Matthew F. Hale is an incarcerated white supremacist convicted of attempting to order the solicited assassination of Judge Joan Lefkow for presiding over an infringement lawsuit against his supremacist group.
Background[]
Hale was born on July 27, 1971, solely raised by his law enforcement father, Russell Hale, Jr. The young Hale espoused supremacist and racists beliefs starting at an early age, reading Adolf Hitler's Mein Kempf and other Nazist prints by age 12. In high school, he formed a neo-nazi group, and when studying political science at Bradley University, Hale tried and failed several times to form separate supremacist groups and organizations that either didn't gain substantial traction or weren't recognized as chapters of larger organizations. Hale was repeatedly fined for public racist acts and demonstrations, such as burning the flag of Israel and passing out racist pamphlets at a shopping mall. He escalated to violence, which included holding three black-American men at gunpoint with his brother, along with assaulting a mall security guard. Hale was convicted of obstruction of justice from the former, which was overturned on appeal, and sentenced to months of house arrest and probation from several charges regarding the latter.
Hale in a standoff with police during a protest
Hale joined the Church of the Creator, a white supremacist faith-based movement, and after founder Ben Klassmen committed suicide, changed his affiliation from political to religious and manipulated the organization into make him "Pontifex Maximus" of the renamed World Church of the Creator. Hale graduated the Southern Illinois University School of Law in 1998, passing the bar exam a few months after. However, his application for legal practice licensure was denied by the state Bar Committee on Character and Fitness, a hearing panel the next year determining Hale lacked requisite moral character and fitness. Hale filed a lawsuit under representation of Glenn Greenwald, but over years of legal warfare, the state Supreme Court upheld the ruling, and the Northern District Court and the Seventh Circuit Appeals Court upheld they were out of jurisdiction. The U.S. Supreme Court also threw out their case. In 2000, Hale's organization was sued by the Church of the Creator, a religious group in Oregon, on the grounds of copyright infringement. Presiding district court judge Joan Lefkow ruled in favor of the Oregon group on appeal.
Benjamin Smith, Arrest, and Conviction[]
On July 2, 1999, two days after the hearing panel ruling, Benjamin Nathaniel Smith, a college-age member of the organization, presumably motivated in protest of the ruling and in support of Hale, drove through Illinois and Indiana and committed a series of drive-by shootings targeting Orthodox Jewish, black-American, and Korean victims, killing a black-American basketball coach and a Korean college student; the killing spree ended on Independence Day when Smith committed suicide. Despite Hale stating in a televised interview the organization "does not condone violent or illegal activities", one of the surviving victims sued hale and the organization. Smith was later found out to have been recruited when Hale's organization arrived at his first campus, Smith even testifying at Hale's appeal for a law practicing license.
Joan Lefkow was sued by Hale, who declared a "state of war" on her and accused her of bias in a news conference, alleging her ruling to be from her husband being Jewish and her grandchildren being biracial. In the spring of 2000, FBI informant Tony Evola was sent to infiltrate the organization because of Hale's speech at the funeral of Smith. Evola impressed Hale with a confrontation with a protester of their organization. Evola was made "head of security", which gave him access to Hale's travel plans and put him in position of personal bodyguard to Hale. Leading to 2003, Evola recorded conversations with Hale and the organization's members which would be used as evidence. Hale spoke highly of Smith and regretted his actions, but also reportedly said he preferred nonviolent resistance because he was being watched all the time. Yet when the Supreme Court rejected Hale's lawsuit, he boasted his organization had freedom of whatever actions they used to "resist the tyranny".
Evola would sporadically question Hale on his desired reactions that stymied his supremacist agenda, either through direct or chatroom communication. Hale would always insist on legal maneuvers for their group, but would make added comments such as not caring if informants and whistleblowers testifying against them were targeted in retaliation, always insisting he wouldn't want to be responsible. In the face of fictitious plans and actions Evola alleged, Gale would always discourage and reject the notions. But finally, in December 2002, Evola got on record Hale having no issue with Evola allegedly taking whatever actions he wanted against Joan Lefkow. This led to Hale's charges of soliciting murder in January 2003.
Artist's rendering of Hale during his trial
On February 28, 2005, Judge Lefkow's mother and husband were murdered at their North Side home, which left Hale a prime suspect. However, he was cleared when the real killer, Bart Ross, whose medical malpractice lawsuit was dismissed by Judge Lefkow, shot himself dead during a traffic stop in Wisconsin, leaving a suicide note admitting the killings were his culpability. On April 6 2004, Hale's trial began, and on April 6 2005, Hale was sentenced to 40 years in prison under presiding judge James S. Moody, Jr. Over a dozen tapes of hale included racial slurs and a joke about Smith's spree. Hale was moved out of AXD Florence to medium security in Indiana in 2016. He was returned to Florence in 2017, but again moved to medium security in Illinois in 2020. In spite of the sentence, Hale's released date is estimated to be April 2, 2036, at the age of 64.
Known Victims[]
- Three unnamed black-American men (all held at gunpoint with his brother)
- Unnamed mall security guard (assaulted)
- Judge Joan Marilyn Humphrey Lefkow (solicited her murder; failed)
On Criminal Minds[]
- Season Seven
- "A Thin Line" - While never directly mentioned or referenced in the franchise, a Q&A chat with Virgil Williams confirms hale was the inspiration for Clark Preston - Both are supremacists who attempted business and political schemes which ended up failing, had a young, racist follower who went on a shooting spree in support of their political endeavors, were arrested in connection with the attempted murder of a government official, and their cases were under the jurisdiction of the FBI.