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Tom Metzger, neo-Nazi founder of the group White Aryan Resistance, died Nov. 4 at age 82 in Southern California, according to the Times of San Diego.
A Portland jury ordered Metzger in 1990 to pay $5 million for his role in the racially motivated 1988 murder of Ethiopian immigrant Mulugeta Seraw.
Related: Here's What Happened the Night Mulugeta Seraw Was Murdered—and Afterward
Three young skinheads associated with the Portland white supremacist group East Side White Pride beat Seraw to death with a baseball bat in the Kerns neighborhood in 1988.
Two years later, a Southern Poverty Law Center attorney convinced the jury in a civil lawsuit that Metzger trained and motivated the men and was partly responsible for Seraw's murder.
Related: The Reporter Who Investigated Mulugeta Seraw's Murder Says the Hate Was Homegrown
Nick Martin, who publishes The Informant, which reports on white extremists, said that Metzger was a big player in that world.
"If David Duke is America's best-known white supremacist in the past 40 or so years, then Tom Metzger was arguably No. 2," Martin wrote on Twitter.
"His influence in organized racism in the U.S. was large, and he even had sway with a number of young neo-Nazis in recent years."
