Advertisement

Supremacist who tried to turn North Dakota town into white enclave gets probation

Judge sentences man who tried to turn Leith, N.D., population 16, into white supremacist enclave to four years probation.

By Frances Burns

BISMARCK, N.D., April 29 (UPI) -- A supremacist who got probation Tuesday for trying to turn a North Dakota town into a white enclave says he is through with "white nationalism."

Craig Cobb, 62, who pleaded guilty in February to felony terrorizing and five counts of misdemeanor menacing, has been in jail since November. Under District Judge David Reich's sentence, he will be released immediately and spend four years on supervised probation.

Advertisement

Reich postponed accepting the plea agreement to allow time for a psychological evaluation.

Cobb, who may have developed his white supremacist views during a long stint as a taxi driver in Hawaii, moved to Leith last year. He attracted national attention when he announced he planned to take over the town, founded in 1910 as a stop on a now-closed railroad line, and turn it into a base for people who share his ideology.

Leith has no more than 16 residents. At the time Cobb moved in, the town's only non-white resident was a black man married to a white woman.

In an April 14 telephone interview with the Jamestown Sun, Cobb said he hoped Missouri officials would accept him as a resident, allowing him to serve his probation there.

Advertisement

“I’m just going to go and try to get a 62-year-old girlfriend and companion,” he said. “I want to retire from white nationalism, because I’ve had it.”

Latest Headlines