Woman Gets Nearly 5 Years in Racist Plot

Associated Press/March 13, 2003
By Denise Lavoie

Boston -- A woman convicted of plotting with her boyfriend to blow up Jewish and black landmarks was sentenced Thursday to nearly five years in prison by a judge who called the couple's plans "hateful'' and "horrible.''

A federal jury convicted Erica Chase, 23, and her former boyfriend, Leo Felton, 32, in July for what prosecutors described as a scheme to foment racial holy war. Chase apologized for her role in the plot and said she had turned her life around.

"I didn't see how ugly and disturbing my life was when I was living in the middle of it. I had to be ripped out of it,'' Chase said. "I have a lot of shame for everything.''

Chase faced up to six years in prison. U.S. District Judge Nancy Gertner said she believed Chase had taken some responsibility for her actions, but still had a long way to go.

The couple was arrested in April 2001 when an off-duty police officer spotted Chase passing a counterfeit $20 bill at a doughnut shop in Boston.

Investigators said Felton was making the phony money to help fund their plan and had already gathered most of the ingredients to make a bomb, including a 50-pound bag of ammonium nitrate, the same fertilizer used in the Oklahoma City bombing.

Chase will get credit for the 23 months she has served since her arrest, giving her just under three years left behind bars. Felton was sentenced in December to almost 22 years in prison.

The defense maintained the couple was prosecuted for their white supremacist beliefs and never intended to carry out violent acts.

Felton was a member of the White Order of Thule, and Chase belonged to the World Church of the Creator. They met after Chase corresponded with Felton while he was in prison for the attempted murder of a black taxi driver.

Prosecutors told the jury they found newspaper clippings and photographs of two Boston landmarks - the New England Holocaust Memorial and the Leonard P. Zakim Bridge - in the couple's apartment.

Felton and Chase were convicted of conspiring to make a bomb, conspiring to make counterfeit bills, obstruction of justice, conspiracy to obstruct justice and firearms violations.