Infamous Tiki Torch Nazi Kills Himself Before Drug Trial

February 14, 2023 Extremists, Nazis

The Daily Beast reports:

Teddy Joseph Von Nukem, one of the most prominent faces lit by the glow of tiki torches in what became the lasting image of the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, killed himself as he was due to face criminal trial last month.

The 35-year-old skipped out on his first day of trial for a drug trafficking charge in Arizona on the morning of Jan. 30, according to court records. At the very moment a federal judge was issuing a warrant for his arrest, Von Nukem was actually still back at his home in Missouri, where had walked out in the snow behind the hay shed and shot himself.

Von Nukem gained notoriety for attending the Aug. 12, 2017 hate speech rally that aggressively revived a nativist movement in the United States. He glorified the violence, and researchers of domestic extremism suspect he was a key figure in a brutal beating of a black man that day.

The Springfield News-Leader reports:



Photographed wearing a black shirt, with his mouth open and a tiki torch in hand, the Lebanon native’s face went viral as he marched at the front of the 2017 protest against the removal of confederate statues.

The Unite the Right rally garnered national attention because it was organized by a conglomeration of white supremacist, alt-right, neo-Nazi and pro-Confederate groups and resulted in the murder of counter-protestor Heather Heyer.

Speaking to the News-Leader at the time, Von Nukem said he supported then-President Trump but was not associated with the far-right groups that organized the rally. “The rally was not a racist rally. It was a rally to save our history,” he said.

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