Marshals nab German Neo-Nazi fugitive

UPI/August 28, 2000
By Robert Black

Washington -- Deputy U.S. marshals tracked down and captured a German neo-Nazi fugitive over the weekend, the U.S. Marshals Service said Monday.

The fugitive, Hendrik Albert Viktor Moebus, allegedly was living on the property of a white separatist author in West Virginia. Moebus was wanted in Germany for violating the conditions of his release after a 1994 murder conviction.

Moebus, along with two accomplices, was convicted of luring a "non-Aryan" 16-year-old boy into an apartment and strangling him. After serving two-thirds of his sentence, Moebus was placed on three years probation in August 1998.

German officials told the Marshals Service that Moebus "violated his probation by making extremist remarks about the murder victim and showing the 'Hitler salute' during right-wing activities in Germany."

When the Muhlhausen Regional Court in Germany issued an arrest warrant for the man's arrest, ordering to serve out the rest of his sentence, Moebus fled to the United States, the service said.

The Marshals Service said the German Federal Ministry of Justice requested assistance in finding Moebus in March. The marshals discovered that Moebus had entered the United States through Seattle last December. Marshals tracked him to Spokane, Wash., Richmond, Va., and parts of Ohio, before the trail led them to West Virginia.

Moebus was believed to be living on the compound of William Pierce, author of The Turner Diaries and founder of the National Alliance, a neo-nazi, white separatist group. Convicted Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh had a copy of The Turner Diaries, a fictional 1978 story of the violent overthrow of the U.S. government, when he was arrested in 1995.

Pierce has a Ph.D. in physics and is a former college instructor in Oregon. "After extensive surveillance, a team of 12 deputy marshals identified Moebus leaving the property," a Marshals Service statement said. "He was arrested without incident about 20 miles away from the Pierce compound" in Hillsboro, W.Va.

Moebus is in custody pending his extradition back to Germany