"But our position was he [Mouse] was mistaken about who did it," Konradi says of his prepared defense. "We had enough people who would testify to the whereabouts of both these individuals on the night and time this happened. Apparently, Mouse knew these people since a very young age, and he identified them from a photo lineup, even though the attack was over in a matter of seconds in an unlit parking lot."
The two men were preparing to go to trial in February of this year in Criminal District Judge John Creuzot's court when, suddenly and without warning, Mouse refused to testify. The only reason Mouse offers is that he wanted no further trouble from the two men, and he feared prosecuting them might exacerbate the situation.
According to Konradi, Mouse was "very disagreeable" with Assistant District Attorney Tammy Kemp, the prosecutor heading up the case for the Dallas County District Attorney's office. Konradi says Kemp, who did not return calls for this article, tried to contact Millender several times to convince him to testify, but she was never able to reach him.
Finally, Konradi says, Kemp left Millender a phone message asking him to call Konradi about providing a nonprosecution affidavit, but Mouse never returned the message. "She was very disappointed," Konradi says. His clients likely will never stand trial.
Most of Mouse's friends say they wish he had testified against the men he claims stabbed him, but they also understand why he did not. He long thought he had closed the chapter of his life that included the Confederate Hammerskins, only to have it reopened with the edge of a blade.
But Mouse's tribulations may not be over yet. Though there have been no reports of violence against any of the former skinheads who testified during the federal civil-rights trial, a source at the Department of Justice in Washington, D.C., says the FBI likely will look into Mouse's stabbing on the grounds that it may have been retaliation and an obstruction of justice. But the source admits the investigation won't go far without Mouse's cooperation.
Mouse just wants to be left alone, to disappear.
"What happened makes me more sad, actually, than angry," he says. "These people I used to run with--that I thought were my friends, that I thought were almost my brothers and sisters--they did stab me in the back. Multiple times. And it just hurts. I don't run with those people anymore, and I don't have anything to do with them anymore, but why couldn't they just leave me alone and let me do my own thing and they do theirs? I have no grudge against them."
At the end of the interview, Mouse jokes that maybe he'll change his name so his old friends can't find him anymore. Maybe he'll take a Jewish name, maybe a black one--"Leroy Rabinowitz," he says, something with kosher soul. He laughs, but make no mistake--Mouse is a scared man, on the run from a violent past that just may catch up with him.
