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Weisser: The phone rang, and Larry said, "I want to get out of this, and I don't know how." I asked if he had had dinner and said I would bring something over and we'd have a bite to eat and talk about it. I told Julie what had happened, and she said, "I'll bet Larry Trapp is just as apprehensive about us as we are about him. I think we ought to bring him a peace offering." She found a silver ring, and we went over there. As we walked in I touched his hand and he burst into tears. He didn't know we were bringing the ring, and he had two silver swastika rings on, one on each hand. He took the two rings off and said, "I want you to take these rings; they just symbolize hatred and evil, and I want them out of my life." Julie gave him the other ring and put it on his finger.
Q. Mr. Trapp, have you now completely renounced the Klan and the Nazi Party?
Trapp: I denounce everything they stand for. But it's not the people in the organizations that I hate. I hate what they stand for and what they do. If I were to say I hate all Klansmen because they're Klansmen and all Nazis because they're Nazis, I would still be a racist. I was one of the most hardcase white activists in the U. S. If I can have that change of mind or change of heart, anybody can.
Q. There is another former Klansman, David Duke, who claims to have renounced the Klan. How is he different?
Trapp: Racism used to take a more blatant form: the hangings, the beating of blacks half to death on the streets. Listen to David Duke's policies. What he is doing -- and I've talked to him personally -- what he's doing is using a more subdued racism. If you check his policies closely, you'll find that they're the same policies that they have always been. There is no change.
Q. Should white supremacists be taken seriously?
Trapp: The end goal of the white movement is the complete annihilation of all nonwhites. There is talk of setting up purely white colonies here in the U.S. $ That way they'll have their economy established when the rest of the U.S. is taken over by the whites. What they are talking about is basically tyranny.
There are books that have been written that are more or less a philosophy of the white movement. They talk about pregnant white women hanging from trees and lampposts with signs on them saying I WAS A RACE TRAITOR, with their belly cut open, their baby cut out. This is what they plan on. They're a bunch of savages.
Q. I understand that you have been threatened since you left the Klan.
Trapp: I really rattled that applecart and caused a lot of damage within the movement by retiring. I'm sure there's a contract out on me. Usually what happens is, the word gets passed around among the skinheads. They're the ones to worry about, because they're the ones who do all the dirty deeds. The skinheads around town know me, and I am not afraid of them.
Q. If a Klansman got in touch with you and said he wanted to leave the organization, would you help him?
Trapp: I'd check him out real good. The Klan pulls a lot of scams on a lot of people, even their own. For years they've been backstabbing themselves. Not one Klansman or one Nazi can really say he actually trusts the other. It's constant conflict. This is one of the reasons they're in a decline.
Q. Do you think the Klan or the Nazi Party will live on?