The FBI arrested two Florida state corrections officers and one former officer Thursday morning after the three men reportedly conspired to kill a released inmate.
Thomas Driver, 25, David Moran, 47, and Charles Newcomb, 42 — all of whom reportedly belong to the Traditionalist American Knights sector of the Ku Klux Klan — began conspiring in late 2014, Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi said, after Driver got into a fight with the inmate in August 2013.
A confidential FBI source within the KKK sector attended a Klan meeting where the men discussed how they wanted the inmate “six feet under,” according to redacted court affidavits. Newcomb presides over the KKK chapter as “Exalted Cyclops.”
With the inmate now released, the three men staked out his home in Palatka, Florida, and discussed murdering him with shots of insulin, according to the affidavits.
Referring to the inmate with racial slurs, Newcomb suggested posing him with a fishing pole, pushing him in the water and making it look like he drowned while fishing. Newcomb also said, “If we have to do pow-pow, we will,” referring to a gun he had loaded.
In mid-February, the source offered to contact a “professional” to kill the inmate, according to the affidavit.
Around March 18 and 19, the FBI gave its source a disposable phone with fake photos that showed the inmate “brutally murdered,” Bondi said in a conference call. When the source showed the three men the photos, all three men appeared happy, with Moran and Driver smiling and shaking the source’s hand, according to the affidavit.
Multiple news outlets reported Moran was hired as a correctional officer in January 1996 and was promoted to correctional officer sergeant in April 2004. Driver was hired as a correctional officer in July 2010. Both men have since been fired, according to a press release from Department of Corrections secretary Julie Jones.
Newcomb was hired in October 2012 but was fired less than three months later for failing to complete employee training.
Multiple state and federal agencies assisted with the investigation, Bondi said.
An agent spokesman with the FBI declined to comment on where the three men were arrested, citing the ongoing investigation.
The FBI arrested all three men on charges of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, Bondi said. Her office will prosecute the case in Columbia County, and, if found guilty, the men each face 30 years in Florida state prison.
Authorities took Newcomb to the Alachua County Jail on Thursday morning, where he remained as of press time in lieu of a $750,000 bond.
Driver and Moran were taken to the Union County Jail.
[A version of this story ran on page 1 - 4 on 4/3/2015 under the headline “FBI arrests Fla. DOC officers”]
