Former KKK Leader And His Mom Face Charges In Cross Burning
Steven Joshua Dinkle, an alleged “former Exalted Cyclops” of the Ku Klux Klan, and his mother have been arrested for a 2009 cross burning in a black neighborhood in Ozark, Alabama.
Dinkle was described by the DOJ as having previously held the “Exalted Cyclops” title in an Ozark, Ala. chapter of the Ku Klux Klan. Dinkle “conspired with another person to burn a cross in an African-American neighborhood to threaten and intimidate residents of that neighborhood and thereby interfere with their federally protected housing rights” on May 8, 2009, the Justice Department alleges.
“Dinkle allegedly constructed a six-foot cross, wrapping jeans and a towel around it. He and his co-conspirator drove the cross to an African-American community near Johntown Road in Ozark where Dinkle poured fuel on the cross, erected it in the ground and set it on fire,” the DOJ press release said. “The indictment further contends that Dinkle obstructed justice by lying to local investigators in 2009, and federal investigators in 2012. Dinkle claimed he had withdrawn from the KKK months before the cross burning, provided a false alibi and denied knowing a person who was, in fact, his superior in the KKK.”
Dinkle’s mother, Pamela Morris, who the DOJ described as “the former secretary of the KKK chapter” was arrested on Nov. 21 and charged with committing perjury before the grand jury investigating the cross burning. In an indictment filed in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama on November 14, federal prosecutors said Morris “knowingly made false material declarations when she denied being involved in the Ku Klux Klan” and when she denied being aware of her son’s KKK involvement. Morris has entered a not guilty plea in the case.
