A hare brained scheme

SAUGUS – A Saugus man with White Supremacist ties was among three suspects indicted Thursday for allegedly torturing and decapitating a rabbit at a New Hampshire beach last summer.William H. West Jr., 32, 26 Kenwood Ave., and co-defendants Robert Freeman, 36, of Plainfield, Conn., and Kevin Lynch, 26, of Milton, face charges brought by a Rockingham County grand jury.Investigators tracked the suspects after a video recording of the animal abuse appeared on YouTube, an Internet-based entertainment Web site.Last August, police in Rye, N.H. learned that people at Odiorne Point State Park in Rye had witnessed the torture, and that a video had been posted on YouTube.At mid-afternoon on Aug. 6, a Rye policeman was dispatched to the park to check out a report that men were abusing a rabbit. The officer found no suspects.Four days later, Rye police were informed by a law enforcement agency that monitors cults that the YouTube video was seemingly made at the park, and that it appeared one man held the rabbit while two others hacked at it until the head was decapitated.Rye Police Chief Kevin Walsh confirmed the YouTube video had been downloaded for use as evidence. He told news reporters in Rye that the rabbit in the video did not resemble the wild rabbits often seen in the park.Although police have not publicly discussed any possible connection West may have to White Supremacist groups, a July 2002 story in the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, focused on the Illinois-based World Church of the Creator, includes a quote from the suspect.West, identified in the story as a Saugus truck driver and a member of the World Church of the Creator, said that violence is not needed to ensure white supremacy.”We don’t promote violence. Everybody has had (bad) apples in their groups,” West said, responding to comments about violent incidents involving those with ties to the church.A member of the Jewish Defense League had been charged in connection with a conspiracy to build and detonate bombs, he said.According to the 2002 report, the church coined the phrase “Rahowa” – a term supporters use as a battle cry for “Racial Holy War.” People of color are called “mud races” by the church and Rev. Matthew F. Hale’s e-mails sign off with the slogan: “The Jew is through in 2002!”Hale said Rahowa does not mean “bullets will fly” but that the church wants independence for white people and does not believe Adolf Hitler is a prophet because members do not believe in prophecies. But Hitler did tell the truth about the Jews and communists, he said.The newspaper story was prompted by the discovery in summer 2002 of about 2,000 World Church of the Creator fliers left on front lawns in about 30 Central Massachusetts communities.Robert S. Griffin of Peabody, a member of the church, told reporters at the time that the flier blitz was conducted because he had many leftover from an earlier printing for a July church event.The rabbit torture case is being handled by Rye Police in conjunction with the Rockingham County Corrections Department, the Boston Police Department Intelligence Unit, Massachusetts State Police, the Anti-Defamation League, and the Rockingham County Attorney’s Office.