LAS VEGAS (AP) - A Las Vegas woman has pleaded guilty to her role in the 1998 slaying of two skinhead group members who advocated racial tolerance.
Melissa Hack, 39, pleaded guilty to a felony count of conspiracy to murder on Friday in U.S. District Court in Las Vegas.
Hack, her brother Ross Hack and Leland Jones were identified as white supremacists when they were indicted in 2012 in the shooting deaths of Daniel Shersty, 20, an Air Force member who was white, and Lin Newborn, 24, who was black.
The case focused national attention on a subculture of moderates within a group usually considered extremist and united by hatred of non-whites.
Shersty and Newborn belonged to a group known as the Anti-Racist Action Group, sometimes dubbed Skinheads Against Racial Prejudice, prosecutors said. Authorities theorize they were killed because they opposed racial prejudice.
The Hack siblings and Jones were affiliated with a neo-Nazi white supremacist group at the time, they said.
Melissa Hack and another woman lured Shersty and Newborn to a remote desert site north of Las Vegas where they were shot, according to federal prosecutors.
She was the girlfriend of white supremacist John “Polar Bear” Butler, 42, a former leader of the Independent Nazi Skins who was convicted of murder in a state court in the case in 2001. He’s serving a life sentence.
Hack told authorities she saw her brother and Jones shoot Shersty with handguns and Butler chase Newborn into the desert, shotgun in hand.
Ross Hack, 42, and Jones, 33, are scheduled to go to trial Aug. 12.
Under the terms of her plea deal, Melissa Hack agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors against the two.
She awaits sentencing Sept. 8. The plea agreement calls for a 20-year prison sentence.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.