Crime & Safety

White Supremacist Gets 10 For Torching Black Family's Home

The feds have taken white power leader Brian Moudry off Joliet's Reed Street for 10 years.

By Joseph Hosey

A Joliet white supremacist leader who pleaded guilty to torching a black family's home was sentenced to 10 years in federal prison.

Brian Moudry, 36, set fire to the house—which was on the same block of South Reed Street where he lived—in June 2007.

“This was an exceptionally despicable crime motivated by hate," a prosecution sentencing memo said. "The victims of the arson did nothing, but move into a new residence in Joliet. Unbeknownst to the victims, several houses down lived a white supremacist who never knew the victims but hated them because they were African American."

Moudry has been in federal custody since May 2012. He pleaded guilty in January to using fire to interfere with housing rights on the basis of race.

Moudry admitted to pouring gasoline on the house and setting it on fire. A family of eight children and one adult was asleep inside but escaped the blaze without injury.

According to Moudry's plea agreement, he found the fact that a black family had rented a house on his block upsetting. He set the fire in hopes of driving the family out and intimidating the owner of the home, the agreement said.

Two other men who had been drinking with Moudry the night before the fire were arrested by the Joliet police in the immediate aftermath of the blaze. Moudry was not taken into custody or charged at that time.

One of the men was released without charge soon after his arrest. The other had an arson case pending against him for nearly nine months before prosecutors dropped it. Moudry was not arrested until almost five years after the fire.

Moudry is a disciple of incarcerated white power leader Matt Hale, who was imprisoned for plotting to kill U.S. District Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow.

In March 2005, federal agents hauled Moudry and some of his associates in for questioning after Hale was suspected of ordering the execution-style slayings of Judge Humphrey Lefkow's husband and mother. The killings turned out to be unrelated to Hale, Moudry or their group.

Before he was questioned by the feds in 2005, Moudry organized a series of white power rallies in and around Joliet. His house in Joliet's sleepy Reedswood neighborhood was targeted in a gun attack following a 2004 white power demonstration.

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