Seth Slabaugh

seths@muncie.gannett.com

Frank Ancona appeared last year in "KKK: Beneath the Hood," a Discovery Channel documentary.

Klavern, a local unit of the Klan, is a blend of Klan and cavern.

Police wearing riot gear used pepper gas to break up a KKK rally in New Castle in the summer of 1996.

WINCHESTER – Residents of Winchester are alarmed after Ku Klux Klan recruiting leaflets were dropped in yards last weekend, possibly by someone who knew enough about the neighborhoods to single out white households.

One of the leaflets depicts a costumed Klansman above the message:

"Neighborhood Watch. You can sleep tonight knowing the Klan is awake. Are there troubles in your neighborhood? Contact the Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan today."

Contained in blue plastic bags weighted down by small rocks, the leaflets include a "24-hour Klanline" telephone number.

"The Klan is very desperate for members and publicity," says Bryan Byers, a professor of criminal justice at Ball State University. "The number of KKK klaverns (local units) nationwide is under 175, and Klan membership has remained steady at between 4,000 and 6,000 nationally for many years."

Last May, fliers left on vehicles around Richmond promoted a supposed Loyal White Knights of the KKK rally in Centerville on the 17th of the month. Centerville, Wayne County and state police showed up, but the rally never materialized.

The Star Press called the number on the leaflets distributed in Winchester, selected an option for "media inquiries" and was ultimately directed to Frank Ancona, imperial wizard of the Traditionalist Knights.

"I'd like to know where this criminology professor gets his figures from," said Ancona, who lives in Missouri. "Our own members don't know how many we have, so I really doubt an outsider knows our numbers. That's secret information within our organization."

A local exalted cyclops within the group likely ordered the leafleting, said Ancona, who was aware of a recruiting drive in Ohio over the weekend trying to build neighborhood crime watches. Winchester is the county seat of Randolph County, which borders Ohio.

Vickie Nunez, a case manager in the Randolph County prosecutor's office, didn't receive a leaflet but quoted a co-worker who didn't want to be identified as saying "they were in a lot of yards," including Nunez's church.

"I'm married to a Mexican guy, so they probably don't look strongly at me," Nunez said. "I don't want to be watched. If I find a cross burning in my yard, I don't know what I'll do."

Rob Butler, pastor of Congregational Christian Church on East Street, was shown one of the blue bags containing the leaflets after services on Sunday. He quoted his daughter as saying some members of the church's youth group also reported receiving leaflets.

While the Traditionalist Knights describe themselves as a non-violent Christian group, Butler said, "I don't read the Scripture perhaps the way they do. A lot of people can claim to be a Christian, but we generally know by the fruit. That's what Jesus said. You can tell a tree by the fruit it produces."

Butler also quoted his daughter as saying Hispanic homes did not receive the leaflets.

"Basically, white individuals would have gotten them," the pastor said. "I think it was somebody who lives here who eyeballed the neighborhood. That would be my guess."

Winchester police were aware of the pamphleteering, which Byers says for the most part is protected expression under the First Amendment.

The Traditionalist Knights, based in Missouri, won a court case over leafleting in that state.

The leaflets spread in Winchester came from templates available on the Traditionalist Knights website. They are worded in such a way as to cast the Klan as a "protector" of others and not as "perpetrators" or "hate mongers," Byers told The Star Press.

"This is intentional," he said. "They do not want to cast themselves in what they know would be a negative light by attacking certain groups — African-Americans, Jews, et cetera — even though they do this regularly among themselves and in some venues."

A hate-crime expert, Byers added: "... the leaflet message of 'protecting' the community with a 'neighborhood watch' is code for protecting the white residents against minority-driven criminal activity — normally from outside the community."

The population of Winchester is 96 percent white, according to the 2010 Census. The remainder of the city's residents are black, Asian, other races or more than one race. People of Hispanic origin make up 2.5 percent of the city.

Leafleting by the Traditionalist Knights and the Loyal White Knights has generated a rash of local media stories in states including Pennsylvania, Alabama, West Virginia, Texas, Louisiana and Kentucky this year.

"Both groups sought new members with their fliers, and both claimed at various points to be setting up neighborhood watches for crime," reports Mark Potok in the Fall 2014 issue of Intelligence Report, a publication of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). "But there was no real activity on their part beyond the anonymously distributed fliers. What they really seem to be seeking was the dues that come with new members."

The last major activity by the Klan in East Central Indiana was a rally in New Castle in the summer of 1996. Hundreds of police wearing riot gear used pepper gas to subdue more than 600 Klan members and supporters. An imperial wizard was arrested on charges including rioting, unlawful assembly and obstruction of traffic.

Ancona told The Star Press, "We are always recruiting. The Masons are recruiting, and the police departments and the churches. Any organization that wants to survive ... is recruiting. But we're not desperate for members."

The Star Press reached Ancona by calling the Traditionalist Knights phone number, where a voice message informs callers to press 1 for an information packet, 2 for media inquiries, 3 to have a representative return the call or 4 to "check the status of your application."

Ancona is not publicity shy. He appeared in The Discovery Channel documentary "KKK: Beneath the Hood" last year and has been quoted by media including KCTV in Kansas City, USA Today, the BBC and talk-radio show host Alan Colmes.

According to SPLC, there are active Klan groups in Elwood, Monroe City, Kokomo, Scottsburg and West College Corner in the Hoosier state, as well as white nationalist groups in Muncie, Bloomington and Roanoke; a racist skinhead group in Knightstown; neo-Nazi groups in Wakarusa and Warsaw; racist Christian identity groups in Martinsville, Morgantown, Franklin, Indianapolis, Shelbyville, Rochester and Kokomo; a black separatist group in Indianapolis; a radical traditional Catholicism group in South Bend; and a neo-Confederate group in Nashville.

The white nationalist group in Muncie is identified as the Southern European Aryans League Army, which espouses white supremacist or white separatist ideologies, according to SPLC.

The Traditionalist Knights is not one of the Klan groups identified by SPLC in Indiana.

Winchester Mayor Steve Croyle suspects the Klan was "probably on a fishing trip" in his city and "rode off into the sunset" after distributing the leaflets.

It's very difficult to tell from leafleting whether the Klan has a presence in Winchester or is just recruiting, Byers said. "It could mean both ... or it could mean neither," he said. "It could also be a prank by local teens. We are getting into the traditional pranking season. I wouldn't want to say it shouldn't be taken seriously — it should — and it is pretty sophisticated to be a prank especially since the use of baggies and rocks has been used elsewhere and pranksters may not want to go to that effort. However, it is nearly impossible to pinpoint a culprit."

Byers relies on SPLC, which conducts annual counts of hate groups, for Klan population estimates.

SPLC estimates there are, at most, 4,000 to 6,000 Klansmen in America today, "a far cry from the estimated 40,000 Klansmen active in the 1960s."

The Traditionalist Knights may be having some success, growing from three klaverns in 2012 to seven in 2013, according to the Intelligence Report. And the North Carolina-based Loyal White Knights expanded from 16 klaverns to 52 during that time, making it the largest and most visible Klan group. However, SPLC says that growth likely came from "cannibalism," absorbing defectors from other groups.

James Moore, the grand dragon of the Loyal White Knights in Virginia, told The Palladium-Item in Richmond in May that "we have a pretty active chapter there in Centerville, so we are heading up there."

Contact Seth Slabaugh at (765) 213-5834.