Alan Harrison Berg was 50 when he was assassinated outside his Denver townhouse on the evening of June 18, 1984. As he stepped from his Volkswagen Beetle he was met with a hail of gunfire from a MAC-10 submachine gun, was shot multiple times and died instantly. Berg, a Jewish radio talk show host on KOA known for outspoken liberal views and a confrontational style, had frequently challenged white supremacists who called his program.

Investigators tied the killing to a neo-Nazi white supremacist group known as The Order, which had a stated goal of inciting a racially based revolution and financed its activities by robbing armored cars and counterfeiting. Robert Jay Mathews founded the group and was believed to have acted as a lookout during the assassination; Mathews later died in a deadly standoff with FBI agents in December 1984.

Federal prosecutors tried the case as a civil rights violation rather than a state murder prosecution. Bruce Pierce was identified as the triggerman and David Lane as the getaway driver; a federal jury convicted both on civil rights charges and sentenced Pierce to 252 years and Lane to 190 years. Richard Scutari and Jean Craig were acquitted in Berg’s death but convicted on separate racketeering counts. Did anyone who knew Berg or lived in Denver in 1984 have details about his final days or the threat he faced from organized extremists?