NYT: As Investigation Widens, Arson Linked to Md. Gang (Unseen Cavaliers) [View All]

As Investigation Widens, Arson Is Linked to Maryland Gang
By GARY GATELY

Published: December 22, 2004


GREENBELT, Md., Dec. 21 - One of six young men under arrest in the arson that caused $10 million damage to a new subdivision two weeks ago has told investigators that the leader of a southern Maryland gang orchestrated the attack as a way of adding to the gang's notoriety, the authorities said in court documents made public Tuesday....

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Just before a detention hearing in federal court here Tuesday for the first of the suspects seized, investigators presented the most details yet of what they said they had learned about those arrested. Much of it involved the gang, said to have been called the Family or, alternatively, the Unseen Cavaliers, a reference to the Chevrolet Cavalier; some of the suspects shared an interest in racing autos in rural surroundings, officials said....

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Donna Sanger, an assistant United States attorney, said at the hearing that the suspects had engaged in "nothing less than an attempt to wipe out an entire community."

Ms. Sanger said the suspects had named the arson plot Operation Payback. Though she would not elaborate, law enforcement officials have suggested that revenge may have been a motive of two of the suspects. Mr. Speed had been upset that his employer showed indifference after the death of his infant son last spring, investigators said, and Mr. Parady may have been angry because he was rejected when he applied for a job with the Lennar Corporation, the subdivision's developer.

Ms. Sanger also noted that many of the Hunters Brooke home buyers were black, and suggested that racism may have been a motive. Charging documents and accompanying affidavits have neither mentioned race nor called the arson a hate crime. But law enforcement officials, noting that all the suspects are white, say that two of them have made racist remarks to investigators....


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/22/national/22arson.html