Attorney Edgar Steele has died
COEUR d'ALENE - Outspoken and in the end imprisoned, North Idaho trial lawyer, author and speaker Edgar J. Steele died Thursday, his family confirmed. He was 69.
His wife, Cyndi Steele, said Friday that her husband died of pneumonia, a lung infection he had for a year. She accused the federal prison in Victorville, Calif., of failing to provide Steele with adequate care.
"His death is just a continuation of the unjust treatment my husband has faced since the day of his arrest" in June 2010, Cyndi Steele said.
She had not talked with him in three weeks, but she said their relationship remained strong.
"Things between us have always been great," she said.
Edgar Steele went to prison after a federal court jury in Boise convicted him of hiring a hitman to kill Cyndi Steele. He was sentenced to 50 years.
A recording made with a small, secret listening device carried by Steele's handyman, Larry Fairfax, captured Steele ordering the hit against his wife. He and his family maintained it was a fake.
"My husband died alone, (and) mistreated," she said. "I never got to see him."
She said she had not seen him face to face in roughly three years.
"I know my husband is innocent," she said. "I know he passed away loving me as much as he did when we got married. I love him then, I love him today, and I always will."
She said while she was considered the victim in the U.S. government's case against her husband, she said it was actually the federal government and the judicial system that "victimized" her.
She shared a message with The Press which she said she had posted to her Facebook account: "Where ever you are, I can only pray that you know all this and can rest in peace."
Edgar and Cyndi Steele have a son and two daughters, all adults.
Edgar Steele graduated with a bachelor's degree from the University of Washington, then served four years in the U.S. Coast Guard.
He went on to graduate from the University of California at Berkeley, with a master's degree in business administration, then from the UCLA School of Law, before working for a law firm in the San Francisco Bay Area.
He left to work on his own and came to North Idaho, living in Sagle until his arrest.
As a lawyer, he worked on behalf of politically-incorrect clients, such as former Aryan Nations leader Richard Butler.
He wrote the nonfiction book "Defensive Racism: An Unapologetic Examination of Racial Differences," which promised to "blow the cover off the conspiracy for the New World Order, which is turning America into a police state and rendering (the American) electoral process meaningless."
"Steele conjures the vision of a New America, rising Phoenix-like from the ashes and resurrecting the principles of liberty and personal freedom upon which (America) originally was founded, all the while charting a clear, easy-to-follow path for the individual through the coming chaos," according to the book's website. "Bold, powerful and persuasive, 'Defensive Racism' weaves a compelling argument to deal with racial differences we all recognize, yet pretend not to notice."