Skinheads Not Brothers Under the Skin

The Palmdale City Library had been closed since Thanksgiving, and on Monday the latest copy of the New Yorker was believed to still be buried in the mail. The advice here is for the library to make dozens of copies of William Finnegan’s article and give it away. Charge for photocopying costs if you must.

The Dec. 1 New Yorker, you see, is very much in demand in the Antelope Valley. It sold out quickly at the local B. Dalton, Waldenbooks and Readmore. Regrettably, someone checked out the only copy at the county library in Lancaster before anybody thought to make a photocopy.

“California’s Lost Kids” touts a flap stapled over a droll illustration of Pilgrims being dealt blackjack by an American Indian. Inside, Finnegan’s piece, illustrated with a photograph of skinheads by Mary Ellen Mark, carries the title “The Unwanted.” This is the subtitle:

In a Los Angeles suburb where schools and parents faltered, the American Dream was replaced by drugs, neo-Nazism, and despair. The hardest hit were Mindy Turner and her friends.

Local notables took predictable umbrage. “Magazine article outrages officials,” declared a Page 1 headline in the Antelope Valley Press on Saturday. The hope here is that the outrage piques interest, because Finnegan’s reportage is well worth reading. If that’s not enough to make you curious, read on.

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All I know about Finnegan is what I read in the magazine. The “Contributors” column notes that he’d been a staff writer at the New Yorker since 1987, is the author of four books (including “A Complicated War” and the forthcoming “Cold New World”) and twice won national awards for magazine journalism in the public interest. Early in the account of his investigation of Antelope Valley skinhead culture, he mentions that he was raised in Woodland Hills.

Finnegan spent months ingratiating himself with a cadre of young skinheads and tells their story in intimate detail. Seventeen-year-old Mindy is at the center of the tale, drifting dangerously between allegiances to the Nazi Low Riders, or NLR, and their multiracial rivals, the Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice, or Sharp. “This obscure, semi-doctrinal conflict,” Finnegan writes, “fascinated me long before it escalated to homicide, as eventually it did.”

These teens are rebels with dubious causes: violent racists pitted against violent anti-racists. It’s not surprising to learn that they all seem to come from damaged homes. In their yearning for a sense of belonging and purpose, they cling to one another in a kind of surrogate family. Friendships are bonded by “tweaking” methamphetamine.

Mindy’s father, Finnegan explains, was electrocuted on the job while she was in elementary school. Her mother, Debbie, remembered that Mindy “was deeply troubled by the idea that her dad had never been baptized, and thought that that was probably why Mindy later became a Mormon--because she wanted to be baptized herself. Actually, before Mindy became a Mormon she had wanted to become Jewish. But that had turned out to be too much work. Becoming a Mormon was relatively easy. All this was before Mindy got addicted to crystal methamphetamine and became a Nazi, in the ninth grade.”

Finnegan monitors Mindy’s life as she goes in and out of detox, in and out of racist ideologies, in and out of romances and friendships. One of her boyfriends is an NLR cohort who spent six months behind bars after pleading guilty to attempted murder. He’d shot up the house of another of Mindy’s suitors. (Nobody was hurt, that time.)

Another of Mindy’s friends is Darius Houston, and that’s a problem. Darius is a half-black, half-white Sharp and thus hated by NLR. Finnegan learns about the tensions at the Malone house, an NLR hangout because three Malone brothers are members.

The tensions came to a head on the night of March 6, 1996, at a Sharp party in Lancaster. Not everybody there was anti-racist. Finnegan said he’s heard “at least two dozen versions” of what happened that night. But among the undisputed facts are these:

Houston, who was drunk, got into an altercation with a white girl named Ronda who was wearing a bomber jacket with a Confederate-flag patch. After a boy tried to defend her and got beaten up by the Sharps, Ronda left and returned to the party with Tim and Jeff Malone.

Jeff, 19 and nicknamed “Demon,” waved a knife at a girl. Houston threw beer in Tim’s face. “One of the Malones challenged Darius,” Finnegan said. “The NLRs were standing in close formation, their backs against a living room wall. Darius ran toward them, a knife in his right hand. With his first thrust, he stabbed Jeff Malone through the heart.”

He died later that night and the Sharps scrambled, fearing reprisal. Houston moved to Orange County. In the end, prosecutors decided not to press charges, figuring that the victim had ventured into rival turf armed with a knife. Witness testimony conflicted.

“The crucial question for the prosecution,” Finnegan writes, “was whether a jury could be persuaded that the killing had not been in self-defense. That seemed unlikely. The victim was a Nazi skinhead, who would not be viewed sympathetically. Mr. Houston was on his own turf, minding his own business.”

The prosecutor tells Finnegan: “I’m not saying Mr. Houston is a great guy. He’s not. He’s a jerk. You need to call me in about six months to see if he is still alive. I do not believe he will be.”

And Finnegan continues: “To the Malone family’s bitter contention that it was really because Jeff was a skinhead from a poor family that no one would be prosecuted for his death, I could think of no rejoinder. It was true.”

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Lancaster Mayor Frank Roberts told the A.V. Press that he spoke with Finnegan twice. “We talked about hate crimes and I told him it was a very minor problem. The story is an absolute misappropriation of writer’s ink.”

And activist Billy Pricer, founder of the United Community Action Network, faulted Finnegan for “selective reporting,” adding: “The reporter could have gone to Des Moines, Iowa, or any town in Texas to get that story. . . . I’m not saying it’s not a problem because it is. If these individuals would organize, we would be on the verge of truly despicable events.”

Sheriff’s Lt. Tom Pigott, commander of 22 detectives and four sergeants in the Antelope Valley, told me he feels the magazine blew the area’s skinhead problem out of proportion. He said it fails, for example, to describe the good work of the Antelope Valley Human Relations Task Force, of which he is a member.

Well, all reporting is selective. Finnegan could have, but didn’t, describe various hate crimes--including the murder of a black transient--that involved NLR. Pigott figures NLR is responsible for many if not most of “hate incidents” reported to authorities.

The story is, ultimately, what the readers make of it. Perhaps there’s a lesson in the fact that Finnegan got such access to the young misfits that he comes to think of as “The Unwanted.”

He made them feel like their story mattered. He made them feel important. He made them feel wanted.

Scott Harris’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays. Readers may write to him at The Times’ Valley Edition, 20000 Prairie St., Chatsworth 91311, or via e-mail at [email protected] Please include a phone number.