled with Klose to Chicago to meet with national leaders of the Outlaws about opening Kavallerie Brigade chapters in the Midwest, records state. The outcome of the discussions was not disclosed.
Another defendant, Harold "Hippie" Kinlaw, faces trial next month on charges that he asked Boaz to build a bomb so he could kill his brother in law, a black police officer.
The neo-Nazi group's demand for white racial purity was so strong that Dubose was not allowed to join the 1st SS Kavallerie Brigade because his mother was Cuban, Boaz testified.
After the arrests began in 2012, then Orange-Osceola State Attorney Lawson Lamar said the case was the most complex undercover investigation in decades in Central Florida.
"The underlying aspect through all of it was that they were obtaining explosives and explosives expertise, and they intended to use them to kill people in the United States," Lamar said. "We have a duty to stop what they were doing."
In the spring of 2010, the Joint Terrorism Task Force began investigating the American Front, another Nazi-influenced group of white supremacists rumored to be conducting combat training in rural Osceola County for a race war. Records show the FBI paid a former drug dealer who had sold cocaine in the 1st SS Kavallerie Brigade's club house to infiltrate the group.
The case against 14 accused members of the American Front has mostly fallen apart, with just three convictions without lengthy sentences. The only member awaiting trial is accused leader Marcus Faella.
hcurtis@tribune.com or 407-420-5257
Source http://touch.orlandosentinel.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-79018383/
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