George Lincoln Rockwell in front of the headquarters of the NSWPP, and his home, on Wilson Boulevard in Arlington.

 

The Murder of George Lincoln Rockwell

Hadding Scott

adapted from Setting the Record Straight, 22 January 2011

 

Shortly before noon on Friday, 25 August 1967, George Lincoln Rockwell left his home, and headquarters of his National-Socialist White People’s Party, at 6150 Wilson Boulevard¹ in Arlington, Virginia, to do his laundry at the Econ-o-wash laundromat in the Dominion Hills Centre at 6013 to 6035 Wilson Boulevard. The location was described by the Associated Press as “across the busy highway from the old frame house that served as Rockwell’s home — and the barracks of his ‘troopers'” (AP, 26 August 1967).

At the laundromat a witness, 60-year-old Ruby Pierce, said that Rockwell, “a tall, charming man,” came in and talked about which washing machine to use. “He put his clothes in the washer and put his detergent in, and then he said, ‘I forgot something,’ or maybe he said, ‘I forgot my bleach.'”

Rockwell exited the laundromat, got into his 1958 Chevrolet, and began to back out. Two loud shots pierced the windshield of Rockwell’s car, one of them striking him in the chest. Rockwell made a brief and futile attempt to seek cover. His  backward-moving car struck another car and stalled. Rockwell either lurched out or fell out of the passenger-side door, landing face-up on the pavement with feet still in the car; in one report he pointed to the rooftop before dying. Witnesses said that he had been shot in the head and chest, but the medical examiner, Dr. John Judson, found only a chest wound (AP, 26 August 1967). Here is a photo of the crime scene that appeared in the Washington Post:

Here are the bullet-holes in the windshield of Rockwell’s car:

Here is how the Washington Post mapped the area where the killing occurred, and the sequence of events. You can see that if Patsalos had been hanging around the entrance to Rockwell’s property, he would have been practically in the shopping center already. It may even have been possible to use the rooftop as a point of surveillance over Rockwell’s property; certainly it was possible to keep track of comings and goings from there, at least.

LOCALE — George Lincoln Rockwell drove from American Nazi Party headquarters (A) across Wilson Boulevard to shopping center (B). The sniper on the rooftop (C) in inset) fired two shots as Rockwell backed his car from parking lot (D). Car coasted to stop (E). (Washington Post illustration and caption.)

When the shots were fired² 17-year-old laundry attendant Robert Hancock looked up and saw the gunman on the 15-foot roof of the beauty salon (UPI, 25 August 1967). A barber named James Cummings saw a man later identified as John Patler, a.k.a. John Christ Patsalos, an expelled former member of Rockwell’s organization, leap from the south end of the shopping center and gave chase but lost him. 

Somewhere in the range of 30 to 45 minutes after the killing Patsalos was spotted by police standing at a corner bus stop at the edge of a park about one-half mile from the shooting.  He tried to run away but was caught and placed under arrest by Inspector Raymond S. Cole (UPI, 25 August 1967).

Patsalos’ Character

John Christ Patsalos was born in Bronx, New York.  His family history is quite troubling. His father, an immigrant, served a term at Sing Sing for murdering John Patsalos’ mother in 1943 when he was five years old. (AP, 26 August 1967) He fought for custody of John and his brother on being released. (AP 26 August 1967) In 1996 the brother, Christ George Patsalos, was arrested in Jacksonville, Florida for having murdered his girlfriend in 1982. This was literally a family of murderers.

John Patsalos had a criminal history prior to adopting the name Patler and becoming a “Nazi.” He spent time in a New York youth-detention house where Patsalos boasted that another assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, had once been held. One report says that he murdered a childhood friend. 

Patsalos  enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps in 1958. In July 1960 he was given an honorable discharge on grounds of “unsuitability.” One report says that the discharge was due to his being arrested at an American Nazi Party event (AP 26 August 1967). He joined Rockwell’s organization in 1960 and around that time he started calling himself by the German-sounding surname Patler. 

In 1961 Patsalos, now “Patler,” was put in charge of the American Nazi Party’s “Hate Bus,” which toured the South with a dozen stormtroopers. Patsalos made speeches in various Southern cities where there was notable conflict over “Civil Rights.” (AP 22 May 1961)

Patsalos edited and illustrated the NSWPP’s publication for members, The Stormtrooper, and drew cartoons found in Rockwell’s book White Power.

In 1962 Patsalos left the American Nazi Party and in collaboration with crypto-Jew Dan Burros³ formed the American National Party. This ANP, based in Manhattan, claimed ten members and was able to muster six for public demonstrations, all clad in white shirts and black trousers. They managed to call some attention to themselves by extreme and aggressive posturing, e.g. calling for war against Russia, which provoked a public complaint from a Russian diplomat.  In their magazine Kill! Patsalos accused Rockwell of being a liberal (UPI, 25 August 1967). Patsalos rejoined Rockwell’s organization in 1964. Rockwell commented on the episode as follows:

“A political guerrilla band is what we are. And under such conditions, the struggle for power is almost cannibalistic. What happened is Patler rebelled against the leadership– he thought he could do it better. He went up to New York and tried and he fell on his face. He’s ashamed of what he did. He’s apologized for it publicly. And he’s worked his head off. He’s a fine member right now.”

Having tried and failed to build his own organization, Patsalos sought and received readmission into Rockwell’s organization, but the incompatibility that had led to his resignation was still there. 

Patsalos, in his and Dan Burros’ short-lived “American National Party,” had done away with all things “nazi.” Patsalos objected to this aspect of Rockwell’s organization even after rejoining, and had conflicts with other members because of it. As a swarthy Greek, Patsalos seems to have objected particularly to the Nordic ideal associated with National-Socialism. He referred to members lighter than himself as “blue-eyed devils” (NY Times, 26 August 1967).

Matt Koehl told reporters that Patsalos had exhibited “Bolshevik leanings,” and, “Communist thought kept creeping up in his work.” (UPI, 25 August 1967)

According to testimony given during his appeal before the Virginia Supreme Court in 1970, Patsalos said to another NSWPP member, “Rockwell is an evil genius and must be stopped.” (UPI, 1 December 1970)

Police Inspector Walter E. Bell is cited for the claim that Patsalos had left the NSWPP in January 1967 (AP, 26 August 1967). A UPI story of 1 December 1970 specifies that Patsalos had been fired as editor of the party’s newspaper on 30 March 1967 and expelled from the organization on 4 April.

Early in the summer of 1967, there was an attempt to kill Rockwell in the driveway of his house.  Dr. William Pierce, who worked for Rockwell at the time, quotes Rockwell as saying that the gunman looked like Patsalos to him:

“About June of the next year, 1967, Rockwell drove out of the headquarters to  run an errand.  As usual he  was  accompanied by somebody when he went  out.  That  wasn’t always the  case,  though–he could be  very careless about  his  personal safety.  There  was a long  drive, maybe one  hundred  yards, from the house down to the street, with  forest on both sides.  When Rockwell  got back  from his  errands, there  was some brush piled in the  driveway.   Rockwell was driving and had to  stop, and the other guy got out of the car to clear the brush off the driveway so they could continue. It turned out that Patler had put the brush  there  and was hiding in bushes alongside  the  driveway.  While  the other  guy was out of the car clearing the brush, Patler  took a shot at Rockwell sitting in the car.  It missed and ricocheted off the car just above the door  where  Rockwell was sitting.  Rockwell, who was  unarmed, jumped  out of the car and  began running toward where Patler was. Patler panicked  and took  off running through the woods with Rockwell at his heels.  Patler was  armed,  Rockwell wasn’t, and  Rockwell was chasing him.  Patler was about  twenty years younger  and a faster  runner  and  got away.  Later I asked  Rockwell who did it, and he said, ‘I couldn’t get a clear look at the guy, all I could see was his  back–but I  would swear it  was John  Patler.'” [W. L. Pierce quoted by R. Griffin, The Fame of a Dead Man’s Deeds].

Rockwell’s father, former vaudeville and radio⁵ performer George “Doc” Rockwell, age 78 at the time, said after learning of his son’s fate: “I’m not surprised at all.” (AP 26 August 1967) And, “He was more afraid of his own men than people were of him.”

At the time of the arrest, Patsalos was drenched in sweat, had roofing tar on the bottom of one shoe, and both shoes were wet, as were his pants up to six inches above the knee. A teenage girl had witnessed Patsalos hurrying away from the shopping center. (The Free Lance-Herald, 3o September 1967)

The day after the murder a C-96 Mauser “Broomhandle” was found “just below” a wooden foot-bridge under six to eight inches of water in a creek that runs through Bon Air Park, midway between the shopping center and where Patsalos was apprehended. (AP, 27 August 1967) Apparently it had rocks placed over it, since Four Mile Run is full of rocks and the prosecutor contended that Patsalos had knelt in the water while concealing the weapon.

The Arlington Police submitted it to the FBI’s crime lab for testing. (AP, 27 August 1967) Ballistics showed that this was the murder weapon.  Patsalos had borrowed the unusual firearm from a party member in 1964 and never returned it. Patsalos had been seen target-practicing on his father-in-law’s farm, and slugs taken from a tree there confirmed that the gun found in the creek was the one that had been in Patsalos’ possession. 

Based on this evidence Arlington County judge L. Jackson Embrey sent the case to a grand jury.

Patsalos loudly protested his innocence and never confessed anything. A conspiracy theory was propagated that Patsalos had been the victim of a frame-up by the ADL. Rockwell’s former deputy Karl Allen was a proponent of this theory.⁴ Karl Allen also raised money for Patsalos’ defense.

When the trial began on 27 November 1967, Patsalos was very well defended, with three attorneys. His attorneys’ strategy all along was to draw attention to flaws in the prosecution’s case or to try to create flaws by challenging the admissibility of crucial pieces of evidence, specifically the Mauser Broomhandle slugs found on his father-in-law’s farm, the admissibility of which was challenged on the first day of the original trial (Free Lance-Star, 28 November 1967) and in the final appeal before the Virginia Supreme Court in 1970.

One of the defense attorneys, Thomas J. Harrigan, tried but failed to have the case dismissed, alleging that the prosecutor, William J. Hassan, had piled inference upon inference and had failed to connect Patsalos with the crime. (AP 12 December 1967) 

Some conspiracy-theorists have suggested that the Commonwealth of Virginia showed undue leniency to Rockwell’s assassin. While Patsalos did get a light sentence, it is easily shown that this was not the fault of the government.

To learn about Rockwell’s death, please visit my other blog.

Rockwell was a man of great courage and ability, who spoke some important truths, but it remains an open question with me, to what extent Rockwell really was a national-socialist. Clearly he had an essentially biological view of man (despite nominal Christianity) and was thoroughly anti-Communist, and he was aware of Jews as a subversive element, but these tendencies were strong in the USA prior to World War II, and not especially linked to national-socialism until war-propaganda made them so.

Rockwell was certainly a nationalist. It is on the second half of the “national-socialist” label that Rockwell seems open to question.* I have noticed that some of the people (William Pierce, Kurt Saxon) that joined Rockwell leaned toward a traditional American “rugged individualism” and seemed to take little interest in the NSDAP’s economic policies; they seemed to be hostile toward the basic idea of social-welfare programs, which were crucial to the National-Socialist project in Germany.

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* According to today’s standard textbook definitions, abundant social programs and central economic planning do not qualify a society as socialist without government-ownership of enterprises. This technicality gives Marxists the pleasure of declaring that national-socialism even as it was practiced in Germany is not really socialism. But my question is whether even the aspects of socialism that the NSDAP practiced are supported by or consistent with Rockwell’s statements and writings.

Some people are direct and say what they mean. Others find ways to be odious while remaining formally gentle and polite.

Hear a ten minute clip of George Lincoln Rockwell’s 9 May 1965 appearance on Michael Jackson’s talkshow on KNX Los Angeles.

There is a clash of worldviews evident in the give-and-take. Although Rockwell identifies himself as White and Christian, his views are clearly influenced by Darwinism. He rejects the term “human being” as an absolute category but rather sees man as part of nature with some types of man being less human than others. Instead of divinely ordained categories, Rockwell sees a natural continuum: “I say there’s no sharp line.”

Michael Jackson’s lack of concern for reality is so complete that he advocates trying to make Blacks equal to Whites even if Blacks are inherently inferior, taking no account of the burden and deprivation to White people that such an effort entails. Only a White man so privileged that he does not have to deal with the consequences of what he advocates, and so self-serving that he lacks any sense of responsibility to less wealthy members of his own race, could take such a position.

Leftist-dominated Wikipedia says that Jackson “was never accused of being rude,” but you can hear Rockwell accusing Jackson precisely of being rude when he says, “Maybe I ought to do that; maybe I ought to cut you out more,” referring to Jackson’s hanging up on a caller.

Maybe it’s only a coincidence that this happened in September of the same year.
 

The whole station was in effect cut off when its tower’s guywires were cut by a pair of mischief-makers (spotted running from the scene) and the station was forced to operate on a makeshift, long-wire antenna at drastically reduced power for the following year, losing who knows how much advertising revenue, in addition to the costs of erecting a new tower.

While I do not believe that Rockwell would have ordered such a deed, I would not be even slightly surprised if a couple of his adherents, annoyed with Jackson’s outrageous (especially for 1965) advocacy of racial equality, undertook it of their own accord. The perpetrators were never caught.