Following the fatal shooting of an employee on Monday at Wayne Community College in Goldsboro, N.C., officials said they were searching for a white male with a facial tattoo.
The massive manhunt for the killer eventually ended on a beach in Florida, where authorities said they arrested Kenneth Morgan Stancil III, a 20-year-old who had formerly attended the community college.
In a mugshot, Stancil’s face clearly showed the tattoo police had mentioned, including the number 88 on his left cheek.
That number, to those who track such things, is a sign of neo-Nazi affiliations.
Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, told TPM on Tuesday that the tattoo is “absolutely, without question, a neo-Nazi signifier.”
The number “88” is a code for “Heil Hitler” since “H” is the eighth letter in the alphabet.
Police announced on Tuesday that they were investigating the killing of staffer Ron Lane as a possible hate crime. While officials have yet to release a motive, Lane’s supervisor, Brent Hood, said the victim was gay, according to television station WXII.
Lane, an 18 year employee of the community college, was killed shortly after arriving on campus Monday morning. Authorities said Stancil was a former work-study student who had worked under Lane at the college’s print shop.
Mark Pitcavage, the director of investigative research for the Anti-Defamation League, told TPM on Tuesday that signs of Stancil’s neo-Nazi affiliations went beyond his face tattoo.
Pitcavage sent TPM screengrabs of a profile that Stancil appeared to have created on New Saxon, a social networking site for “people of European descent.”
On the profile, Stancil listed “motorcycles, white pride, adolf hitler, bavarian motor works” and “guns” as his interests. The only book on his profile was “My struggle,” or “Mein Kampf,” according to Pitcavage. Stancil noted that he disliked “race traitors” and described himself as a “6 ft 2 in, Aryan man” with “blondish brown hair” and blue eyes. Among his hobbies, he noted an interest in welding, auto mechanics and “tattoo artist.”
Below is a screengrab of the New Saxon page that Pitcavage provided to TPM:
Pitcavage also provided photos he’d found on Stancil’s page:
In the photos, Stancil appears without a facial tattoo. According to police, Stancil’s eye tattoo was recent and might have been acquired on Saturday. Sgt. Jeremy Sutton of the Goldsboro police said officials were investigating the possible white supremacy connection of the tattoo, according to television station WITN.
Authorities told the AP that Stancil allegedly used a pistol-grip shotgun, which he fired once on the campus. He then fled the school and was apprehended on Tuesday by police who found him sleeping on a beach in Volusia County, Fla., according to the AP.
School officials told the AP that Stancil was let go from his work-study program job because of too many absences.
Stancil appeared in court on Tuesday afternoon where he addressed the judge and accused Lane of molesting a family member before saying that doing time in prison would be “the easy part,” WITN reported.
“One less (bleep) child molester on this (bleep) earth,” Stancil said. Stancil is being held in Florida without bond, according to WITN.
Stancil’s full mugshot is below:
