DENVER—Even after a quarter century, the violent murder of Denver talk-radio icon Alan Berg at the hands of a white supremacist group reverberates amid fresh reminders of hate crimes.
It has been 25 years since Berg was gunned down in the driveway of his Congress Park condominium, and Thursday’s commemoration comes just days after a white supremacist allegedly opened fire at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., killing a security guard.
Berg, who was Jewish, gained a strong following in the early 1980s through talk radio, where his liberal views mixed with a combative and often-abrasive on-air persona. In the process, he ignited the anger of The Order, a splinter group of the Aryan Nation white nationalist movement that financed its anti-government goals with bank robberies in the Pacific Northwest—before turning to murder.
Berg’s slaying marked an early signpost on the road that led to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, said Mark Potok, director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala.
“In a sense, it was one of the opening shots of a truly revolutionary radical right,” he said, “perfectly willing to countenance the mass murder of American civilians for their cause.”
Groups such as The Order moved the far-right away from its roots as a restorationist movement and into a violent, revolutionary mindset, Potok said. Berg appeared on a hit list that included television producer Norman Lear; a federal judge from Kansas; and Morris Dees, one of the founders of the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Anath White, now a writer and movie producer in Los Angeles, was the last producer to work with Berg. She recalls the shows shortly before he was killed when he confronted members of the Christian Identity movement, who believed Jews were descended from Satan.
Berg, who was working at Denver’s KOA-AM at the time of his slaying, challenged the members. The exchange was rancorous.
“That got him on the list and got him moved up the list to be assassinated,” White said.
But she is certain that even if Berg had known how dangerous the Christian Identity people and their supporters were, he would not have canceled or changed his tack for those shows.
“He was a person who took risks for his beliefs,” she said.
Berg, educated as a lawyer, had spoken before on the danger of his celebrity. “Hopefully, my legal training will prevent me from saying the one thing that will kill me,” he said. “I’ve come awfully close.”
Berg, 50, was killed by automatic-weapon fire on June 18, 1984, as he returned home from dinner with his ex-wife, Judith Lee Berg. Eventually, four members of The Order were indicted in the slaying, but only two were convicted—alleged triggerman Bruce Pierce and alleged getaway driver David Lane.
Lane died in prison in 2007. Pierce continues to serve his 252-year sentence at a federal prison in Pennsylvania and remains active in the movement through correspondence, which he signs, “I Serve God, Race & Truth.”
No one was ever convicted of murder in Berg’s killing. But investigators quickly zeroed in on who pumped 13 bullets into his body, and why.
The Order, formed by nine men who met in a Washington-state farmhouse in 1983, was dedicated to separation of the races and the annihilation of Jews. They targeted Berg not only because he was Jewish, but because he ridiculed them and their leaders on the air, prosecutors contended.
Berg billed himself as “the man you love to hate.” But in 1994, Judith Berg told The Denver Post that the private man wasn’t much like the raging, controversial personality he presented on the air.
“He wanted people to look at themselves and to be conscious of their thoughts—to take responsibility for their attitudes and decisions,” she said. “The angry image was largely shtick.”
Norm Early, who was Denver’s district attorney then, declined to prosecute on murder charges, saying the evidence wouldn’t stand up in court.
Federal authorities tried four suspects in 1987, and the two found guilty were convicted of violating Berg’s civil rights. Lane, then 49, was sentenced to 150 years. Pierce, then 33, got the same, in addition to sentences on other charges stemming from the robberies in the Northwest.
Richard Scutari was accused of acting as a lookout for Pierce. Though acquitted of that charge, he was sentenced to 60 years on federal racketeering charges for other Order-related crimes. Scutari was denied parole in 2000 and can’t apply again until 2016.
Jean Craig was accused of collecting information on Berg to assist in the plot. She, too, was acquitted in the civil rights case but convicted for other crimes.
Bob Mathews, a co-founder of The Order, was believed to be another lookout. But before he could be prosecuted, Mathews died in a blaze that resulted from a gun battle with FBI agents in Washington state.
White, Berg’s last producer, testified at two trials and still gets chills at the memory. But she felt that if anything good came from the tragedy, it was a wider awareness of the threat that loomed.
“Alan’s death blunted a lot of this activity at a crucial time,” White said. “I think something horrible like what just happened at the Holocaust museum proves that these folks don’t always go away. But I’d like to believe there are fewer of them out there now.”
