CHICAGO (AP) - An attorney for jailed white supremacist Matthew Hale said he was asked to give an encoded message to one of Hale's supporters, according to a published report. Hale has been a focus of the investigation into the shooting deaths of a federal judge's husband and mother. Lawyer Glenn Greenwald said Hale's mother asked him a few months ago to pass the message to a Hale supporter.
"She said she didn't know what the message meant, but she was going to read it to me verbatim because Matt made her write it down when she visited him," Greenwald told The New York Times in Wednesday's editions. "It was two or three sentences that were very cryptic and impossible to understand in terms of what they were intended to convey." | "sooth my heart with a monotonous langour", "Tora, Tora, Tora,", "wack the judge". |
Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow found her 64-year-old husband, Michael Lefkow, and 89-year-old mother, Donna Humphrey, shot to death in the basement of her Chicago home when she returned from work on Feb. 28.
Though authorities have said white supremacists are just one aspect of the investigation, Hale and other white supremacists immediately drew investigators' attention in the wake of the slayings.
Hale, 33, is to be sentenced next month for soliciting an FBI informant to kill Judge Lefkow after she ordered him to stop using the name World Church of the Creator for his group because of a trademark lawsuit. Matthew Hale has denied any involvement in the slayings, or of soliciting the judge's murder.
Greenwald, who has represented Hale and his organization in several civil cases, said he told federal agents last week about the conversation he had with Hale's mother, Evelyn Hutcheson, about the message. He said he declined to deliver it.
Hutcheson told the newspaper that the message was about someone her son thought should testify at Hale's April 6 sentencing. She said any coding was meant to keep federal agents from figuring out Hale's legal strategy. Hutcheson has said federal agents have asked her if Hale communicated with her in code. | Guess she passed it on herself. |
Also, a source familiar with the investigation told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity that Chicago detectives and FBI agents also have gone to the law office of Michael Lefkow and have spent hours examining his files in search of leads. 
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