Jasper, Texas - The dragging death of a black man behind a pick-up truck was a publicity stunt to help found a racist group linked to a white supremacist prison gang, prosecutors said yesterday in opening arguments of the capital murder trial of John William King.
Jasper District Attorney Guy James Gray told a jury of 11 whites and one black that writings found in King's apartment showed he was trying to recruit members for a hate group known as the Texas Rebel Soldiers and "needed to do something dramatic that would attract media attention." The act he chose was the brutal murder of James Byrd (49), said Gray.