A university student who, according to the FBI, went on a shooting spree over the Independence Day weekend, killing two people and wounding 10 before shooting himself, was linked to the white supremacist "World Church of the Creator".
The shootings, involving African-Americans, Jews outside a synagogue and Asians outside a Korean church, set off a huge manhunt in Chicago and Indiana. The gunman has been identified as Benjamin Nathaniel Smith (21), a law student at Indiana University who until last month was a member of the racist body.
The church is run by another student lawyer, Mr Matthew Hale, from his parents' home in Peoria, Illinois, and is accused of distributing hate literature. Its newsletters advocate a white racial holy war on "mud races", blacks and Jews to further the expansion of the white race while also saying that violence is not condoned.
The shooting spree began last Friday evening when shots were fired from a blue Taurus car, wounding six Orthodox Jews as they left their synagogue in Chicago. Soon afterwards Mr Ricky Byrdsong, former black basketball coach at North-western University, was shot dead while walking with his children.
On Saturday, groups of black men and Asians were shot at in areas outside Chicago in two separate incidents. On Sunday Mr Won-Joon Yoon, a university student, was shot dead outside the Korean United Methodist Church in Bloomington, Indiana.
By now police had traced the car used in the attacks to Mr Smith who had been questioned by police in Bloomington a year ago for distributing racist fliers. He had been expelled from the University of Illinois, apparently for racist actions, and had enrolled in Indiana University.
On Sunday night, Mr Smith apparently hijacked or stole a van which was pursued by the police. Mr Doug Garrison, an FBI spokesman in Indianapolis, said that Mr Smith shot himself after a police chase.
Mr Hale, leader of the World Church of the Creator, said that Mr Smith was a member until last May but had shown no tendency towards violence.
Police and the Jewish Anti-Defamation League have linked the church to violence and have investigated members for conspiracies to bomb gay, black and Jewish institutions on the West Coast.
Mr Hale says that blaming the weekend shootings on the church was "the same as people accusing the Pope of being behind all those abortion clinic bombings".
The church, which attracted neo-Nazis and skinheads, was founded in 1973 by Ben Klassen, a former member of the Florida legislature, who was born in the Ukraine and raised in Canada.
After church members were convicted of the murder of a black sailor in Florida, Klassen sold off church property and committed suicide in 1993.