Leo Felton
|
Leo Vincelette Felton (born 1970, Silver Spring, Maryland) is an American white supremacist and skinhead who was convicted of bank robbery and plotting to build a bomb in Boston. He is an Odinist and was reportedly a member of the Hammerskins, and while in prison, was a member of the Aryan Brotherhood. Ironically, he is half black through his father, Calvin Felton.
Biography edit
Leo Felton's father, Calvin Felton (b. 1930), was a black architect, while his mother, Corinne Vincelette (b. 1931), was a white voice and diction professor who became involved in the civil rights movement. His parents divorced when he was two, and he was raised in Gaithersburg, Maryland
Felton spent 11 years (1990–2001) in prison for the assault of a taxi driver during a road rage incident. According to Felton, his incarceration caused him to observe how different races reacted when integration was enforced and societal stigmas over racism were not in action to civilize conduct. He claims that white people in prison were under a continual state of siege by people of other races, and that he was welcomed by whites. His prison sentence was extended for attacking two black inmates. In prison, he became an organizer for white supremacist groups, organizing book reviews and exercise while obscuring his ancestry. He found inspiration from the White Order of Thule and read Francis Parker Yockey's Imperium, which led him to believe that race was spiritual instead of biological.
Out of prison and married, Felton began an affair with Erica Chase, a 21-year-old white supremacist. Felton robbed a bank with a friend from prison and forged money in order to buy materials to create a fertilizer bomb. It is unclear what the target was to be. An attendant at a donut shop spotted a counterfeit $20 Chase tried to pass her. She alerted an off-duty Boston police officer, who then arrested Felton and Chase. According to Felton, he was planning on creating an improvised explosive device (based on the bomb that Timothy McVeigh used in the Oklahoma City Bombing) to destroy historically Black and Jewish monuments with the goal of inciting a race war.
Felton was sentenced to 27 years in 2002 for bank robbery, conspiracy to commit bank robbery and other crimes.
As of July 2016, Felton is a prisoner at United States Penitentiary, Lewisburg in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, and is scheduled to be released on January 22, 2026.