COWAN, Tenn. (AP) — A 26-year-old volunteer firefighter trying to distance himself from a white-supremacist group was found beaten to death last month in a cornfield in foothills of the Cumberland Mountains, and three fellow members of the group are due in court this week to answer to murder charges.
Corey Matthews, a father of two young girls, was targeted by other members of the Aryan Nations over a dispute, Franklin County Sheriff Tim Fuller has said, and Matthews "stepped outside of the bounds of their beliefs." Police haven't elaborated on what caused the dispute, nor have family members explained why they think he was trying to leave the group.
Three members of Aryan Nations are scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday on murder charges, while a fourth suspect affiliated with another white supremacist gang is on the run.
Investigators found Matthews' badly beaten body on March 24 about a mile from his house in Cowan, a small town that sprung up in the 1850s as a railroad stop between Chattanooga and Nashville.
