Charlottesville Tiki Torcher Killed Himself Before Drug Smuggling Trial

Rotten to the core posing as righteous

LTC Eugene Chu
..."“Suicide notes were found at the scene, left for law enforcement and his children, however handwriting was somewhat inconsistent,” the coroner’s report states.

Von Nukem gained notoriety for attending the Aug. 12, 2017 hate speech rally that aggressively revived a nativist movement in the United States. He glorified the violence, and researchers of domestic extremism suspect he was a key figure in a brutal beating of a black man that day.

Von Nukem’s sudden death was initially reported by Molly Conger, an independent journalist in Charlottesville who has become a key anti-fascism researcher in the years since the rally shook the city. An obituary said Von Nukem left behind a wife and five children aged under nine. “Some people knew Ted and understood he was a different type of fellow and had different views of things,” it noted.

you probably remember this photograph. it's one of the more iconic of the awful images of the nazi torch march at UVA on august 11, 2017.

Conger’s research identified Von Nukem as one of the men who attacked Deandre Harris in a parking garage. She also connected the dots to show how Von Nukem gloated about the attack in text messages to another white supremacist rally organizer, who was later prosecuted in a separate case.

Journalists, researchers, and anti-fascist activists spent months carefully examining photos and videos of the violence that day to identify white supremacists and hold them accountable. Von Nukem, who stood front and center during some of the most iconic moments of the hateful procession, was quickly outed by former classmates back in his home state. One former student told the local Springfield News-Leader that in school he was known as a “token goth kid” who had what the newspaper described as “an unsettling interest in Nazi Germany.”

At the time, Von Nukem told the newspaper he supported Donald Trump and had adopted the white supremacist worldview that whites are now “disadvantaged.”

"I don't mind showing solidarity with them," he told the newspaper then. “You have to pick your side. You have to throw your support behind the army that is fighting for you."...