Winnipeg stab victim was ex-KKK leader

When James Edsel Tucker was fatally stabbed at his Winnipeg apartment early Thursday, it was the end of a dark era in Manitoba history, one the 45-year-old had apparently tried to distance himself from by changing his name.

Police confirmed that Tucker was previously known as William James Harcus, whom an expert on racist groups said was the former head of the Manitoba Ku Klux Klan and a defendant in a high-profile Winnipeg hate crimes trial.

Martin Archie Flett, 22, has been charged with second-degree murder but there has been no suggestion the killing was related to Harcus’ past as the leader of the Manitoba Klan, which claimed Canada was the “land of the white race.”

The victim’s identity was confirmed by Helmut-Harry Loewen, a retired University of Winnipeg professor. The Anti-Racist Canada blog also reported the murder victim had once been the Grand Dragon of the KKK in Manitoba.

Loewen said Harcus had changed his name after he and two others went on trial for hate crimes in 1992. Harcus, then 21, was charged with distributing pamphlets denigrating blacks.

The prosecution collapsed, however, after a police officer gave contradictory evidence. Charges against all three were stayed.

But Loewen, who was familiar with Harcus through his work as chair of the Manitoba Coalition Against Racism and Apartheid, filed a Human Rights Tribunal complaint against Harcus and the Manitoba Knights of the KKK.

In the early ’90s, recruitment posters had appeared in Winnipeg showing a burning cross and a Klansman on horseback. “Join or support your local Klan,” it read. The Klan also set up a phone line where callers could receive recorded messages.

“It is obligatory upon the negro race and upon all other coloured races in Canada to recognize that they are living in the land of the white race by courtesy of the white race and the white race cannot and will not be expected to surrender to any other race,” one message said.

The tribunal shut down the hate line, ruling in December 1992 that it was “likely to expose a number of groups and several individuals, identifiable on the basis of race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion and sexual orientation, to hatred or contempt.”

Harcus changed his name and tried to make it as a bluegrass musician. He moved to Vancouver “but appears to have lived for most of the intervening years in Winnipeg,” said Loewen. “Tucker/ Harcus ran into my friend … a few weeks ago, asked him for a job and said he’d been trying to get his life in order.”

On June 23, emergency personnel responded to a call in on Winnipeg’s Furby Street. Tucker had been stabbed in the upper body. Paramedics took him to the hospital in critical condition, and he died shortly afterward.