Hate-crime defendant's tattoos bared

San Jose Mercury News/July 28, 1999
By Lycia Naff

Jules Fettu, a man whose white supremacist views are tattooed all over his body, had to lift his shirt and expose them to jurors Tuesday at his aggravated battery-hate crime trial.

Fettu didn't like it. As jurors craned forward to get a look, Fettu scowled, his face flushed, as he exposed two pieces of body art: The initials WCOTC, for World Church of the Creator, painted across his knuckles, and the large block-lettered acronym RAHOWA, short for Racial Holy War, branded across his lower back.

Broward Circuit Judge Barry E. Goldstein did not make Fettu reveal the various swastikas adorning his flesh, or the words "Racial Loyalty" carved into triceps or any of the other racially incendiary markings.

Fettu, 24, is accused of pummeling a Miami father and son outside a Sunrise Megadeth concert in August 1997 after the son refused to accept hate literature Fettu and others were handing out.

"The evidence that he wears this on his person speaks volumes as to his intent and state of mind," said Assistant State Attorney Peter Megrino.

Tuesday's testimony offered a deeper look into the culture of the white-power cult that is the World Church of the Creator.

Jurors also heard testimony that Fettu's West Palm Beach apartment -- featuring a ceiling decorated with beer bottle caps shaped into a mammoth swastika -- was a sort of inner sanctum for the World Church of the Creator faction in South Florida.

Former members of the group testified that Fettu, the state director, would read aloud from The Turner Diaries, the guidebook Timothy McVea used in preparation for the Oklahoma City bombing, as well as from the two original World Church texts: The White Man's Bible and Nature's Eternal Religion.

Fettu's fellow church members would "chant the credos and commandments," said Dawn Witherspoon, 24, of Weston, who is Fettu's girlfriend now serving 13 months in federal prison for her role in the armed robbery hate crime against a Jewish video store owner.

The racists doctrines recited in Fettu's apartment introduced Witherspoon to the term "race traitor."

"A `race traitor' is someone who dates outside of his race, is a Christian or believes in God, or talks to the cops. I guess I'm considered a race traitor," said Witherspoon.

She is the one who turned on her comrades and helped police build a case against Fettu and other World Church members involving several Broward hate crimes.

Witherspoon said she went to police only after her life, her family's life and the lives of her pets were threatened by "church" members when they learned she "no longer wanted to be involved with them, and I was in danger," she said.

However, Witherspoon, who was present during the beating at the Megadeth concert, said Fettu did not actively participate in the beating. He watched but didn't raise a hand or deliver a kick.

She was contradicted, though, by another Fettu girlfriend, who was called as a surprise witness by the prosecution.

Katarzyna Bieluch, 18, who is the daughter of a Palm Beach County police captain and Fettu's girlfriend at the time of the beating, said Fettu was not only involved but he "got a few good kicks in."

"[Fettu] kicked him a few times. I saw one go to the head and one to the side, just like, you know, how you kick a soccer ball," Bieluch said.

She also told jurors that Fettu helped create an alibi for all those who had witnessed or participated in the beating: If questioned by police, World Church members were to say they were at Shakespeare's Pub, a local bar, at the time of the beating.

Closing arguments and jury deliberation are scheduled for today.