December 12, 2024 • 40 mins
In 1990, a single episode of a public access show called "Klansas City Kable" aired in Kansas City, Missouri. The klansman who fought city council for his right to produce it was never prosecuted for the bombing campaign he claims to have carried out in the decade prior, but his long career as a professional racist took him all over the world before a years-long undercover operation finally put him away.
Sources:
Kennard, Matt. Irregular Army: How the US Military Recruited Neo-Nazis, Gang Members, and Criminals to Fight the War on Terror. London: Verso. 2012
Newton, Michael. White Robes and Burning Crosses: A History of the Ku Klux Klan from 1866. McFarland and Company 2014
https://www.nytimes.com/1991/11/03/world/klan-seizes-on-germany-s-wave-of-racist-violence.html
Ketter, Pia. "Zwischen Mord und Kreuzverbrennung. Der Rechte Rand, March/April 2016.
Rink, Nina. "Anleitung zum »Rassenhass«" Der Rechte Rand, March/April 2016
Norton, Bill. "The Cop and the Klan." Star Magazine, October 9, 1988
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone media. As the sun began to set on
a cool fall evening in late September nineteen ninety one,
TV reporter Harold Spiegel was waiting nervously at the edge
of the woods outside of a small town about an
hour south of the nation's capital. The reporter was waiting
(00:23):
for more information about their destination. That evening. He'd received
a tip about an event and managed to secure a
meeting with some of the men who would be attending.
They wouldn't tell him exactly where they were going, but
after a short discussion in a parking lot, they allowed
him to follow along. He drove deeper and deeper into
(00:45):
the countryside for half an hour before the men parked
at the edge of the forest and got out. More
men arrived. Some were wearing white robes and pointed hoods,
the traditional garb of members of the ku Klux. Others
wore motorcycle jackets with SS patches on them and unfrilled
(01:06):
flags and banners with swastivas. And then he followed them
into the woods. The reporter, alone in the woods with
a few dozen Nazis and clansmen, knew what these men
were capable of. A nearby town was in the throes
of a week long pogrom, with gangs of young Neo
Nazis laying siege to apartment buildings that were home to
(01:28):
Vietnamese and Mozambique immigrants. In a clearing, the men surrounded
a large wooden cross as it burned. A man in
a leather jacket adorned with SS ruins stood in the
center of the circle and shouted, seeghaile I come to
you from America. The cross was burning an hour south
(01:52):
of the nation's capital, but the capitol in question was Berlin, Missouri.
Clansmen Dennis Mahon was at the height of his career
as a professional racist. He had formed his own clan group,
the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and he
was Tom Metzker's right hand man in the White Aryan Resistance.
(02:13):
His trip to Germany promised to strengthen international ties between
hate groups in Europe and the United States. From the
time he joined the Klan in nineteen eighty, his life
story is inextricably intertwined with the history of the white
power movement. He made summer time visits to the Aryan
Nation's compound in Idaho. He ran paramilitary training drills on
(02:34):
a compound in Missouri. He was hauled into court to
testifying grand jury proceedings about the Oklahoma City bombing after
a former girlfriend accused him of helping plan the attack,
and by the time the FBI hired an exotic dancer
to seduce him into confessing to mailing a pipe bomb
to a public library in Scottsdale, Arizona, he was an
(02:55):
old man that the movement had mostly forgotten. I'm Molly Conger.
This it's weird, little guys. Last week, I said, I
(03:24):
wasn't sure if Dennis Mahon ever did try his hand
at producing his own public access television program. He was
just a brief side character and a larger story about
Tom Metzger, a klansman and the founder of the white
supremacist group White Arean Resistance. Metzger had received a generous
gift in nineteen eighty four three hundred thousand dollars in
(03:47):
cash from the members of the Order proceeds from their
armored car robbery earlier that year, and almost immediately after
Metzger got this massive cash and fusion, he set to
work producing a virulin racist television show called Race and Reason.
His goal was to get his racist propaganda into the
(04:07):
home of every working class white man in America by
way of public access TV. Across the country, Metzger supporters
dutifully ordered VHS tapes of the show and applied to
broadcast it on their own local channels. Others took up
the cause and produced their own original versions based on
Metzger's idea. One of the men who did both was
(04:30):
a klansman in Missouri named Dennis Mahon. I didn't set
out to write about Dennis this week. I had something
else in mind, but I asked myself a question last week.
Did Dennis ever actually produce a show called Clansis City Cable.
(04:51):
We didn't have time last week for another tangent to
find out about this. I was following Tom Metzger and
the Stolen money, but I just can't leave an itch
like that unscratched. And it turns out he did and
I found it. A single fifteen minute episode of Klansas
(05:14):
City Cable aired in Kansas City, Missouri, on April third,
nineteen ninety.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
We're going to discuss Klansas City Cable, which took two
and a half years, a sweat blood persecution, getting five
more jobs, getting harassed by fence, bomb shot at, assaulted
death threats constantly. Well we've succeeded.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Just a quick note on pronunciation. Dennis's last name, maho
n can be pronounced a variety of ways. It's a
common enough name, and I'm sure a lot of people
say it a lot different ways. I've chosen the pronunciation
used by his attorney in a twenty fifteen oral argument
before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Good morning, mister
(06:11):
Chief Judge Thomas, and may it plays the court.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
I'm Daniel Cablan.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
I represent the appellant, Dennis Mayhon. Identical twin brothers, Daniel
and Dennis Mayhon were born in Illinois in nineteen fifty.
After high school, they both found their way into military service.
Daniel served in the US Navy and the Coast Guard
from nineteen seventy to nineteen seventy nine, and Dennis was
(06:38):
definitely in the Florida National Guard in the early eighties.
I know that, and a lot of sources indicate that
he spent time in the Army in the seventies, including
a tour in Vietnam, but I can't find that actually
sourced to anything in particular It's just repeated a lot,
often by Dennis himself. Both brothers trained as and became
(07:02):
aircraft mechanics classified ads in Miami in nineteen seventy two
showed that brothers were making a little money on the
side teaching flying lessons. By his own account, Dennis Mahon
was already a klansman by nineteen eighty, which is the
year he joined National Alliance. William Luther Pierce's novel The
Turner Diaries was published in nineteen seventy eight, and it
(07:25):
was often sold at gun shows, which is probably where
Dennis picked up a copy in nineteen eighty. The book
was eye opening, but what he claims really radicalized him
that year was the Maurial boat Lift. For six months
in nineteen eighty, there was a mass exodus from Cuba.
(07:45):
By October, an estimated one hundred and twenty five thousand
Cubans and twenty five thousand Haitians arrived in South Florida.
In May of nineteen eighty alone, eighty six thousand Cuban
emigrants reached Florida during that chaotic month. Dennis Mahon was
one of the Florida National Guardsmen assigned to assist in
(08:07):
transporting the asylum seekers to processing centers. In an interview
with Matthew Kennard for his book Irregular Army, Maihon refers
to that time period as quote the Haitian invasion, though
in all likelihood the vast majority of the people he
interacted with that month were Cuban. Regardless, he was repulsed
(08:31):
by these people that he had been deployed to help.
An older interview, one from nineteen eighty eight, attributes this
shift in attitude to just being in Miami at all, saying, quote,
all the brown skinned, Spanish speaking people made him feel
like a stranger in his own land. He was already
(08:55):
a klansman by then, so you can't really call this
the origin story of his racism. But in his mind,
this is where things changed. Something had to be done
about this, and then he goes dark. There is not
(09:15):
a single trace of Dennis Mayhon in the early to
mid eighties. I was tearing my hair out trying to
find any evidence that he even existed after his thirtieth birthday.
I tried all my usual tricks, and I came up
empty handed. He was driving refugees to detention centers in
(09:38):
Miami in May of nineteen eighty and then nothing. He's
a ghost until he turns up in Kansas City in
nineteen eighty seven, suddenly emerging as a clan leader of
some influence. In a nineteen ninety one interview with a
reporter from the Oklahoma and Mayhan says I was underground
(09:59):
from eighty t eighty seven. He'd spent those years doing
things he can't talk about, things he can't do anymore
now that he's a leader in the movement, telling the reporter,
I don't regret doing them, but I realize I can't
do those kinds of things now. And this wasn't a
(10:20):
one off comment. It wasn't bluster and bravado for a
newspaper reporter, because I have a matching statement that he
made eighteen years later. And he didn't know he had
an audience that time. In two thousand and nine, on
a line he didn't know was tapped, Dennis Mayhon was
(10:41):
arguing with a friend, Charles Denman. Kunz, a member of
the Kuhn's family that founded the first National Bank of Omaha,
is described by an ATF agent in court documents as
quote a white supremacist and a friend of Dennis Mayhon,
and he had been providing financial assistance to the Mayhon
brothers for some time. In two thousand and nine, he
(11:04):
was concerned that a woman Dennis had grown close to
maybe lying to him. Koons was right, of course, that
woman that he was worried about worked for the FBI,
but Dennis didn't want to believe that. In a rage
on that recorded line, he said, you don't know how
(11:24):
many pipe bombs I've lit off. You don't know how
many transformers I've destroyed and put people out of power
in the eighties until I got outed in other recorded
conversations with that FBI informant that Kons had grown so
wary of Dennis Mayhon claims that he bombed an abortion clinic,
a Jewish community center, and various government offices during that
(11:48):
time period, but no concrete allegations have been made about
his involvement in any particular incident. What is consistent is
the time period from nineteen eighty to nineteen eighty seven.
He's a ghost, a ghost in a white robe. In
(12:09):
nineteen eighty seven, he appears again in the public record,
and with quite a splash. He's not just a clansman.
He's a very important clansman. Maybe whatever he did during
those years underground gave him the credibility he needed in
the movement to emerge fully formed as a public face,
(12:30):
a man of some authority and influence, because by the
time he resurfaces, he's the King Klegal for the Missouri
Nights of the Ku Klux Klan. Now, if you remember
your clan vocabulary from the Very Black episodes, a klegal
is a local clan recruitment officer, but a King klegal
(12:53):
is kind of like a clan regional manager. So he's
overseeing the recruitment f by other legals in Missouri, and
he's managing the clan's affairs in the state. In nineteen
eighty eight, the Kansas City Stars Star magazine ran a
lengthy feature story profiling j Allan Moran and exalted Cyclocks
(13:17):
with the Missouri Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Between
full page photos of a glowering clansman in his full regalia,
Veteran reporter Bill Norton wove the tale of a Platte
County cop who radicalized quickly losing his job and getting
recruited into the Klan by Dennis Mayhon In nineteen eighty seven.
(13:53):
Jay Alan Moran's first encounter with Dennis Mayhon, at a
Christian identity church in Missouri in the spring of nineteen
eighty seven is the first place I find him again
after the underground years, and he's just arrived in Missouri
to take on the role of King Kleagel after some
time organizing new clan chapters in Oklahoma and Michigan. J
(14:16):
Allen Moran was still an officer of the law when
he showed up at that church, which made a lot
of people uneasy. It was Dennis Mayhon's responsibility to feel
him out. Was this newcomer a true believer or a threat?
But the two men became close friends, bonding over their
(14:36):
shared love of the white race. Early in their friendship,
Mayhon told Miran that he'd been a suspect in bombings
in at least three different cities, though if he told
Miran which ones, Moran didn't repeat that to the reporter.
And it appears that agents from the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco and Firearms the kind of agents who might investigate
(14:59):
a serial bomber. We're keeping an eye on Mayhon because
about six months into their friendship, j Alan Moran was
called into his boss's office. Flat City Police Chief Charles Masoner,
a man apparently known as Chuggy to his friends, according
to his obituary, was sitting in his office with an
agent from the ATF. The agent had seen Moran passing
(15:24):
out Clan flyers with Dennis Mayhon, and they had an
ultimatum for him. If he wanted to keep his job
as a cop, he needed to play ball. They wanted
information about his new friend. The ATF disputes Moran's claim
that they tried to force him to plant a bomb
in Mayhan's trailer. An agent told the Kansas City Star, quote,
(15:48):
we never encourage anyone to commit a violation. That just
did not occur. Now would the ATF pressure someone to
commit a crime. I'm not saying it's out of the question,
but I don't think the ATF needed to plant a
bomb in Mayhon's trailer. There were bombs in Mayhan's trailer.
(16:12):
But Moran's story gets even stranger from there. He claims
the agents told him that the gun used to murder
Missouri State Trooper Jimmy Linegar in nineteen eighty five had
been registered to Dennis Mayhon, which is a wild thing
to say. Jimmy Linegar initiated what he thought was a
(16:34):
routine traffic stop a little south of Branson, Missouri, on
April fifteenth, nineteen eighty five. He didn't know he was
pulling over David Tate, a member of that Nazi bank
robbery gang, the Order. And David Tate was a fugitive.
A Grand Juri in Seattle had just indicted him and
(16:55):
twenty three others for conspiracy and racketeering related to the
Order's robberies. Who's also wanted in Washington State on an
older weapons charge. He felt cornered, so he opened fire
on the two state troopers with a mac ten, killing
Linegar and wounding Alan Hines before fleeing on foot. Tate
(17:15):
was missing in the Ozarks for a week before officers
spotted him drinking from a creek, hungry and confused. David
Tate is serving a life sentence in Missouri for first
degree murder. And this is the only time I've ever
seen Dennis Mayhon's name dragged into that story. Because the
thing is according to an opinion issued by the Eighth
(17:38):
Circuit Court of Appeals, the guns David Tate left behind
in that van weren't registered to Dennis Mayhon because they
weren't registered to anybody at all. I mean, that was
part of the problem. He had a van full of
unregistered guns. But what an odd claim to make, and
(18:01):
where would Moran even get an ideal like that? Had
Mayhon been telling him stories about the Order. Mayhon's on
record as having been a big fan of their work.
But I can't find a claim anywhere else that he
ever had his hands on any guns or money connected
to the Order. Did the ATF agent just make that up?
(18:26):
That seems unnecessary. I guess we'll never know, But regardless,
the claim does make for a neat little narrative device.
In that magazine article, you know in nineteen eighty seven,
the ATF is appealing to Moran's honor and loyalty to
a fellow cop. Surely you'll help us send Mayhon to jail.
(18:48):
He was involved in the murder of a state trooper,
but Moran declined the offer. He refused to assist the
agents in any way, and he soon lost his job
a Platte City police officer. And then a year later
he's a rising star in the Ku Klux Klan and
he's telling this Kansas City Star magazine writer that men
(19:11):
like David Tate, the man who murdered that state trooper,
were heroes to him. He told the reporter that he
dreamed of a perfect aryan nation where white men and
women lived under God's law alone, a place where non
whites could only visit on work fiesus, and anyone who
stepped out of line could be executed. In his vision
(19:35):
of this white utopia, there would be statues lining a
wide boulevard in the capitol, statues of men who had
killed in service of the Ethno State, men like David Tate.
After becoming fast friends in nineteen eighty seven, j Allen
Moran and Dennis Mahon got down to business clan business,
(19:59):
and by January nineteen eighty eight, they were trying to
get on TV. Tom Metzger's Race and Reason program had
been on the air in cities all over the country
for a few years by then, with city after city.
But grudgingly taking their lawyer's advice, if the Klan wants
to be on public Access TV, you have to let them,
(20:23):
and it was Metzger's Race and Reason program that Moran
and Maehon were hoping to air in Kansas City. The
city initially rebuffed them by making up new rules. When
the men arrived at the studio with a VHS tape
of Metzger's show, they were told that public access programming
had to actually be produced in the studio by local residents.
(20:44):
They couldn't broadcast pre recorded content, and if they wanted
to use the studio to record a show, they'd have
to receive training from station employees on how to properly
use all the equipment. And you know, we just don't
actually have any openings for training right now, so they're stalling.
(21:07):
No data is scheduled for this training, and they can't
make the show until they get the training. You can
make the show, but you have to get the training.
And it's just not time. They're just kicking the can
down the road, buying time. While the Kansas City City
Council meets with lawyers to try to figure out how
to stop this. The conflict over what could be aired
(21:41):
on TV in Kansas City caught the attention of Harry Jones,
a journalism instructor at the University of Kansas. He thought
it would be a valuable learning opportunity for his students
to hear from Moran and Mayhon, saying it would be
a lesson in challenging interviewing. Campus protests forced him to
(22:01):
rescind the invitation to appear on campus. The class was rescheduled.
Twenty two journalism students were shuttled to an empty airplane
hangar at a nearby regional airport for a class that
looked more like a press conference. The two clansmen held court,
expounding on their philosophies on race mixing and the evil
(22:24):
influence exerted by Jewish people, and then they took questions
from the students afterward. One student said the men's views
were quote unrealistic and laughable, and noted that they avoided
answering certain questions, refusing to give any hard answers on
the actual size of their organization or exactly how they
(22:47):
intended to remove black and Jewish people from the land
they would use for their ethno state. Another student said
the men's remarks were gross and obscene and completely unprintable,
particularly on the subject of Jews. All in all, the
instructor viewed the event as a success, telling the paper
(23:10):
that about a third of the students engaged in the
interview practice and were vigorous and polite but persistent. I'm
sure the decision to hold the class in the end
had nothing to do with the clan's threats against the
university after the invitation was originally withdrawn. Moran's threats to
sue over a canceled class probably didn't have them shaking
(23:32):
in their boots, but the promise of impending clan rallies
on campus was unappealing, and it wasn't just the University
of Kansas that he was threatening with lawsuits and clan marches.
By the summer of nineteen eighty eight, Kansas City had
voted to shut down their entire public access television station
(23:53):
rather than air the clan's TV show. The Clan's been
responded by filing suit with the backing of the ACLU,
and soon after that suit was filed, the debate about
what belongs on TV reached Weekday afternoon's most watched TV show.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
In Kansas City. Recently, a civic battle erupted when council
members voted to eliminate the public access channel rather than
to allow the Klan to broadcast. Dennis Mayan is a
KKK official who wanted to be host of the Klansas
City cable program, which would feature, among other things, footage
from KKK rallies and cross burnings, and, in Dennis's own words,
(24:35):
an occasional safari through the black parts of Kansas City.
Defending Gennis and other clan members. Writes to free and
equal opportunity to public access cable stations is American Civil
Liberties attorney John Powell.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
The September first, nineteen eighty eight episode of The Oprah
Winfrey Show featured Tom Metzker, Dennis Mayhon, and Dennis's ACLU
attorney squaring off again, C. T. Vivian, a man that
Martin Luther King Junior himself once called the greatest preacher
to ever live, Reverend Emmanuel Cleaver, a Kansas City City
(25:10):
councilman who was fighting to keep Mayhon off the air,
and an Orthodox Rabbi. The show was a bit of
a circus, but that's obviously what they were going for.
Members of the John Brown Anti Clan Committee had packed
the audience and managed to get several comments in as
Oprah roamed the studio soliciting questions.
Speaker 4 (25:33):
John Brown Anti Clan committeem proud of it. I'd like
to ask this question, where does free speech end and
the freedoms organized for murder begin. Where do we draw
the line. I draw the line with Tom Metzer and
the klu Klux Klan because behind a man in the
three piece six is another man in a paramilitary uniform,
and those people are out there killing people.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
That audience member was Tray more right than she could
have known. Just six weeks after that episode aired, an
Ethiopian college student nam Mulagetta Sarah was beaten to death
in Portland, Oregon by three skinheads. With help from the
Southern Poverty Law Center, Mullageda's family successfully sued Tom Metzger
(26:18):
for twelve million dollars. Those murderers were exactly what the
opera audience member predicted, a paramilitary force behind a man
in a three piece suit. They were members of White
Arian resistance who had been incited to kill by Metzger's propaganda.
Maihon made a whole week out of his trip to
(26:39):
Chicago to appear on OPRAH. The episode was filmed on
a Thursday, but he spent the whole week in the city.
On Sunday, August twenty eighth, he was a headline speaker
at a White Pride rally in Chicago's Marquette Park. Five
hundred people turned up to hear speeches from klansmen. The
(27:00):
events organizers, a clan chapter in Illinois, claimed they'd had
no idea there was another event in Marquette Park that day.
Marquette Park is over three hundred acres, and clansmen aren't
known for their courtesy or flawless event planning, so maybe
they hadn't done it on purpose. But that Sunday afternoon
(27:22):
they were sharing the park with several hundred people who
had marched over together from a nearby church. They were
commemorating the August nineteen sixty six Marquette Park March, led
by doctor Martin Luther King, Junior. And history may not repeat,
but it often does rhyme. That march in nineteen sixty
six was confronted by thousands of angry white people, some
(27:47):
with Confederate flags and swastika banners, and they pelted the
marchers with objects, hitting doctor King himself in the head
with a rock. And in nineteen eighty eight, the city
of Chicago sent eight hundred police officers to keep these
two events separate. Officers on horseback blocked a contingent of
(28:08):
klansmen who broke off from the main event to try
to antagonize the churchgoers. Officers had to form a human
barricade to hold back the clansmen as the other rally dispersed.
Newspaper reports say there were no injuries, but they also
report that a young black man who appeared to have
(28:29):
no idea that either event was happening in the park
that day had to be rescued by officers after klansmen
surrounded him, pelting him with rocks. At least a dozen
klansmen were arrested for disorderly conduct and one for punching
a photographer. But Dennis Mayhon's trip to Chicago was a success.
(28:50):
He gave a speech to a crowd of hundreds of supporters,
and he appeared on national television. Everybody saw him, everybody
including his boss.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
If I may lose my job for being on the
show today, Oprah's.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
Studio audience cheered when Mayhun said he may end up
losing his job for appearing on the show. In the
context of the show, he's trying to make a point
about how he's suffering for his political views, how he's
constantly being punished for exercising his right to free speech.
He probably didn't actually think he was going to lose
(29:33):
his job. His employer, trans World Airlines, said they'd known
about his clan activities for some time. He's not a
subtle guy. He was fired shortly after appearing on the
Oprah Winfrey Show, but it wasn't because they learned something
new about their aircraft mechanic. It was because he kept
(29:53):
missing work. His trip to Chicago in September was far
from the only thing take him away from his job
at the Kansas City International Airport that year. In February,
he took a week off to go to Arkansas. Klansmen
and neo Nazis from around the country were demonstrating outside
the federal courthouse in Fort Smith as the trial began
(30:15):
for the fourteen white supremacist leaders accused of seditious conspiracy.
The very first Aryan Fest, a kind of Nazi woodstock
that Tom Metzger and his son John came up with,
was held that summer. A nineteen eighty eight issue of
Metzger's White Arian Resistance newsletter says that over one hundred
Nazis and skinheads from around the country spent three days
(30:39):
in June on a farm in Oklahoma listening to white
power music. He describes a band called the Tulsa Midtown
boot Boys as quote one of the hottest white power
bands this side of Screwdriver. A month later, in July,
Mayhon took a trip out to Idaho to give a
(30:59):
speech at the air In World Congress, and even when
he wasn't traveling, he was busy. In nineteen eighty eight,
Mayhon had a falling out with Tom rob. Rob was
the national director of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
He didn't like being called an imperial wizard. I guess
he thought that sounded silly, but I can't imagine why.
(31:23):
But he was the national director and Mayhon was a
king Klegel in the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
But as the sedition trial got underway at Fort Smith,
Tom Rob thought it would be prudent for the clan
to publicly stand by only those defendants who he felt
had a valid First Amendment defense. He didn't want to
(31:45):
be seen in public defending out and out terrorism. That'd
be bad for business. Dennis Mayhon, on the other hand,
was offering his full throated support, not only for all
of the defendants in the Fort Smith trial, but for
all of the members of the order. He publicly praised
Robert Matthews, the gang's leader, who had died in an
(32:07):
armed standoff with the FBI, calling him a martyr. And
it was this disagreement about how much you can say
out loud in public that you love terrorism that caused
Dennis Mahon to split with the Knights of the Ku
Klux Klan, and in nineteen eighty eight he formed his
(32:27):
own organization, calling it the White Knights of the Ku
Klux Klan. It doesn't look like Dennis Mayhon ever, got
a new full time job after getting let go in
the fall of nineteen eighty eight, but that just freed
him up to spend more time organizing. In nineteen eighty nine,
he ran for Aldermen in Ward I of the Kansas
(32:49):
City suburb of Northmore. His candidate profile on the local
newspaper says only he does automotive work on a contract basis.
He could not be reached for additional information. Fellow clansman
Edward Eugene Stephens the Fourth was running for Aldermen and
Northmore's third Ward Stephen's wife Cynthia, ran for collector and
(33:14):
his father, Edward Eugene Stephens the third, was running unopposed
to keep his seat as Northmore's municipal judge. Stephens's wife
and father told the Kansas City Star that they were
not members of the clan, although no one denied that
Edward Stephens fourth was deeply involved in the clan. Two
(33:36):
years later, after Rodney King was beaten by LAPD officers,
Stephens and Mayhon were responsible for mailing clan recruitment flyers
to police departments all over Los Angeles in the midst
of what appeared to have been a fairly lackluster campaign
for Aldermen. In nineteen eighty nine, Dennis Mayhon was still
(33:57):
fighting the Kansas City City Council over his public access
TV show. The city hoped to get his lawsuit dismissed,
but after a federal judge denied their motion and set
a trial date for September, they decided to just settle instead.
That summer, the city council voted to reinstate the public
(34:17):
access channel. They signed a settlement agreement with the Klansmen
for ninety seven thousand dollars. Maehon would go on to
press his luck trying to get Tom Metzger's Race and
Reason program on other public access channels in the region,
threatening to bring in white supremacist leaders like Tom Metzker
himself and Aran Nation's leader Richard Butler, to stage protests
(34:40):
outside the studios if they didn't capitulate, and on April third,
nineteen ninety, the first and only episode of his Very
own show aired in Kansas City. The episode is not
quite fifteen minutes long. In the open, frames are garbled,
(35:02):
there's colored bars sort of flickering over the clansmen, and
the audio is choppy, but it opens on a klansman
in a red robe with his face entirely covered by
a red hood, and he greets the viewer with this message, city.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
By city, we're going where we want, certain what we want.
Nobody no water is born with Starflus.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Our country.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
He was born out of bloodshed, and from that bloodshed
was the birth of the Ku Klux Klan.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
After his introduction, ending with a shout of white power
punctuated by a Hitler salute, the klansmen in red sort
of shuffles out of frame and Dennis Mahon walks in.
He's wearing a bright teal Clan robe with a red
kate but no hood. What follows is a rambling complaint
(36:06):
about how unfair the process has been to get the
show on the air, and then he lays out a
plan for what the show will be. Episodes will feature
footage from clan rallies, and they'll have guests with differing perspectives,
and he promises to feature what he calls quote racial comedians,
because quote, we all like good racial jokes. I don't
(36:31):
know who we is. Dennis. He hoped to have episodes
featuring interviews with his friends, people like Tom Metzger and
Arian Nation's leader Richard Butler, but he also wanted to
feature people with other ideas, people like Lewis Ferricon. But
he never did book any guests. The only episode of
(36:52):
Klansas City Cable was taped at the American Cablevision studio
on Main Street in downtown Kansas City, few days before
it aired. While Mahon was recording, his supporters waited outside
standing guard. There was no demonstration, there was no protests.
The public outcry was over it been going on for years.
(37:16):
Nobody showed up. I doubt anyone had any particular idea
that the program was even being recorded. In an office
building on a Thursday afternoon, but one of the two
dozen clansmen standing on main Street waiting for Denis to
come out, pulled a gun on a black pedestrian, prompting
nine to one one calls. In the end, nineteen klansmen
(37:39):
were taken into custody in the fifteen minutes it took
Dennis to record the episode. Most of them were released
without charges. The incident prompted American Cable Vision to announce
a plan to update their rules for using the studio.
They were hoping to ban guns on the premises and
require all visitors to sign in. There's no follow up
(38:02):
I can find on whether they ended up implementing any
changes to the rules. But it didn't matter. Dennis got
what he wanted. He didn't actually want the responsibility of
creating a weekly television program. He was a man of action,
not words. Now, Tom Metzker was a committed propagandist, but
(38:24):
Dennis Mayhon just wanted to force everyone to submit to
the Clan, and now that they had, he didn't have
to make any more episodes. He proved his point. I
had every intention of getting all the way through the
early nineties in this first episode, but I have to
confess that I got in a little too deep researching
(38:45):
the latter half of the story when I should have
been writing the first half. And it's now very late
at night, and I need to deliver this recording to
Rory before he wakes up. Dennis Mayhon has only just
begun to cause problems at this point, so you'll have
to come back next week to hear about the Klansman's
(39:06):
attempt to frighten black children with a bad Mister Rogers impression,
his efforts to start clan chapters in Germany in the
time he got deported from Canada, the conspiracy theories linking
him to the Oklahoma City bombing, and the exotic dancer
who spent four years gaining his trust, secretly recording him
(39:26):
until he said enough to tie him to a mail
bomb in Arizona. And there's also a very weird guy
with a compound in the Ozarks. He hides his guns
in the many natural caves around his property. Poo Little
(39:49):
Guys as a production at Coolzone Media and iHeartRadio. It's research,
written and recorded by me, Molly Conger. Our executive producers
are Sophie Littterman, and Robert Evans. The show is edited
by the wildly talented Rory Gagan. The theme music was
composed by Brad Dickert. You can email me at Weird
Little Guys podcast at gmail dot com. Unless it is
(40:11):
about how I pronounced the name of the city. I'll
definitely read your email, but I poorly won't answer it.
It's nothing personal. You can exchange conspiracy theories about the
show with other listeners on the Weird Little Guys separate it.
Just don't post anything that's going to make you one
of my Weird Little Guys
Cool Zone media. As the sun began to set on
a cool fall evening in late September nineteen ninety one,
TV reporter Harold Spiegel was waiting nervously at the edge
of the woods outside of a small town about an
hour south of the nation's capital. The reporter was waiting
(00:23):
for more information about their destination. That evening. He'd received
a tip about an event and managed to secure a
meeting with some of the men who would be attending.
They wouldn't tell him exactly where they were going, but
after a short discussion in a parking lot, they allowed
him to follow along. He drove deeper and deeper into
(00:45):
the countryside for half an hour before the men parked
at the edge of the forest and got out. More
men arrived. Some were wearing white robes and pointed hoods,
the traditional garb of members of the ku Klux. Others
wore motorcycle jackets with SS patches on them and unfrilled
(01:06):
flags and banners with swastivas. And then he followed them
into the woods. The reporter, alone in the woods with
a few dozen Nazis and clansmen, knew what these men
were capable of. A nearby town was in the throes
of a week long pogrom, with gangs of young Neo
Nazis laying siege to apartment buildings that were home to
(01:28):
Vietnamese and Mozambique immigrants. In a clearing, the men surrounded
a large wooden cross as it burned. A man in
a leather jacket adorned with SS ruins stood in the
center of the circle and shouted, seeghaile I come to
you from America. The cross was burning an hour south
(01:52):
of the nation's capital, but the capitol in question was Berlin, Missouri.
Clansmen Dennis Mahon was at the height of his career
as a professional racist. He had formed his own clan group,
the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, and he
was Tom Metzker's right hand man in the White Aryan Resistance.
(02:13):
His trip to Germany promised to strengthen international ties between
hate groups in Europe and the United States. From the
time he joined the Klan in nineteen eighty, his life
story is inextricably intertwined with the history of the white
power movement. He made summer time visits to the Aryan
Nation's compound in Idaho. He ran paramilitary training drills on
(02:34):
a compound in Missouri. He was hauled into court to
testifying grand jury proceedings about the Oklahoma City bombing after
a former girlfriend accused him of helping plan the attack,
and by the time the FBI hired an exotic dancer
to seduce him into confessing to mailing a pipe bomb
to a public library in Scottsdale, Arizona, he was an
(02:55):
old man that the movement had mostly forgotten. I'm Molly Conger.
This it's weird, little guys. Last week, I said, I
(03:24):
wasn't sure if Dennis Mahon ever did try his hand
at producing his own public access television program. He was
just a brief side character and a larger story about
Tom Metzger, a klansman and the founder of the white
supremacist group White Arean Resistance. Metzger had received a generous
gift in nineteen eighty four three hundred thousand dollars in
(03:47):
cash from the members of the Order proceeds from their
armored car robbery earlier that year, and almost immediately after
Metzger got this massive cash and fusion, he set to
work producing a virulin racist television show called Race and Reason.
His goal was to get his racist propaganda into the
(04:07):
home of every working class white man in America by
way of public access TV. Across the country, Metzger supporters
dutifully ordered VHS tapes of the show and applied to
broadcast it on their own local channels. Others took up
the cause and produced their own original versions based on
Metzger's idea. One of the men who did both was
(04:30):
a klansman in Missouri named Dennis Mahon. I didn't set
out to write about Dennis this week. I had something
else in mind, but I asked myself a question last week.
Did Dennis ever actually produce a show called Clansis City Cable.
(04:51):
We didn't have time last week for another tangent to
find out about this. I was following Tom Metzger and
the Stolen money, but I just can't leave an itch
like that unscratched. And it turns out he did and
I found it. A single fifteen minute episode of Klansas
(05:14):
City Cable aired in Kansas City, Missouri, on April third,
nineteen ninety.
Speaker 2 (05:22):
We're going to discuss Klansas City Cable, which took two
and a half years, a sweat blood persecution, getting five
more jobs, getting harassed by fence, bomb shot at, assaulted
death threats constantly. Well we've succeeded.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
Just a quick note on pronunciation. Dennis's last name, maho
n can be pronounced a variety of ways. It's a
common enough name, and I'm sure a lot of people
say it a lot different ways. I've chosen the pronunciation
used by his attorney in a twenty fifteen oral argument
before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Good morning, mister
(06:11):
Chief Judge Thomas, and may it plays the court.
Speaker 3 (06:13):
I'm Daniel Cablan.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
I represent the appellant, Dennis Mayhon. Identical twin brothers, Daniel
and Dennis Mayhon were born in Illinois in nineteen fifty.
After high school, they both found their way into military service.
Daniel served in the US Navy and the Coast Guard
from nineteen seventy to nineteen seventy nine, and Dennis was
(06:38):
definitely in the Florida National Guard in the early eighties.
I know that, and a lot of sources indicate that
he spent time in the Army in the seventies, including
a tour in Vietnam, but I can't find that actually
sourced to anything in particular It's just repeated a lot,
often by Dennis himself. Both brothers trained as and became
(07:02):
aircraft mechanics classified ads in Miami in nineteen seventy two
showed that brothers were making a little money on the
side teaching flying lessons. By his own account, Dennis Mahon
was already a klansman by nineteen eighty, which is the
year he joined National Alliance. William Luther Pierce's novel The
Turner Diaries was published in nineteen seventy eight, and it
(07:25):
was often sold at gun shows, which is probably where
Dennis picked up a copy in nineteen eighty. The book
was eye opening, but what he claims really radicalized him
that year was the Maurial boat Lift. For six months
in nineteen eighty, there was a mass exodus from Cuba.
(07:45):
By October, an estimated one hundred and twenty five thousand
Cubans and twenty five thousand Haitians arrived in South Florida.
In May of nineteen eighty alone, eighty six thousand Cuban
emigrants reached Florida during that chaotic month. Dennis Mahon was
one of the Florida National Guardsmen assigned to assist in
(08:07):
transporting the asylum seekers to processing centers. In an interview
with Matthew Kennard for his book Irregular Army, Maihon refers
to that time period as quote the Haitian invasion, though
in all likelihood the vast majority of the people he
interacted with that month were Cuban. Regardless, he was repulsed
(08:31):
by these people that he had been deployed to help.
An older interview, one from nineteen eighty eight, attributes this
shift in attitude to just being in Miami at all, saying, quote,
all the brown skinned, Spanish speaking people made him feel
like a stranger in his own land. He was already
(08:55):
a klansman by then, so you can't really call this
the origin story of his racism. But in his mind,
this is where things changed. Something had to be done
about this, and then he goes dark. There is not
(09:15):
a single trace of Dennis Mayhon in the early to
mid eighties. I was tearing my hair out trying to
find any evidence that he even existed after his thirtieth birthday.
I tried all my usual tricks, and I came up
empty handed. He was driving refugees to detention centers in
(09:38):
Miami in May of nineteen eighty and then nothing. He's
a ghost until he turns up in Kansas City in
nineteen eighty seven, suddenly emerging as a clan leader of
some influence. In a nineteen ninety one interview with a
reporter from the Oklahoma and Mayhan says I was underground
(09:59):
from eighty t eighty seven. He'd spent those years doing
things he can't talk about, things he can't do anymore
now that he's a leader in the movement, telling the reporter,
I don't regret doing them, but I realize I can't
do those kinds of things now. And this wasn't a
(10:20):
one off comment. It wasn't bluster and bravado for a
newspaper reporter, because I have a matching statement that he
made eighteen years later. And he didn't know he had
an audience that time. In two thousand and nine, on
a line he didn't know was tapped, Dennis Mayhon was
(10:41):
arguing with a friend, Charles Denman. Kunz, a member of
the Kuhn's family that founded the first National Bank of Omaha,
is described by an ATF agent in court documents as
quote a white supremacist and a friend of Dennis Mayhon,
and he had been providing financial assistance to the Mayhon
brothers for some time. In two thousand and nine, he
(11:04):
was concerned that a woman Dennis had grown close to
maybe lying to him. Koons was right, of course, that
woman that he was worried about worked for the FBI,
but Dennis didn't want to believe that. In a rage
on that recorded line, he said, you don't know how
(11:24):
many pipe bombs I've lit off. You don't know how
many transformers I've destroyed and put people out of power
in the eighties until I got outed in other recorded
conversations with that FBI informant that Kons had grown so
wary of Dennis Mayhon claims that he bombed an abortion clinic,
a Jewish community center, and various government offices during that
(11:48):
time period, but no concrete allegations have been made about
his involvement in any particular incident. What is consistent is
the time period from nineteen eighty to nineteen eighty seven.
He's a ghost, a ghost in a white robe. In
(12:09):
nineteen eighty seven, he appears again in the public record,
and with quite a splash. He's not just a clansman.
He's a very important clansman. Maybe whatever he did during
those years underground gave him the credibility he needed in
the movement to emerge fully formed as a public face,
(12:30):
a man of some authority and influence, because by the
time he resurfaces, he's the King Klegal for the Missouri
Nights of the Ku Klux Klan. Now, if you remember
your clan vocabulary from the Very Black episodes, a klegal
is a local clan recruitment officer, but a King klegal
(12:53):
is kind of like a clan regional manager. So he's
overseeing the recruitment f by other legals in Missouri, and
he's managing the clan's affairs in the state. In nineteen
eighty eight, the Kansas City Stars Star magazine ran a
lengthy feature story profiling j Allan Moran and exalted Cyclocks
(13:17):
with the Missouri Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Between
full page photos of a glowering clansman in his full regalia,
Veteran reporter Bill Norton wove the tale of a Platte
County cop who radicalized quickly losing his job and getting
recruited into the Klan by Dennis Mayhon In nineteen eighty seven.
(13:53):
Jay Alan Moran's first encounter with Dennis Mayhon, at a
Christian identity church in Missouri in the spring of nineteen
eighty seven is the first place I find him again
after the underground years, and he's just arrived in Missouri
to take on the role of King Kleagel after some
time organizing new clan chapters in Oklahoma and Michigan. J
(14:16):
Allen Moran was still an officer of the law when
he showed up at that church, which made a lot
of people uneasy. It was Dennis Mayhon's responsibility to feel
him out. Was this newcomer a true believer or a threat?
But the two men became close friends, bonding over their
(14:36):
shared love of the white race. Early in their friendship,
Mayhon told Miran that he'd been a suspect in bombings
in at least three different cities, though if he told
Miran which ones, Moran didn't repeat that to the reporter.
And it appears that agents from the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco and Firearms the kind of agents who might investigate
(14:59):
a serial bomber. We're keeping an eye on Mayhon because
about six months into their friendship, j Alan Moran was
called into his boss's office. Flat City Police Chief Charles Masoner,
a man apparently known as Chuggy to his friends, according
to his obituary, was sitting in his office with an
agent from the ATF. The agent had seen Moran passing
(15:24):
out Clan flyers with Dennis Mayhon, and they had an
ultimatum for him. If he wanted to keep his job
as a cop, he needed to play ball. They wanted
information about his new friend. The ATF disputes Moran's claim
that they tried to force him to plant a bomb
in Mayhan's trailer. An agent told the Kansas City Star, quote,
(15:48):
we never encourage anyone to commit a violation. That just
did not occur. Now would the ATF pressure someone to
commit a crime. I'm not saying it's out of the question,
but I don't think the ATF needed to plant a
bomb in Mayhon's trailer. There were bombs in Mayhan's trailer.
(16:12):
But Moran's story gets even stranger from there. He claims
the agents told him that the gun used to murder
Missouri State Trooper Jimmy Linegar in nineteen eighty five had
been registered to Dennis Mayhon, which is a wild thing
to say. Jimmy Linegar initiated what he thought was a
(16:34):
routine traffic stop a little south of Branson, Missouri, on
April fifteenth, nineteen eighty five. He didn't know he was
pulling over David Tate, a member of that Nazi bank
robbery gang, the Order. And David Tate was a fugitive.
A Grand Juri in Seattle had just indicted him and
(16:55):
twenty three others for conspiracy and racketeering related to the
Order's robberies. Who's also wanted in Washington State on an
older weapons charge. He felt cornered, so he opened fire
on the two state troopers with a mac ten, killing
Linegar and wounding Alan Hines before fleeing on foot. Tate
(17:15):
was missing in the Ozarks for a week before officers
spotted him drinking from a creek, hungry and confused. David
Tate is serving a life sentence in Missouri for first
degree murder. And this is the only time I've ever
seen Dennis Mayhon's name dragged into that story. Because the
thing is according to an opinion issued by the Eighth
(17:38):
Circuit Court of Appeals, the guns David Tate left behind
in that van weren't registered to Dennis Mayhon because they
weren't registered to anybody at all. I mean, that was
part of the problem. He had a van full of
unregistered guns. But what an odd claim to make, and
(18:01):
where would Moran even get an ideal like that? Had
Mayhon been telling him stories about the Order. Mayhon's on
record as having been a big fan of their work.
But I can't find a claim anywhere else that he
ever had his hands on any guns or money connected
to the Order. Did the ATF agent just make that up?
(18:26):
That seems unnecessary. I guess we'll never know, But regardless,
the claim does make for a neat little narrative device.
In that magazine article, you know in nineteen eighty seven,
the ATF is appealing to Moran's honor and loyalty to
a fellow cop. Surely you'll help us send Mayhon to jail.
(18:48):
He was involved in the murder of a state trooper,
but Moran declined the offer. He refused to assist the
agents in any way, and he soon lost his job
a Platte City police officer. And then a year later
he's a rising star in the Ku Klux Klan and
he's telling this Kansas City Star magazine writer that men
(19:11):
like David Tate, the man who murdered that state trooper,
were heroes to him. He told the reporter that he
dreamed of a perfect aryan nation where white men and
women lived under God's law alone, a place where non
whites could only visit on work fiesus, and anyone who
stepped out of line could be executed. In his vision
(19:35):
of this white utopia, there would be statues lining a
wide boulevard in the capitol, statues of men who had
killed in service of the Ethno State, men like David Tate.
After becoming fast friends in nineteen eighty seven, j Allen
Moran and Dennis Mahon got down to business clan business,
(19:59):
and by January nineteen eighty eight, they were trying to
get on TV. Tom Metzger's Race and Reason program had
been on the air in cities all over the country
for a few years by then, with city after city.
But grudgingly taking their lawyer's advice, if the Klan wants
to be on public Access TV, you have to let them,
(20:23):
and it was Metzger's Race and Reason program that Moran
and Maehon were hoping to air in Kansas City. The
city initially rebuffed them by making up new rules. When
the men arrived at the studio with a VHS tape
of Metzger's show, they were told that public access programming
had to actually be produced in the studio by local residents.
(20:44):
They couldn't broadcast pre recorded content, and if they wanted
to use the studio to record a show, they'd have
to receive training from station employees on how to properly
use all the equipment. And you know, we just don't
actually have any openings for training right now, so they're stalling.
(21:07):
No data is scheduled for this training, and they can't
make the show until they get the training. You can
make the show, but you have to get the training.
And it's just not time. They're just kicking the can
down the road, buying time. While the Kansas City City
Council meets with lawyers to try to figure out how
to stop this. The conflict over what could be aired
(21:41):
on TV in Kansas City caught the attention of Harry Jones,
a journalism instructor at the University of Kansas. He thought
it would be a valuable learning opportunity for his students
to hear from Moran and Mayhon, saying it would be
a lesson in challenging interviewing. Campus protests forced him to
(22:01):
rescind the invitation to appear on campus. The class was rescheduled.
Twenty two journalism students were shuttled to an empty airplane
hangar at a nearby regional airport for a class that
looked more like a press conference. The two clansmen held court,
expounding on their philosophies on race mixing and the evil
(22:24):
influence exerted by Jewish people, and then they took questions
from the students afterward. One student said the men's views
were quote unrealistic and laughable, and noted that they avoided
answering certain questions, refusing to give any hard answers on
the actual size of their organization or exactly how they
(22:47):
intended to remove black and Jewish people from the land
they would use for their ethno state. Another student said
the men's remarks were gross and obscene and completely unprintable,
particularly on the subject of Jews. All in all, the
instructor viewed the event as a success, telling the paper
(23:10):
that about a third of the students engaged in the
interview practice and were vigorous and polite but persistent. I'm
sure the decision to hold the class in the end
had nothing to do with the clan's threats against the
university after the invitation was originally withdrawn. Moran's threats to
sue over a canceled class probably didn't have them shaking
(23:32):
in their boots, but the promise of impending clan rallies
on campus was unappealing, and it wasn't just the University
of Kansas that he was threatening with lawsuits and clan marches.
By the summer of nineteen eighty eight, Kansas City had
voted to shut down their entire public access television station
(23:53):
rather than air the clan's TV show. The Clan's been
responded by filing suit with the backing of the ACLU,
and soon after that suit was filed, the debate about
what belongs on TV reached Weekday afternoon's most watched TV show.
Speaker 3 (24:14):
In Kansas City. Recently, a civic battle erupted when council
members voted to eliminate the public access channel rather than
to allow the Klan to broadcast. Dennis Mayan is a
KKK official who wanted to be host of the Klansas
City cable program, which would feature, among other things, footage
from KKK rallies and cross burnings, and, in Dennis's own words,
(24:35):
an occasional safari through the black parts of Kansas City.
Defending Gennis and other clan members. Writes to free and
equal opportunity to public access cable stations is American Civil
Liberties attorney John Powell.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
The September first, nineteen eighty eight episode of The Oprah
Winfrey Show featured Tom Metzker, Dennis Mayhon, and Dennis's ACLU
attorney squaring off again, C. T. Vivian, a man that
Martin Luther King Junior himself once called the greatest preacher
to ever live, Reverend Emmanuel Cleaver, a Kansas City City
(25:10):
councilman who was fighting to keep Mayhon off the air,
and an Orthodox Rabbi. The show was a bit of
a circus, but that's obviously what they were going for.
Members of the John Brown Anti Clan Committee had packed
the audience and managed to get several comments in as
Oprah roamed the studio soliciting questions.
Speaker 4 (25:33):
John Brown Anti Clan committeem proud of it. I'd like
to ask this question, where does free speech end and
the freedoms organized for murder begin. Where do we draw
the line. I draw the line with Tom Metzer and
the klu Klux Klan because behind a man in the
three piece six is another man in a paramilitary uniform,
and those people are out there killing people.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
That audience member was Tray more right than she could
have known. Just six weeks after that episode aired, an
Ethiopian college student nam Mulagetta Sarah was beaten to death
in Portland, Oregon by three skinheads. With help from the
Southern Poverty Law Center, Mullageda's family successfully sued Tom Metzger
(26:18):
for twelve million dollars. Those murderers were exactly what the
opera audience member predicted, a paramilitary force behind a man
in a three piece suit. They were members of White
Arian resistance who had been incited to kill by Metzger's propaganda.
Maihon made a whole week out of his trip to
(26:39):
Chicago to appear on OPRAH. The episode was filmed on
a Thursday, but he spent the whole week in the city.
On Sunday, August twenty eighth, he was a headline speaker
at a White Pride rally in Chicago's Marquette Park. Five
hundred people turned up to hear speeches from klansmen. The
(27:00):
events organizers, a clan chapter in Illinois, claimed they'd had
no idea there was another event in Marquette Park that day.
Marquette Park is over three hundred acres, and clansmen aren't
known for their courtesy or flawless event planning, so maybe
they hadn't done it on purpose. But that Sunday afternoon
(27:22):
they were sharing the park with several hundred people who
had marched over together from a nearby church. They were
commemorating the August nineteen sixty six Marquette Park March, led
by doctor Martin Luther King, Junior. And history may not repeat,
but it often does rhyme. That march in nineteen sixty
six was confronted by thousands of angry white people, some
(27:47):
with Confederate flags and swastika banners, and they pelted the
marchers with objects, hitting doctor King himself in the head
with a rock. And in nineteen eighty eight, the city
of Chicago sent eight hundred police officers to keep these
two events separate. Officers on horseback blocked a contingent of
(28:08):
klansmen who broke off from the main event to try
to antagonize the churchgoers. Officers had to form a human
barricade to hold back the clansmen as the other rally dispersed.
Newspaper reports say there were no injuries, but they also
report that a young black man who appeared to have
(28:29):
no idea that either event was happening in the park
that day had to be rescued by officers after klansmen
surrounded him, pelting him with rocks. At least a dozen
klansmen were arrested for disorderly conduct and one for punching
a photographer. But Dennis Mayhon's trip to Chicago was a success.
(28:50):
He gave a speech to a crowd of hundreds of supporters,
and he appeared on national television. Everybody saw him, everybody
including his boss.
Speaker 2 (29:03):
If I may lose my job for being on the
show today, Oprah's.
Speaker 1 (29:12):
Studio audience cheered when Mayhun said he may end up
losing his job for appearing on the show. In the
context of the show, he's trying to make a point
about how he's suffering for his political views, how he's
constantly being punished for exercising his right to free speech.
He probably didn't actually think he was going to lose
(29:33):
his job. His employer, trans World Airlines, said they'd known
about his clan activities for some time. He's not a
subtle guy. He was fired shortly after appearing on the
Oprah Winfrey Show, but it wasn't because they learned something
new about their aircraft mechanic. It was because he kept
(29:53):
missing work. His trip to Chicago in September was far
from the only thing take him away from his job
at the Kansas City International Airport that year. In February,
he took a week off to go to Arkansas. Klansmen
and neo Nazis from around the country were demonstrating outside
the federal courthouse in Fort Smith as the trial began
(30:15):
for the fourteen white supremacist leaders accused of seditious conspiracy.
The very first Aryan Fest, a kind of Nazi woodstock
that Tom Metzger and his son John came up with,
was held that summer. A nineteen eighty eight issue of
Metzger's White Arian Resistance newsletter says that over one hundred
Nazis and skinheads from around the country spent three days
(30:39):
in June on a farm in Oklahoma listening to white
power music. He describes a band called the Tulsa Midtown
boot Boys as quote one of the hottest white power
bands this side of Screwdriver. A month later, in July,
Mayhon took a trip out to Idaho to give a
(30:59):
speech at the air In World Congress, and even when
he wasn't traveling, he was busy. In nineteen eighty eight,
Mayhon had a falling out with Tom rob. Rob was
the national director of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
He didn't like being called an imperial wizard. I guess
he thought that sounded silly, but I can't imagine why.
(31:23):
But he was the national director and Mayhon was a
king Klegel in the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
But as the sedition trial got underway at Fort Smith,
Tom Rob thought it would be prudent for the clan
to publicly stand by only those defendants who he felt
had a valid First Amendment defense. He didn't want to
(31:45):
be seen in public defending out and out terrorism. That'd
be bad for business. Dennis Mayhon, on the other hand,
was offering his full throated support, not only for all
of the defendants in the Fort Smith trial, but for
all of the members of the order. He publicly praised
Robert Matthews, the gang's leader, who had died in an
(32:07):
armed standoff with the FBI, calling him a martyr. And
it was this disagreement about how much you can say
out loud in public that you love terrorism that caused
Dennis Mahon to split with the Knights of the Ku
Klux Klan, and in nineteen eighty eight he formed his
(32:27):
own organization, calling it the White Knights of the Ku
Klux Klan. It doesn't look like Dennis Mayhon ever, got
a new full time job after getting let go in
the fall of nineteen eighty eight, but that just freed
him up to spend more time organizing. In nineteen eighty nine,
he ran for Aldermen in Ward I of the Kansas
(32:49):
City suburb of Northmore. His candidate profile on the local
newspaper says only he does automotive work on a contract basis.
He could not be reached for additional information. Fellow clansman
Edward Eugene Stephens the Fourth was running for Aldermen and
Northmore's third Ward Stephen's wife Cynthia, ran for collector and
(33:14):
his father, Edward Eugene Stephens the third, was running unopposed
to keep his seat as Northmore's municipal judge. Stephens's wife
and father told the Kansas City Star that they were
not members of the clan, although no one denied that
Edward Stephens fourth was deeply involved in the clan. Two
(33:36):
years later, after Rodney King was beaten by LAPD officers,
Stephens and Mayhon were responsible for mailing clan recruitment flyers
to police departments all over Los Angeles in the midst
of what appeared to have been a fairly lackluster campaign
for Aldermen. In nineteen eighty nine, Dennis Mayhon was still
(33:57):
fighting the Kansas City City Council over his public access
TV show. The city hoped to get his lawsuit dismissed,
but after a federal judge denied their motion and set
a trial date for September, they decided to just settle instead.
That summer, the city council voted to reinstate the public
(34:17):
access channel. They signed a settlement agreement with the Klansmen
for ninety seven thousand dollars. Maehon would go on to
press his luck trying to get Tom Metzger's Race and
Reason program on other public access channels in the region,
threatening to bring in white supremacist leaders like Tom Metzker
himself and Aran Nation's leader Richard Butler, to stage protests
(34:40):
outside the studios if they didn't capitulate, and on April third,
nineteen ninety, the first and only episode of his Very
own show aired in Kansas City. The episode is not
quite fifteen minutes long. In the open, frames are garbled,
(35:02):
there's colored bars sort of flickering over the clansmen, and
the audio is choppy, but it opens on a klansman
in a red robe with his face entirely covered by
a red hood, and he greets the viewer with this message, city.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
By city, we're going where we want, certain what we want.
Nobody no water is born with Starflus.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Our country.
Speaker 2 (35:34):
He was born out of bloodshed, and from that bloodshed
was the birth of the Ku Klux Klan.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
After his introduction, ending with a shout of white power
punctuated by a Hitler salute, the klansmen in red sort
of shuffles out of frame and Dennis Mahon walks in.
He's wearing a bright teal Clan robe with a red
kate but no hood. What follows is a rambling complaint
(36:06):
about how unfair the process has been to get the
show on the air, and then he lays out a
plan for what the show will be. Episodes will feature
footage from clan rallies, and they'll have guests with differing perspectives,
and he promises to feature what he calls quote racial comedians,
because quote, we all like good racial jokes. I don't
(36:31):
know who we is. Dennis. He hoped to have episodes
featuring interviews with his friends, people like Tom Metzger and
Arian Nation's leader Richard Butler, but he also wanted to
feature people with other ideas, people like Lewis Ferricon. But
he never did book any guests. The only episode of
(36:52):
Klansas City Cable was taped at the American Cablevision studio
on Main Street in downtown Kansas City, few days before
it aired. While Mahon was recording, his supporters waited outside
standing guard. There was no demonstration, there was no protests.
The public outcry was over it been going on for years.
(37:16):
Nobody showed up. I doubt anyone had any particular idea
that the program was even being recorded. In an office
building on a Thursday afternoon, but one of the two
dozen clansmen standing on main Street waiting for Denis to
come out, pulled a gun on a black pedestrian, prompting
nine to one one calls. In the end, nineteen klansmen
(37:39):
were taken into custody in the fifteen minutes it took
Dennis to record the episode. Most of them were released
without charges. The incident prompted American Cable Vision to announce
a plan to update their rules for using the studio.
They were hoping to ban guns on the premises and
require all visitors to sign in. There's no follow up
(38:02):
I can find on whether they ended up implementing any
changes to the rules. But it didn't matter. Dennis got
what he wanted. He didn't actually want the responsibility of
creating a weekly television program. He was a man of action,
not words. Now, Tom Metzker was a committed propagandist, but
(38:24):
Dennis Mayhon just wanted to force everyone to submit to
the Clan, and now that they had, he didn't have
to make any more episodes. He proved his point. I
had every intention of getting all the way through the
early nineties in this first episode, but I have to
confess that I got in a little too deep researching
(38:45):
the latter half of the story when I should have
been writing the first half. And it's now very late
at night, and I need to deliver this recording to
Rory before he wakes up. Dennis Mayhon has only just
begun to cause problems at this point, so you'll have
to come back next week to hear about the Klansman's
(39:06):
attempt to frighten black children with a bad Mister Rogers impression,
his efforts to start clan chapters in Germany in the
time he got deported from Canada, the conspiracy theories linking
him to the Oklahoma City bombing, and the exotic dancer
who spent four years gaining his trust, secretly recording him
(39:26):
until he said enough to tie him to a mail
bomb in Arizona. And there's also a very weird guy
with a compound in the Ozarks. He hides his guns
in the many natural caves around his property. Poo Little
(39:49):
Guys as a production at Coolzone Media and iHeartRadio. It's research,
written and recorded by me, Molly Conger. Our executive producers
are Sophie Littterman, and Robert Evans. The show is edited
by the wildly talented Rory Gagan. The theme music was
composed by Brad Dickert. You can email me at Weird
Little Guys podcast at gmail dot com. Unless it is
(40:11):
about how I pronounced the name of the city. I'll
definitely read your email, but I poorly won't answer it.
It's nothing personal. You can exchange conspiracy theories about the
show with other listeners on the Weird Little Guys separate it.
Just don't post anything that's going to make you one
of my Weird Little Guys
Host
Molly Conger
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