Neo-Nazi Group Breaks Up Over Leader’s Love Triangle, Assault Arrest
White nationalist Matthew Heimbach fights with demonstrators at Michigan State University as he and other alt-right advocates try to attend a speech by white nationalist Richard Spencer on March 5, 2018 in East Lansing, Michigan. Image by Scott Olson/Getty Images
By Aiden Pink March 14, 2018
A prominent neo-Nazi group is breaking up after its leader allegedly slept with his spokesman’s wife, then physically attacked both the spokesman and his own wife after they investigated the affair.
Matthew Heimbach, leader of the Traditionalist Worker Party, was arrested Tuesday in Indiana and charged with battery, intimidation, strangulation and domestic battery committed in the physical presence of a child, The Daily Beast reported.
In response to the incidents, TWP spokesperson David “Matt” Parrott quit the organization and pulled the group’s website offline. ““Obviously due to the events that transpired, people have lost faith in the party on every level,” Parrott told The Daily Beast.
Parrott believed that his wife was having an affair with Heimbach — who is married to Parrott’s stepdaughter from a previous marriage. He and Heimbach’s wife tried to catch the twosome in the act and then confront them. But upon doing so, according to statements to the police, Heimbach began a brawl, choking Parrott to unconsciousness after Parrott threw a chair at him.
After receiving a 911 call from Parrott, who had fled to a local Walmart, police went to the Heimbach home, where they say they heard a scuffle after Heimbach tried to convince his wife to make the police go away. After Heimbach’s wife accused him of being violent toward her, police arrested him. They listed his occupation in their report as “white nationalist.”
The Traditionalist Worker Party was present and highly visible at the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last year. TWP members were also arrested earlier this week outside Richard Spencer’s speech at Michigan State University — which took place in a livestock pavilion.
Contact Aiden Pink at pink@forward.com or on Twitter, @aidenpink
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