Screaming Nazi Who Waved Torch At Charlottesville White Supremacist Rally Commits Suicide Before Drug Smuggling Criminal Trial
White supremacist Teddy Joseph Von Nukem killed himself last month just before facing trial for drug smuggling charges against him, RadarOnline.com can confirm.
Von Nukem, who was one of the most prominent faces to march behind tiki torches during the now-infamous white supremacist Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 11 and 12, 2017, reportedly killed himself on January 30.
According to the Daily Beast, the 35-year-old alleged neo-Nazi failed to appear in Arizona court for his first day of trial and, after a federal judge issued a warrant for Von Nukem’s arrest, it was revealed he had shot himself in the head behind a hay shed in the backyard of his Missouri home.
“Suicide notes were found at the scene, left for law enforcement and his children, however handwriting was somewhat inconsistent,” the newly released coroner’s report stated.
Von Nukem first became notorious on August 12, 2017 after attending a hate speech given at the Unite the Right rally that called for the revival of a nativist movement across the United States.
The late 35-year-old also reportedly glorified the violence seen across Charlottesville that summer and was suspected of being a key figure involved in the near-fatal beating of a Black man earlier that day.
“Some people knew Ted and understood he was a different type of fellow and had different views of things,” Von Nukem’s obituary read earlier this month.
According to one classmate, Von Nukem was a “token goth kid” throughout high school who had “an unsettling interest in Nazi Germany.”
He was also an outspoken supporter of former President Donald Trump and allegedly believed White Americans were becoming increasingly more “disadvantaged.”
"I don't mind showing solidarity with [white supremacists]," he told a newspaper during the Unite the Right rally in August 2017. “You have to pick your side. You have to throw your support behind the army that is fighting for you."
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Nearly four years after the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Von Nukem was arrested on March 17, 2021 after being caught entering Arizona from Mexico while in possession of 15 kilograms of fentanyl.
He later admitted he was paid $215 to smuggle the fentanyl into the U.S. from Mexico and was released from prison pending his trial scheduled for January 30, 2023.