North Dakota church burns down after B.C. white supremacist revealed as owner

Story transcript

Jerome Jankowski has been feeling uneasy ever since he learned that a notorious white supremacist had purchased the old church next door to his house in Nome, N.D.

But when he looked out his kitchen window on Wednesday, the church was on fire. It's not clear what caused the blaze.

"It was a church, you know. To me it's almost sacrilege," Jankowski, 76, told As It Happens host Carol Off. "But I also realize they sold the church and it wasn't a church anymore."

The Zion Lutheran Church had indeed, been sold — to Craig Cobb, a Vancouver white supremacist who fled to the U.S. after RCMP announced a Canada-wide warrant against him for wilful promotion of hatred. 

Cobb told ABC affiliate WDAY6 that he'd planned to either move into the church or reopen it as the "President Donald J. Trump Church of Rome," reports MyNDNow.com

Cobb, whom the anti-hate watchdog Southern Poverty Law Centre lists as a neo-Nazi, made headlines in 2012 when he quietly bought up property in the small town of Leith, N.D., then announced his plans to turn it into an "Aryan enclave."

He'd already started transferring ownership of the lots to Ku Klux Klan members and other white supremacists when a clip went viral showing Cobb on the Trisha Goddard Show getting the results of a DNA test that revealed he was 14 per cent sub-Saharan African.

His Leith scheme came to an end when he was jailed in 2013 for terrorizing the town's residents at gunpoint during what he called a "patrol" of the town.

He has since continued to purchase old properties in small U.S. towns. The North Dakota newspaper In Forum reported on Wednesday that Cobb's name was on the deed of the old church in Nome, about 120 kilometres southwest of Fargo. Later that same day, it burned down.

'Do we really want him in town?'

Jankowski said he's never spotted Cobb at the church or around town, but he remembers seeing him on the news when he was making trouble in Leith. 

"As soon as they said he bought that church, I said, 'Do we really want him in town?'" Jankowski said. "My feeling is if he brings in all them white supremacists and they start marching up and down the streets, there are little kids here and I just don't think they should be exposed to that."

The cause of the fire is still unknown, but Cobb told WDAY he suspects arson. So does Jankowski.

"There's no doubt in my mind somebody torched it," Jankowski said.

He said he was sad to see the old church go up in flames — it had been in the town since 1908 — but he also doesn't want Cobb as a neighbour.

"If you lived in a small town like I do, would you want him to move in beside you?"