Hate group member pleads guilty in Georgia murder plot
Michael John Helterbrand, a member of the neo-Nazi terror group The Base, was sentenced Wednesday to 20 years in prison for his role in a conspiracy to murder a Bartow County couple.
Local police and the FBI arrested Helterbrand, 27, in January 2020 along with co-defendants Jacob Oliver Kaderli, 21, and Luke Austin Lane, 23, and charged them with plotting to murder the couple because they suspected them of being in a local antifascist activist group.
The three men had been scheduled for trial later this month when Helterbrand changed course and decided to plead guilty Wednesday. Plea hearings for Lane and Kaderli are scheduled for Friday.
At Helterbrand’s sentencing, Assistant District Attorney Emily Johnson described how Helterbrand plotted to raid the couple’s home and how he and his co-defendants would cover their tracks after killing them. Helterbrand bought “brass catchers” to carry spent ammunition cases, she said, and equipment to make a homemade silencer.
Read more: https://www.ajc.com/news/hate-group-member-pleads-guilty-in-georgia-murder-plot/CJ4FCZSS2BDF5JMLGW2K7APX7A/
The Base is a small but violent extremist group that seeks to use terroristic acts to bring about the downfall of society and establish a white ethno-state. The three men and other members of the local Base cell met and conducted paramilitary training in the summer and fall of 2019 at Lane’s remote property in Silver Creek, a rural community near Rome, court records state.
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