Q. Mr. Trapp, when you realized that Michael Weisser lived in your town of Lincoln, Neb., you started trying to intimidate him. What were you hoping to achieve?
Larry Trapp: The initial thing is fear, with the intention of getting him out of the community. White supremacists think everything is theirs -- the community, the state, everything. As the state leader, the Grand Dragon, I did more than my share of work because I wanted to build up the state of Nebraska into a state as hateful as North Carolina and Florida. I spent a lot of money and went out of my way to instill fear.
Q. When Larry Trapp started harassing and threatening you, what did you do?
Michael Weisser: I called the police, and I had the telephone company put a tap on my telephone. Two days later I got a package of hate mail, anti-Jewish and anti-black material. We knew it was from Larry Trapp, but we couldn't prove it. We were pretty frightened. It went on that way for a while, and then I talked with my wife Julie, and I said I had to confront this. The only thing I hoped to accomplish was to let him know that I wasn't afraid of him. I was pretty angry, but I never expressed any anger on the telephone to him.
Q. Had you actually spoken to him?
Weisser: At first it was just messages. The very first time I reached his answering machine, I had to listen to a 10-minute taped diatribe about how evil the Jews and the blacks were. There was a beep at the end to leave a message, and I said, "Larry, you'd better think about all this hatred you're doing, that you are involved in, because you're going to have to deal with God one day, and it's not going to be easy." Larry is disabled, and another time I called, I said, "Larry, the very first laws that the Nazis passed were against people like yourself, who have physical disabilities, and you would have been among those to die under the Nazis. Why do you love the Nazis so much?"
Trapp: I knew that too.
Weisser: I just kept leaving messages, until finally one day, Larry Trapp, in a fit of anger, picked up the phone. "What do you want?" he said. "You're harassing me! My phone's got a tap on it." I was real quiet and calm. I said I knew he had a hard time getting around and thought he might need a ride to the grocery store. He just got completely quiet, and all the anger went out of his voice, and he said, "I've got that taken care of, but thanks for asking."
Q. Mr. Trapp, what was it that first made you hate?
Trapp: When I was 13 or 14 years old in reform school in Kearney, Neb., I was raped by four or five black boys. From then on I just hated blacks. Every time I was around them, I felt like killing them. Anybody who wasn't like me was my enemy.
Q. Cantor Weisser, over the next few months, the man who considered you his enemy had his doubts about his past and grudgingly accepted your existence. What happened the night you finally met?