Man charged in race killing linked to skinheads

Shot in the head at point-blank range, Aaron Wood, 35, was left to die beneath a street lamp on a dark North Philadelphia street.

That was April 16, 1989, and for 17 years what looked like another pointless murder went unsolved.

Then an unrelated federal investigation in Delaware last spring turned up a lead, tying a gun found in a cache controlled by an alleged white supremacist to the slug removed from Wood, who was black.

At a preliminary hearing before Common Pleas Court Judge David Shutter, Thomas Gibison, 35, of Newark, Del., was charged Wednesday with what Philadelphia prosecutors say was a racially motivated murder committed by Gibison and accomplice Craig Petersen to earn their stripes as committed skinheads - the lacy spider webs that both men subsequently got tattooed across their elbows.

Although a "spider-web tat" is not a definitive sign that a person committed murder, Mark Potok, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project in Montgomery, Ala., said yesterday that "it is not an urban legend. Some people do believe that it represents the killing of a minority."

Potok said his group, which tracks hate crimes, became aware of the tattoo's significance more than a decade ago in connection with the murder of a black couple by three white soldiers in North Carolina.

Of Gibison's case, Potok said, "It's perfectly plausible that [the murder of a minority] is what the tat meant to this guy."

In testimony elicited by Assistant District Attorney Roger King, witnesses, including Petersen, 37, who was granted partial immunity, said Gibison wanted to shoot a black man - any black man - and remarked, "There's one right there!" when they spotted Wood walking alone.

Gibison's lawyer, Michael Farrell, said that although his client's tattoos were associated with white supremacy, Gibison did not subscribe to that ideology.

The case was continued for arraignment March 1 on charges of murder and ethnic intimidation.