July 11, 2008
More than a year after a co-defendant pleaded guilty to double murder charges, a fellow racist skinhead followed suit at his hearing on May 23, 2008, in Florida.
Charles Marovskis, 29, recently from West Pittston, Pennsylvania, but originally from Tampa, Florida, pleaded guilty to two federal charges of second-degree murder in connection with the 1998 beating death of two Florida homeless men.
On March 7, 2007, co-defendant and fellow racist skinhead Kenneth Hoover, 34, also from Pennsylvania, pleaded guilty to the same charges. Both were arrested in Pennsylvania in early 2007, where they were members of the racist Keystone State Skinheads. Hoover entered a federal plea agreement in which he cooperated with the "investigation and prosecution of other persons" who participated in the attack, and in return, the State Attorney's Office did not seek the death penalty against him.
While living in Florida, Marovskis and Hoover, along with co-defendants James Robertson and Corey Hulse, were members of the racist skinhead crew Blood and Honour. In 1998 the four men allegedly committed the murders as part of a race war, with the goal of killing anyone they considered inferior, and to increase their status within the movement. Robertson, who is serving time in a federal prison for a murder conviction, pleaded not guilty on June 23, 2008. Hulse remains a fugitive.
The body of one victim, a 62-year-old man, was discovered under a highway overpass. He had been beaten and stabbed in the eye with a tire iron. The second victim, a 44-year-old man, was killed with an ax and later found in the woods.
The homeless are a common target of attacks by racist skinheads, primarily because they are vulnerable and usually defenseless targets. In March 2007, three members of the Indiana-based Vinlander Social Club, a racist skinhead organization that helped raise funds for Marovskis after his arrest, were themselves arrested in Indiana for allegedly assaulting a homeless man.