Music festival promoter with white supremacist ties cleared of assault charges, still in custody

Published 6:00 pm Friday, January 20, 2023

A man with white supremacist ties who advertised a music festival in the Bend area was cleared of domestic violence charges Friday after he was arrested in Deschutes County earlier this month.

Jacob Laskey, 42, promoted a heavy metal music festival earlier this year that was scheduled to be held at an undisclosed location in Bend in June. The festival was called “MurderFest,” according to Laskey’s original announcement on his now-deleted Instagram account.

The event boasted a lineup of various death and black metal bands.

At least two have dropped out of the festival, but one band, “AltRite,” intends to play if the festival happens.

Laskey was first arrested in 2002 for throwing swastika-engraved rocks through a Eugene synagogue’s window during a service, according to court documents.

In 2018, he was arrested for stabbing a fellow member of a white supremacy group, the American Front. He served time in prison for those crimes.

Concerns swirled social media following Laskey’s announcement of the music festival. Some of those concerns escalated Wednesday at a Bend City Council meeting when two Bend residents from a Jewish family described the fear that has invaded their lives since they found out about the festival.

Police and city officials addressed the concerns at Wednesday’s meeting.

Multiple City Council members and the mayor condemned hate, Nazism and discrimination, and the chief of Bend’s police department, Mike Krantz, acknowledged the fear MurderFest incited within the Bend community.

Since Bend doesn’t have a designated intelligence unit within the police department, Krantz indicated partner organizations like Oregon State Police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are often made aware of bias-based incidents like this, he said.

“We just won’t stand for violence in our community let alone bias-based violence,” Krantz told The Bulletin. “We want to ensure we do thorough investigations and we hold people accountable.”

On Jan. 5, Laskey was arrested in Deschutes County for allegedly assaulting a domestic partner in the presence of a minor. It was Laskey’s second assault charge in less than a year. The January charges were dismissed Friday morning due to a lack of evidence, according to District Attorney Steve Gunnels, but Laskey is still in custody at the Deschutes County jail.

“We concluded that we could not prove that he caused a physical injury to the alleged victim,” Gunnels said.

Laskey is now facing 10 contempt of court charges because he allegedly continued to contact his partner and the alleged victim of the assault charges, Faith Luecke, after the court forbade him.

Luecke protested the no-contact order at a hearing Friday.

“I am not a victim,” Luecke said at the hearing. “I’m not afraid of him.”

Laskey, who appeared in court via video conference, began mumbling incoherent chants during the hearing Friday afternoon. The contempt of court charges against him will go to trial in February.