By Kimberly J. McLarin - The New York Times

September 5, 1993

DR. MARTIN SULLIVAN had "good hands," his colleagues said, supple and efficient, and at 68, he was still steady with the knife. He loved his work as a plastic surgeon, just as he loved his family and his vintage cars. He showed no sign of giving any of it up.

At a time of life when most men have retired, Dr. Sullivan still rose early each morning in his Chicago home, made rounds at several hospitals and was scrubbed and in the operating room by 7:30 A.M. After surgery, he would drive to one of his two offices and see patients until late afternoon. That is what Dr. Sullivan was doing the day a man he had never met showed up for an appointment, filled out several forms, followed him into an examination room and shot him four times in the chest.

Within days of the fatal shooting on Aug. 6, police arrested Jonathan Preston Haynes, a wiry, bespectacled, 34-year-old chemist, who confessed to the crime. He told the police he had also killed a San Francisco hairdresser in 1987, and planned to kill other people.

When asked for his reasons, Mr. Haynes said that Aryan beauty -- the blond Nordic look as idealized by the Nazis -- is endangered. For Americans, who defeated the Nazis, to now try to imitate that beauty is hypocrisy, he said, and warrants death.

"I condemn bleached-blond hair, tinted blue eyes and fake facial features brought by plastic surgery," Mr. Haynes said at a hearing. "It's time we faced up to it and stopped feeding off Aryans like a horde of locusts in a field of wheat."

WHEREVER Jonathan Haynes learned to hate, his father said, it was not at home. A banker with a passion for English literature, Edward Haynes provided his wife and four children with a life of comfort, education and travel. At various times the family lived in New York City, Southern California, the Virgin Islands and the San Francisco Bay area. Edward Haynes and his wife, Custis, considered themselves to be liberal, open to people of any race or religion. At home, the family closely followed the civil rights movement of the 1960's and 1970's.

"All the people around him were taking it in like the air that we breathe," the elder Mr. Haynes said, speaking about civil rights, in a telephone interview from Nevada City, Calif. "I think we used to cheer on the Warren Court at the dinner table when one of the big decisions came down."

If his son was harboring racist thoughts, the father said, no one knew it. "They would have been very unpopular," he added.

But in a telephone interview from the Cook County Jail in Illinois, Jonathan Haynes said his admiration of the Nazis began one day when he was 12, when he was leafing through a history book.

"I thought they were very good-looking people, and for some reason I felt more sympathy for them," he said. "I know I was supposed to hate. But I felt I had been born on the wrong side of the battle lines."

He added: "I never talked to my parents about it. I kind of knew instinctively it was a deep dark secret."

Jonathan Haynes was never popular, preferring books to people, even as a child. He secretly read Hitler's "Mein Kampf" in high school, when what his father described as "his troubles" began. The boy became aggressive, had difficulty studying and isolated himself from his family.

He graduated from the Cate School, a private boarding school in Carpinteria, Calif., in 1977, but did not immediately pursue college, as his family hoped. Instead, he spent the next few years working odd jobs and avoiding his parents, who tried unsuccessfully to persuade him to see a psychiatrist.

"He was resolutely opposed to any form of professional help," Edward Haynes said.

Then, suddenly, everything seemed all right. The young man got a job as a laboratory technician, enrolled in a community college, transferred to one California state university and then to another for its chemistry department. He seemed purposeful and confident, his father said. He warmed to his family.

"We were very proud of him," Edward Haynes said. "We were always concerned about the lack of friends but, there was absolutely no indication of radical political views."

Mr. Haynes (who would not discuss his romantic life or history) ran the same ad in a newsletter called White Sisters, a publication for white supremacist women. Both it and WAR are published by White Aryan Resistance, an organization headed by Tom Metzger, a former Ku Klux Klan leader.

Preserving Aryan purity is the first commandment of most white supremacy organizations. Miscegenation is seen as part of a conspiracy by Jews to weaken and eventually dominate whites, and believers are warned to be on the lookout for those masquerading as white.

But researchers at Klanwatch, a division of the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit legal and educational foundation in Montgomery, Ala., said none of the more than 100 white supremacist publications they monitor have specifically advocated violence against plastic surgeons or hairdressers. David Duke, the former Klan leader and Louisiana politician, even wrote a book extolling the virtues of the plastic surgery that helped create his perfectly chiseled Aryan face.

Although Mr. Haynes has emphatically denied affiliation with any white supremacy organization, the Anti-Defamation League in Chicago has evidence of two contacts he made with such groups. In 1987, he apparently traveled to Southern California to meet with David McCalden, a leader at the time in the movement to deny that the Holocaust took place, said Michael Sandberg, Midwest civil rights director of the league. Mr. McCalden has since died. And in 1991, Mr. Haynes tried to sell his neo-Nazi artwork using a mailing list he said he obtained from Joseph Dilys, a Chicago distributor of white supremacist writings. Mr. Dilys has said he does not know Mr. Haynes.

Regardless of whether Mr. Haynes acted on his own, said Lawrence Jeffries of the Center for Democratic Renewal, a nonprofit organization in Atlanta that monitors hate groups, "there would be a lot of widespread support within the white supremacy movement for this man."

Wilmette, Ill., is a conspicuously wealthy Chicago suburb where finding a pay phone on the street is an arduous task. Here Dr. Sullivan operated his Center for Plastic Surgery in a modern two-story office building. Here Mr. Haynes drove on Aug. 6 in his battered old car.

Mr. Haynes arrived on time for a 2:45 P.M. consultation, Bruce Paynter, an assistant state's attorney for Cook County, said during Mr. Haynes's bond hearing. Mr. Haynes gave his name as John Rothman, then sat patiently in the bright white-tiled waiting room of the second-floor clinic, filling out insurance forms with false information.

After about 15 minutes, he was ushered into an examination room. When Dr. Sullivan entered the room, Mr. Haynes pulled out a .38-caliber Colt revolver and opened fire, the prosecutor said.

"There was no conversation," Mr. Paynter said. "No confrontation. This was an execution."

Dr. Sullivan managed to stagger to the door before collapsing on the floor outside the examination room, the police said. While the frantic staff and patients tried to save the physician, Mr. Haynes fled to the street and drove away. He was arrested the following day in Skokie.

"I wasn't all that much concerned with getting caught," he said. "I figured that was a hazard I was willing to take."

Dr. Sullivan was on the staff of six hospitals in the Chicago area and was an assistant professor at Northwestern University School of Medicine. He dedicated only about 15 percent of his practice to cosmetic surgery, said his partner, Dr. John Smith. His speciality was reconstructive surgery, repairing the torn faces of accident victims and rebuilding breasts lost to cancer. For 30 years, he spent one day a week working in a cleft-lip and palate program he helped create at Shriners' Hospital for Crippled Children.

"That's what I find so . . . I don't know what the word is," said an anguished Dr. Smith. "If this fellow had researched Martin, he would have known he was not the plastic surgeon he envisioned."

But when this fact was pointed out to Mr. Haynes, he said it did not matter.

"That's outside the area of my expertise," he said. "The fact that he was listed as a plastic surgeon is enough for me. I'm prepared to get real cold about it."

Dr. Sullivan was a favorite among the nurses with whom he worked. With his closely cut blond hair and trademark bow ties, he loved limericks and jokes, was calm and easygoing in the operating room, drank loads of Pepsi and always seemed to know where to find it on sale. He had eight children and 21 grandchildren. But Mr. Haynes said that he didn't care how beloved his victim had been.

"That's not my problem," he said. "He was listed in the phone book."

Dr. Smith is hurting from the death of his close friend and mentor, he said. He is also very afraid.

"Of course, I feel vulnerable," he said. "I've talked to many other plastic surgeons who feel vulnerable. I know many of them are putting on locks, TV cameras are going up. But I don't think there is any way to defend against this kind of thing."

Anyone who wants to see Dr. Elysa Fisher, another colleague of Dr. Sullivan's, must now be referred by a physician.

"This week I had a patient who was a Yellow Pages referral, and I had my hand on the knob and I had to steel myself to open the door," Dr. Fisher said. "When I did, I saw this 96-pound girl and felt silly. But I am frightened now."

For his part, Mr. Haynes has refused a public defender and has rebuffed his parents' attempt to hire a lawyer for him. He has granted several interviews to journalists and seems glad of the attention. He is completely unrepentant. "I don't have any remorse," he said. "I do regret that I didn't get the manufacturer of the blue contact lenses."

He pointed out that because Dr. Sullivan was not Jewish and was targeted for death because of his profession, not his race or religion, the hate-crime laws of Illinois, which allow for greater punishment of bias crimes, cannot be applied to his case.

By his own account, he does not qualify as an Aryan superman: "I have bad eyes and bad ears." Nor does he see himself as a "stereotypical racist."

"Why go overboard with it?" he said. "I'm a Nazi. Can I say Jimi Hendrix was a great guitarist? I say give people credit for their attributes."

On Tuesday, Mr. Haynes was indicted on a murder charge and, after a psychiatric evaluation, found fit to stand trial. He is scheduled to enter a plea on Sept. 14. The fact that prosecutors may seek the death penalty does not bother him, he said.

"It lends dignity to my cause," he said.

Custis Haynes and one of her other sons have visited Jonathan in jail. But Edward Haynes, weakened by recent surgery, has not been able to go to Chicago to see his son.

"Please convey the grief we feel for the killings and give our deepest sympathies to the families of the men involved," he said.

"We're horrified," he said, "but he is our son and we also love him. We believe he is sick. I view ethnic hatred maybe as the worst mental illness of all, because it affects so many people. Somehow, this virus has attacked our son."

 

---

 

Accused Slayer of a Surgeon Says 'Fake Aryan Beauty' Angers Him

The New York Times

August 11, 1993

A man accused of killing a plastic surgeon said in court on Monday that he was angry about people "diluting the Aryan beauty" by dyeing their hair blond and wearing blue contact lenses.

The man, Jonathan Preston Haynes, 34, of Rockville, Md., was ordered held without bail on charges of murdering Dr. Martin Sullivan at his suburban Chicago office last week. Mr. Haynes, who did not enter a plea, was also ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.

The Cook County State's Attorney office said Mr. Haynes had confessed to fatally shooting the surgeon and to killing a hairdresser in San Francisco in 1987. Detectives there were reviewing the confession before deciding whether to file charges.

Assistant State's Attorney Bruce Paynter said Mr. Haynes had sought out these groups for attacks: hairdressers who dyed hair blond, manufacturers of blue-tint contact lenses and plastic surgeons who made their clients look more "Aryan." Concern About 'Aryan Beauty'

Mr. Haynes, a former chemist for the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, waived his right to a lawyer at the court appearance on Monday and spoke openly about his Nazi-style beliefs. He said he was angry about people "diluting the Aryan beauty".

"I condemn bleach-blond hair and tinted blue eyes," Mr. Haynes said. "I condemn fake Aryan beauty brought about by plastic surgery. You fought World War II against Aryan beauty. Stop feeding off Aryan beauty like a herd of locusts in a wheat field."

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is investigating whether Mr. Haynes was responsible for letters to other doctors threatening to kill them unless they stopped performing cosmetic surgery on Asians, The Chicago Tribune reported today.

Prosecutors said Dr. Sullivan, a 68-year-old plastic surgeon, was apparently selected at random from a phone book. Mr. Haynes, using the name "John Rothman," then made an appointment to see him on Friday at his office in Wilmette, they said.

"He went into the doctor's waiting room and waited," Mr. Paynter said at the hearing. "When the doctor entered the room, he began firing immediately. This was an execution."

In the San Francisco shooting six years ago, the suspect made an appointment under the name "John Rockman." The victim, Frank Ringi, ran a high-profile hairdressing salon, and often appeared on television talk shows to do makeovers.

Mr. Haynes said he came to the Chicago area last month to kill someone associated with a company that made contact lenses. The person has been notified, said Andy Knott, a spokesman for State's Attorney Jack O'Malley.