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Leader obscure among ruckus

The Sheriff's Office says the local neo-Nazis' president has a violent past, but his children's mother calls him a sweetheart.

By COLLEEN JENKINS
Published April 2, 2006

Over 50-cent coffee Friday morning, the gray-haired men at the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 6180 pondered the neo-Nazi compound just around the corner.

"Bill," a Vietnam veteran in a camouflaged Marine cap said, "tell her what you boys would have done 30 years ago with that rat's nest."

The veterans at the post on Chicago Avenue already knew the answer. Bill Summerfield served 31/2 years in Europe during World War II.

"I didn't like Hitler when we went over to fight them," said Summerfield, 83. "I guess if it come down to it, I'd fight the neo-Nazis too."

The old soldiers have been talking a lot about Nazis since the killing down the street.

Early March 23, a man wearing a gas mask stabbed two people in the mobile home next door to the Teak Street compound. A 17-year-old boy died. Investigators found a gas mask similar to the one described by the surviving female victim inside the neo-Nazi hangout.

No one has been charged in the stabbings. Two group members, John Ditullio and Shawn Plott, were in custody on unrelated warrants and have been questioned about the attack. They swore that they had nothing to do with the stabbings.

Little has been said publicly about the man who brought the whites-only hate group to Teak Street and typically called the members' shots.

His name is Brian "Zero" Buckley.

Buckley, 44, is president of the Teak Street neo-Nazis. He dresses in the group's colors: red shirt, black vest, black combat boots with red shoestrings. He drinks cheap whiskey. His neighbors said he drives them crazy with his rantings.

It was unclear when he joined the group or how he rose to the top. The St. Petersburg Times couldn't reach Buckley for this story.

But arrest reports and court records chronicle the life he has led since arriving in Pasco County from New York in the late 1980s.

"He has been well known to law enforcement," Pasco sheriff's Lt. Robert Sullivan said. "He has a very violent past."

Sheriff's deputies were responding to a noise complaint and possible domestic battery at Buckley's Port Richey home in November 1996 when they came across a group of 15 white men with swastikas tattooed on their shaved heads.

""Sieg heil, sieg heil," Buckley screamed at deputies. The term means "Hail victory" and was commonly used to salute Adolf Hitler.

Buckley told his friends to shoot the deputies, court records state. Authorities charged him with resisting an officer without violence.

Those familiar with the group said members travel in packs. The smallest slight, whether legitimate or not, can set them off.

Tyrone Washington, a black man, was hanging out with some friends at a mobile home park on River Gulf Road the evening of Oct. 16, 1999. Suddenly, he saw a large group approach.

He tried to run. But about six people, including Buckley, attacked him, according to a Port Richey police report. Buckley yelled racial slurs as he swung a bat at Washington's head.

It took 10 staples to close the wound on Washington's head. Buckley was sentenced to 18 months in prison for aggravated battery, followed by four years of probation.

It was hard to miss the neo-Nazis once they moved to Teak Street, where they installed security cameras on the property and flew swastika and Confederate flags. VFW patrons drove around Griffin Park instead of through it.

"Anybody stupid enough to belong to something like that," Summerfield said, "it's hard to tell what they'll do."

But Jill Nangano, mother of Buckley's two children, said his past sins don't provide a full picture.

Growing up in Oceanside, N.Y., she said, "it was like race wars every day." Whites, blacks and Puerto Ricans didn't get along.

"There's a lot of people who hate us where we came from," she said last week.

Buckley was "scary" when he was younger, she said, but has been devastated by grief since his 22-year-old son, Zeke, died last year from complications with his medication.

"Everybody probably thinks he's a monster," Nangano said. "But he's not. He mellowed out from when he was younger.

"Brian has a heart of gold. You have to get to know him to understand him. He's really one of the sweetest people you'd want to meet. But he just has a rough exterior."

Katrina Nilsen moved down the street from the neo-Nazi compound last fall. She found Buckley to be a decent enough guy - when he was sober.

"Brian (Buckley) has a heart of gold. You have to get to know him to understand him. He's really one of the sweetest people you'd want to meet. But he just has a rough exterior."

- JILL NANGANO, mother of Buckley's two children.

When he wasn't, Nilsen said, he was prone to punch a recruit for talking back or fire off rounds at a young guy's feet to get him to dance. He and his comrades often taunted next-door neighbor Patricia Wells, the surviving stabbing victim, because of her friendship with blacks.

In the last few months, Nilsen rarely saw Buckley leave the compound.

"He was pretty much your typical angry hermit," she said.

Buckley was scheduled to arrive back from his father's funeral in New York the night of March 22. Recruit John Ditullio told the Times that the group had planned a party anticipating its leader's return.

But Ditullio, 20, said Buckley wasn't around the compound when the stabbing occurred. It was vice president John Berry, Ditullio said, who handed him three guns and told him to guard the mobile home if police showed up. Two other members, Plott and Cory Patnode, also took off, Ditullio said.

By last week, the flags were gone from the compound. Buckley and his comrades appeared to have cleared out.

Nilsen suspected that they were still in the neighborhood.

"That compound may be gone, but you've still got three other locations" where neo-Nazis live in Griffin Park, she said, "and people who moved into the neighborhood because of it."

Colleen Jenkins can be reached at cjenkins@sptimes.com or 727 869-6236.

[Last modified April 2, 2006, 01:24:20]