Union slaying suspect on sex-offender victim: "He was a demon"

7-30-2013 South Carolina:

UNION, SC — Two suspects charged in the deaths of a registered sex offender and his wife had something to say to reporters Monday as they faced a judge on additional charges.

Jeremy Lee Moody, 30, and his wife, Christine Moody, 36, both of 213 S. 1st St., Lockhart, were charged Monday by the Union County Sheriff's Office with first-degree burglary and two counts each of kidnapping and possession of a firearm during the commission of a violent crime, Sheriff David Taylor said.

The Moodys were charged last week with two counts each of murder in the deaths of Charles Marvin Parker, 59, and his wife, Gretchen Dawn Parker, 51, at their home at 2809 Furman Fendley Highway, Jonesville. Both Parkers were shot and stabbed, investigators said.

Authorities say Charles Parker was targeted because he was a registered sex offender, and that Jeremy Moody has admitted planning to kill another registered sex offender, had he not been arrested.

As Christine Moody was being led in to her bond hearing Monday before Judge Arthur T. Sprouse, she said of the victims: "These were pedophiles." When asked whether the killings were connected to the white supremacy group Crew 41, she replied: "I'm a supporting member of Crew 41. This had nothing to do with Crew 41."

Sprouse explained the additional charges to Christine Moody at the hearing. She admitted that the chance of receiving bond was pretty slim. "God is good all the time, but he's not that good, your honor, she said. "You're going to PR (personal recognizance) me, aren't you?" she added with a laugh. "Because we go way back."

Near the end of the brief hearing, Moody asked Sprouse whether she would go to court on Oct. 8 with her husband.

"I'd like to see my husband again," she said. "I love him very much."

As she walked out of the hearing, a reporter asked whether she felt Charles Parker deserved to be killed.

Christine Moody stopped, looked straight into a TV camera and said, "He was a demon."

Jeremy Moody was less talkative with Sprouse. But as he came out of the hearing, he gave reporters a thumbs up.

A reporter told Jeremy Moody that his wife had called Charles Parker a pedophile and a demon.

"He's all of those things," Jeremy Moody said. "He deserved what he got."

Jeremy and Christine Moody are being represented by public defender Eric Delaney. Delaney has met with the couple since their arrests last week, but did not appear with them in court Monday.

Taylor said the Moodys had cooperated with investigators in giving statements and other information about the killings, so the additional charges were delayed.

Taylor said he has learned that white supremacists sometimes target sex offenders, even if they're not of a different race. He wouldn't comment on whether the killings would be classified as a hate crime.

"We're still working with the FBI," Taylor said. "We're still working this case. I see no timeline on when it may be over."

The FBI defines a hate crime as a "traditional offense like murder, arson or vandalism with an added element of bias," according to the agency's website. In order to collect statistics, Congress defines such crimes as "a criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender's bias against a race, religion, disability, ethnic origin or sexual orientation."

In 2011, according to the most recent FBI figures, 1,944 law enforcement agencies reported 6,222 hate crime incidents to the agency, involving 7,254 offenses.

Jeremy Moody has a prominent "skinhead" tattoo across his throat, along with the words "white power" tattooed on the top of his bald head. He also has an eagle and swastika, "Made in America" and other tattooed symbols associated with skinheads.

On their Facebook pages, Christine and Jeremy Moody use the last name Mengele, the last name of German physician Josef Mengele, who was known for his inhumane medical experiments on twins and other prisoners at the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II. Christine Moody's page contained posts last week in which she appeared to be trying to recruit new members for Crew 41 and used racial slurs, but those posts had been removed by Monday.

Taylor said investigators are still gathering intelligence on Crew 41, a white supremacy group that according to Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil-rights group, is less than a year old and claims to have chapters in Nebraska, Utah and South Carolina.

According to Southern Poverty Law Center statistics, there are 1,007 known hate groups in the U.S., including neo-Nazis, Klansmen, white nationalists, neo-Confederates, racist skinheads and black separatists. That number includes 21 documented groups in South Carolina. Of those 21, five are based in the Upstate, including an anti-gay group and a white nationalist group in Spartanburg County.

Despite the Moodys' apparent ties to white supremacy and Crew 41, Taylor said investigators think they were acting independently of the group. Last week was a learning process for the sheriff and local investigators, who have rarely dealt with hate and white supremacy groups, Taylor said.

"I learned a lot, more than I knew last week," the sheriff said.

The Moodys are scheduled for their initial appearances in general sessions court Oct. 8. ..Source.. by JENNY ARNOLD