This brash Jewish radio host was murdered by white supremacists for denouncing anti-Semitism
And no one was ever tried for Alan Berg’s killing.
Around 10 p.m. on the night of June 18th, 1984, Denver radio host Alan Berg was returning to his apartment after a dinner with his ex-wife when a car pulled up nearby. Before Berg could register what was happening, a .45-caliber MAC-10 machine gun unleashed a spray of bullets into his arms, face, and torso. He was killed immediately. The murder was an attempt to shut up one of radio’s fiercest critics of anti-Semitism. It would expose a white supremacist network behind a series of hate crimes across America, including conspiracies to overthrow the government. But through a strange legal tactic, no one would ever be tried for Berg’s murder.
Berg was a hard-drinking Jewish defense lawyer who grew up in a black and Jewish neighborhood in Chicago. After sobering up, he scored his own radio show in Denver, which reached a quarter of a million people. He was known for his temper, combative style, and “sandpaper voice.” According to Stephen Singular, the author of Talked to Death, a book chronicling Berg’s murder, he was an equal opportunity agitator: “On the air, he mocks Christians, Jews, blacks, men and women, straights and gays, society, himself. He offends without regard to sex, race, religion, creed or class. His show is the First Amendment in action.”
Berg’s style bothered many people, though, especially extremists, and he received numerous death threats. In 1979, a Ku Klux Klan organizer even came into his studio and talked about shooting him. During a segment on 60 Minutes, Berg told the interviewer, with a bit of a laugh, “Hopefully, my legal training will prevent me from saying the one thing that will kill me. And I’ve come awfully close.” But when Singular asked if he had a death wish, Berg firmly denied it, saying, “I have a living wish, and every move in my life has been toward it.”
Berg used his radio show to crusade against anti-Semitism. “I know there are anti-Semitic people out there among you gentiles,” he told listeners. “I know that you’re listening. I want you to call me and tell me why you don’t like Jews. Let’s not pretend this doesn’t exist. Let’s stir it up. You’re anti-Semitic, and you know it, and you’ve got real feelings about this, and I want to find out what they are.”
He got their attention. Berg had had many heated conversations with callers, but the last producer to work with him, Anath White, recalled one in particular. Members of a “Christian identity” group arguing that Jews were descended from Satan got on the line with Berg. According to the Denver Post, “the exchange was rancorous.” The producer believed that this call got him killed. The 47 police officers who were dispatched to solve the murder soon agreed.
The Order was a militant white supremacist group that had been implicated in a series of robberies that netted nearly $4 million dollars and a counterfeiting scheme—both to fundraise for their planned overthrow of the U.S. government, which they referred to as ZOG, or the Zionist Occupation Government. The Order was known to keep a list of Jews, black people, federal agents, and judges they wanted to execute. The list was circulated on white supremacist computer bulletin board systems — an early iteration of the internet. And Berg’s name was on it.
Police quickly zeroed in on several members of the Order. They included the group’s head, Robert Jay Mathews, who was thought to have been a lookout; Bruce Pierce, the alleged triggerman; Jean Craig, who had allegedly gathered evidence about Berg’s comings and goings; David Lane, the alleged getaway driver; and Richard Scutari, another alleged lookout. The gun used to kill Berg was found in the home of a member of the Aryan Nation — a white supremacist group affiliated with the Order.
After narrowly escaping arrest at a motel in Oregon, Mathews holed up in his house on a rural island in Washington state with a heavy arsenal of weaponry. A 36-hour siege ensued, during which 100 agents surrounded the house and exchanged gunfire with Mathews throughout the day and night. As it got dark, helicopters dropped flares, apparently to illuminate the house. Instead, they ignited it. As the house was devoured by flames, the officers shouted for Mathews to surrender. He responded with machine gun fire as the ceiling caved in on him.
But Mathews’ death had destroyed an essential link to Berg’s murder. Mathews had spoken widely about the murder, but for the others, there were no witnesses, no confessions, and no real evidence. Fearing the lack of evidence, prosecutors opted to try the men under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) statute, which was intended to prosecute organized crime. The Order members would not be tried for first degree murder, but they would be tried in a racketeering scheme that included Berg’s murder, along with other crimes like robbery and counterfeiting. Prosecutors hoped to gather enough evidence for a trial in Denver at a later date.
It was, at the time, the largest trial of a white supremacist group in the country. Knowing that the Order was highly militarized and prone to brazen acts of violence, 20 heavily armed U.S. Marshals escorted the defendants in armored vehicles from the jail to the courthouse along varying routes every morning for the nearly four months of the trial. They remained in the courthouse halls during the proceedings as well.
The jurors had been given a 62-page booklet of instructions for how to interpret the case. They deliberated for two weeks, at the end of which they announced all 10 of the accused guilty of the RICO charges. Lane and Pierce were each sentenced to 150 years. But the Denver trial, on state charges for Berg’s murder, never happened.
In spite of Berg’s killing, the FBI would argue that the Order was not “a major threat’’ because of their small numbers. This would prove a grave underestimation. Though the Order may have been relatively small, further investigations into the group would reveal a highly militarized web of white supremacist groups across the country who were linked to numerous crimes and violent plots. In 1995, Timothy McVeigh would bomb a federal building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people. Mark Potok, the director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center, saw Berg’s killing was the precursor to that event, arguing, “In a sense, it was one of the opening shots of a truly revolutionary radical right, perfectly willing to countenance the mass murder of American civilians for their cause.”
For a thorough look at the history of American white supremacy visit Timeline’s White Terror U.S.A. story collection.
