Death of Friends Illuminates Chasm Among Skinheads
By DON TERRY
LAS VEGAS, Nev. -- Lin Newborn and Daniel Shersty were inseparable. It did not matter that Newborn was black and worked in a local body-piercing shop or that Shersty was white and was in the Air Force, working on F-16's and other fighter planes at the nearby Nellis Air Force Base.
They were best friends. They shared a love of music and pretty girls with nose rings. And even though Newborn and Shersty were skinheads, they also shared a passionate hatred of racism -- and that may be why they are dead.
Early in the morning of the Fourth of July, before the fireworks and the parades, someone shot them and left their bodies, separated by 150 yards of sand and sorrow, in the desert on the outskirts of town.
Newborn was 24. Shersty was 20. So far there have been no arrests in the case. But the police and the families and friends of the young men suspect that they were killed by neo-Nazi skinheads.
"That seems to be the most likely," said Sgt. Ken Hefner of the Las Vegas Police Department. "I used to think all skinheads were racist. I've come to find out during this investigation that I was wrong."
Indeed, for nearly two decades, anti-racist skinheads have been confronting racist skinheads from coast to coast. Over the years, the two sides have slashed each other's tires and bashed each other over their shaved heads, but the violence usually stopped there.
Now, shaken and angry, anti-racist skinheads and their allies from around the country are scheduled to come to Las Vegas on Saturday for a rally to honor their fallen comrades. The organizers of the rally, which is expected to draw up to 1,000 people, say they plan a peaceful protest. "Losing two brothers is enough," said John Toddy, 19, one of the organizers here.
The march and the incidents here have shed light on divisions among the skinheads, a vaguely defined subculture whose definition is the subject of fierce debate.
For some adherents, being a skinhead is just fashion, featuring shaved heads, Doc Martin boots and body piercing, as well as an affinity for punk rock and Ska, a music mixture of Caribbean influences, rhythm and blues and rock. For others, it is a fierce pride in a working-class background. Still others add anger toward minorities who, they believe, have cost working-class whites jobs and other opportunities.
"Skinhead is almost like a religion," said Noah Wildman of Moon Ska Records in New York, which specializes in Ska music. "Depending on who you ask, you will get very different interpretations of the same concept."
The split between racist skinheads and anti-racist skinheads began in England in the 1970s, around the time Newborn and Shersty were born. From its beginnings in the 1960s, "West Indian blacks were very much a part of skinhead culture," said Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate groups around the country.
Class, not race, was the skinhead battle cry, Wildman said.
In the 1970s, huge sections of the working-class youth counterculture and the media spotlight were co-opted by racist groups like the British National Front, and skinheads were split into two warring camps -- racist and anti-racist. When the movement and music migrated to the United States in the late '70s, the split crossed the ocean intact. And ever since, Potok said, "there's been a great deal of street fighting between the groups, up to and including murder."
Potok estimates that there are fewer than 4,000 hard-core racist skinheads across the country, and a somewhat smaller number of non-racist skinheads. In Las Vegas, he said, the numbers are small on both sides. There are probably more Elvis impersonators here than skinheads.
When Newborn and Shersty were found dead, the police had no idea who killed them or why, Hefner said. Neither victim had been robbed and neither had anything in his past that would provide a motive for his killing, other than what Hefner called a "constant exchange of hatred" between racist and anti-racist skinheads.
Friends of Newborn and Shersty said that about a month before the two men were killed, a third friend was hospitalized after being hit over the head with a beer bottle by racist skinheads. About that same time, state Sen. Michael Schneider, D-Las Vegas, arrived on the scene of a drive-by shooting that he said was committed by racist skinheads on a black family a few blocks from his home.
It appears that this city of neon is more of a rest stop than a destination for racist skinheads moving on a trail of hate between skinhead strongholds in Utah and Southern California. Still, Potok said, "there was a real racist skinhead scene in Las Vegas a few years ago, and there remains a presence."
That presence, friends of Newborn and Shersty say, is why the slain men helped start a Las Vegas chapter of a nationwide group, Anti-Racist Action, which includes many skinheads but mostly consists of non-skinheads like Toddy, a rally organizer.
Friends of Newborn believe he was the main target of the attack in the desert. He stood out. For a while he sang in a local band called Life of Lies. He was a little older than many of his friends, and had a 2-year-old son. He pierced noses, tongues and navels at Tribal Body Piecing, and he was one of the few black skinheads his friends had ever met.
"He came to our meetings and brought a lot of literature about the true history of skinheads," Toddy said. "He was a very key player in the anti-racist movement here."
Everyone, it seems, knew Newborn, and everyone called him by his nickname, Spit.
"Spit was a super-nice kid," said Harry Fagel, a police officer who patrols the neighborhood where Newborn worked. "He was looked up to by the kids in the area. He espoused a viewpoint of nonviolence. He wasn't a pacifist, but he didn't go looking for trouble."
Newborn was at work on July 3 when two young women came into the shop and one had her navel pieced. Then she asked Newborn to a party later that night. Newborn asked Shersty to go along and the two friends slapped high fives about their good luck, said Marc Isquith, the store owner.
Shortly after the store closed at 9 p.m., Newborn and Shersty got into Shersty's car and drove away. At first, it was believed that the young women had set up a phony date with Newborn and Shersty to lure them out to be ambushed. But Hefner would say only that nothing had been ruled out.
At 8 a.m. on the Fourth of July, a man driving a four-wheel-drive vehicle in the desert found Shersty's body lying next to his black Chevrolet Cavalier. He had been shot in the chest with a shotgun.
Shersty was from Florida. He joined the Air Force to earn money for college, but he always wanted to be an actor. When his body was found, he had a tattoo of the masks of comedy and tragedy on his left shoulder. One mask was black and the other was white.
Shersty's father, Walter, and his stepmother, Sharon, said they had never discussed the evils of racial prejudice with him. "But I knew he wasn't prejudiced," Walter Shersty said. "He always had black friends and white friends and Puerto Rican friends. He was like us. He treated people the way he wanted to be treated."
Daniel Shersty played trumpet in the school marching band, and had one of the lead roles in his high school's production of "Harvey."
"He loved to get dressed up," the elder Shersty said. "He was a ham."
His son's remains are in an urn on the dining room table. He was an only child.
"As far as I'm concerned, Danny is a hero," his stepmother said. "He not only died for his country, he died for his friend."
Because of the rough terrain, Newborn's body, 150 yards away, was not found until two days later.
"A while ago," Newborn's father, Lionel, said, "Lin told me he had some run-ins with Nazi-type skinheads. I feared for him, but I never thought this would happen."
In the last 12 months, Lionel Newborn has buried his wife of 37 years, his oldest son, and now Lin.
What made burying Lin a little easier, the father said, was the hundreds of people who turned out for his funeral. At the service, Newborn had a recording of his son's favorite group -- the Specials, an interracial Ska band from England -- playing background music.
"I was overwhelmed," Newborn said. "I didn't know that my son was so popular. I used to tell Lin that he should do this or that with his life. I'm glad he didn't listen to me and he lived his life his way.
"We all want the best for our children, but I guess if our children are doing what makes them happy, if they're helping others, I guess you can't ask for much more," Newborn added. "I'm just very proud to be his dad."
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)