A white man charged with killing a black man in a March fire at the veterans halfway house where they both lived reportedly admitted his racial bias in a jailhouse letter to a white supremacist group that was intercepted by deputies.
John Daniel Carothers, 53, was already jailed in Rutherford County on a charge of first-degree murder in the death of 40-year-old Robert Miller, who died of burns to his head and upper torso about a week after the March 17 fire. Carothers is also charged with aggravated arson and seven counts of reckless endangerment,
The Murfreesboro Post reported.
The motive behind the arson remained elusive, however, until an Aug. 8 court hearing, at which Murfreesboro police Detective Jacob Fountain, a lead investigator on the case, read a letter Carothers wrote to the white supremacist group, the Post reported.
“To my brothers and sisters in Jesus Christ our savior and Lord, my name is John D. Carothers and I believe the Bible is about white people and for white people,” the letter read, in part,
according to the Post. “I am in Rutherford County Jail for burning a black man. I set him on fire with lighter fluid poured on his head.”
Carothers’ letter also asked the group to send him a study Bible.
The Huffington Post reported that the letter was addressed to the Arkansas-based Kingdom Identity Ministries, the largest publisher in the U.S. of Christian Identity materials.
A website
identifying itself as belonging to Kingdom Identity Ministries calls the movement a “politically incorrect Christian Identity outreach ministry to God's chosen race (true Israel, the White, European peoples).” A logo on the homepage of a cross and crown states, “Conquer we must, for our cause is just.”
Sixteenth Judicial District Attorney Jennings Jones
told NewsChannel 5 in Nashville that the letter was discovered by sheriff’s deputies in the jail’s outgoing mail.
“It is helpful evidence,”
Jones told the news station. “The motive does matter.”
Tennessee does not have a hate crime law, but Jones and Assistant District Attorney J. Paul Newman, the prosecutor on the case, said the racial motivation of the alleged crime could become a factor at sentencing.
Carothers has undergone a psychiatric evaluation, in which he was found competent to stand trial,
NewsChannel 5 reported. His case has been bound over to be heard by a grand jury.