The High School ‘Asshole’ Who Became a Blackface-Wearing Neo-Nazi Homeschool Dad

When Logan Lawrence was unmasked last week as the co-founder of a neo-Nazi homeschooling network, some of his friends and former classmates said the news immediately rang true.

Lawrence, 36, who grew up in Upper Sandusky and until recently worked for his family’s insurance company, left a litany of signs of his racist beliefs over the years. He mocked Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech on his middle school intercom, had an obsession with WWII history in high school, and, later, dressed in racist garb at a local bar.

In now-deleted photos posted to the Facebook page of the Shotzy’s Bar and Grill restaurant in Upper Sandusky, which is owned by the sister of Logan’s best man at his wedding, Logan was photographed at multiple Halloween parties in blackface and other racist costumes. VICE News has confirmed with multiple people that it was Logan in the pictures. A representative of Shotzy’s Bar and Grill did not respond to a request for comment on the pictures.

One person who was at Logan’s wedding and at the parties where Logan wore these costumes, said she was not surprised at last week’s revelations.

“Logan has always been an asshole and the people who know him aren’t shocked,” she told VICE News.

Logan and his wife Katja Lawrence were unmasked last week as the operators of a neo-Nazi homeschool network, known as Dissident Homeschool on Telegram, by the anti-fascist researchers at the Anonymous Comrades Collective. The Telegram group has thousands of members, and shares classroom resources infused with Adolf Hitler quotes, antisemitic themes and white supremacist ideologies. Last year, Katja Lawrence said on a podcast that the reason she started the group was because she was “having a rough time finding Nazi-approved school material for [her] homeschool children.”

Now, Lawrence,  who worked as a web designer for years and designed the local sheriff’s website and the website of Shotzy’s Bar and Grill, shares examples of how her family embraces Nazi ideology, including baking a Fuhrer cake for Hitler’s birthday and a recording of her children shouting “sieg heil.”

After the group was revealed, politicians across Ohio, including Governor Mike DeWine, spoke out against it. But the town of Upper Sandusky has been strangely quiet, and some residents even allege that there has been a concerted campaign to try and silence those speaking out about the Nazi homeschool revelations, and a long and deep-rooted normalization of racism. 

VICE News spoke to more than a dozen residents and former residents of Upper Sandusky about the Lawrences and the town’s relative silence. Many of these residents knew the Lawrences personally; some of them graduated high school with Logan Lawrence, some of them worked with Katja Lawrence, and one individual was at the Lawrences’ wedding. The Lawrences were a couple who “knew everyone and everyone knew them,” one resident told VICE News, adding that there is little chance that the Lawrences were alone in their beliefs.

“They have friends in the community,” another resident who requested anonymity told VICE News. “They've done business in the community. And so somewhere along the line, one would imagine, that they talk to people who are friends with them in the community and there may be some like-minded people around them. The Lawrences knew everyone, and everyone knew them.”

Please send tips about the Lawrences or the neo-Nazi homeschool network to David Gilbert at david.gilbert@vice.com. For Signal, DM @Daithaigilbert on Twitter.

Most of those who spoke to VICE News did not want their names published, and were granted anonymity because of fears of personal or professional attacks from their fellow residents who want the news to simply disappear.

Last week, Kortney Lange, one of Lawrence’s high school classmates, posted a video on TikTok about the homeschool network and was almost immediately hit with what she said felt like “a barrage of messages” telling her to take the video down. Critics, she said, claimed she was damaging the town and the good people who live there.

“Are there racist people in Upper?” one person commented on one of Lange’s Facebook posts, adding: “Hell yes, but in general they are good people.”

But others criticized Upper Sandusky residents for not taking a stand against anti-semitism and racism.

“While there has been a strong response outside of Upper, the community has had minimal reactions,” one resident who requested anonymity, told VICE News. “The response from city officials has been extremely limited with many acting indifferent to things. However, the same day the news [about the Nazi homeschool group] came out, there was a flurry of postings on Facebook warning about an African American man going door to door selling vacuums. Priorities, I suppose.”

While Lawrence’s outward appearance was that of a normal high school student, Lange, Lawrence’s “locker buddy,” remembers he wasn’t particularly interested in school, but was uniquely fascinated with lessons on World War II. “There was a history class that we had together and there was a lesson on the topic of World War II,” she told VICE News. “He didn’t really put a lot of thought towards much [in school], but he was really into that lesson.” Lawrence would continue this obsession after high school, studying history, political science and German at Ohio State University.

Another time, towards the end of middle school, Lange remembers Lawrence’s reaction to a lesson about the history of segregation. 

“Some of us wore red stickers and some of us wore blue stickers. And then in the middle of the week, we would switch it up and then basically it was meant to teach us about segregation,” she said.

Logan didn’t want to participate so he just colored his sticker purple. But he did take part in another way. “Teachers allowed him to get on the intercom and basically do an entire MLK-type speech [of I Have a Dream] and it was in a very mocking manner.” Another person who went to school with Logan corroborated this account.

“Looking back on it now there were some red flags [about Logan], but realistically, I mean everybody in town has a red flag,” Lange said.

Last month, the Dissident Homeschool group shared a lesson plan to mark the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. which included a quote from Adolf Hiter and described the civil rights leader as “a deceitful, dishonest, riot-inciting negro.”

April, a former neighbor of the Lawrences, said she had no indication the Lawrences’ harbored such antisemitic and racist views, but has long known how deep the racism runs in the Upper Sandusky.

“I've always been one of the darker-skinned people in [Upper Sandusky], so I've always had a lot of racist interactions,” April, who is of hispanic descent, told VICE News. “I've been followed through grocery stores. People would scream the N-word at me in social settings. I mean, there’s always been a very racial ugliness to the town.” When she was in high school, she said, April remembered her best friend at the time was dating the son of one of the school officials. One day, April said she called her friend at home but her friend’s boyfriend answered before shouting to his girlfriend: “The n****r is on the phone.”

April, whose real name has been withheld due to concerns about safety and community blowback, only had a couple of interactions with the couple, including one time when she said Katja Lawrence ridiculed the appearance of her house because she had placed plastic over the windows during the winter to keep the wind out.

The revelation about her former neighbors has unnerved April and she is scared that she and her family could become targets if these views are not more strongly condemned. “Who else is smiling at me at church on Sunday and going home and hoping I die?” April said. “Who am I passing at Walmart that has the secret agenda to their life at home just because of the color of my skin? That's what makes me nervous, that it was hiding in plain sight.”

Upper Sandusky used to be known as a “sundown town” a designation applied to towns that had laws practicing racial segregation. In Upper Sandusky, during the 1930s and 1940s, Black people were warned that they should not be out of their homes after the sun went down. One online account claimed that a sign posted at a local mill read: “N****r don’t let the sun set on you.”

While the sign was long ago taken down, town residents say that the throughline of racism continued for decades; Lange and others told VICE News that it was an open secret that the Ku Klux Klan were operating in the area and meeting in farms just outside the town. 

In the 1985 yearbook from the local high school that Logan Lawrence attended, a picture of people dressed in the KKK’s signature white robes is featured, according to a TikTok video posted by a resident of Upper Sandusky this week.

Today, Upper Sandusky remains an overwhelmingly white town, with just 6 residents identifying as Black out of a population of over 6,600, according to the latest census data from 2020. In total, almost 95% of people reported their ethnicity as white only.

"The reality is that this town has been very conservative, it has had a history of racism years and years ago,” ​​ another local resident told VICE News. “There's very little outward racism that occurs [now] but it's very much behind the scenes.”

But it’s not just behind the scenes. Weeks before the revelations about the Nazi homeschool group, the town was roiled by the murder of 22-year-old Keris Riebel on Jan. 1. Riebel was working in a Dollar Tree store and a machete-wielding man entered the store and killed her.

The man, 27-year-old Bethel Bekele, has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, but the murder was quickly seized upon by white supremacist protesters who held a demonstration in front of the courthouse two weeks after the murder.

Several people who witnessed the protest told VICE News that it was hard to know if local people took part, because the participants had covered their faces. Images and video of the protest posted on social media show the attendees were armed with assault rifles and wearing skull masks, a signifier of neo-Nazi accelerationist groups.

Riggin Scheer, the racist podcaster who helped promote the Dissident Homeschool group to a national audience, has been seen wearing a similar mask while protesting a George Floyd memorial gathering in Brookings, South Dakota according to images shared with VICE News.

The murder “has exacerbated racism and nativism in this town,” Nick Barnes, a local resident who operates a food truck in the town, told VICE News.

While statewide figures have condemned the neo-Nazi homeschool network, and the Ohio Department of Education has launched an investigation, local officials have remained largely silent.

Both the Upper Sandusky City Council and the Wyandot County Commission have yet to make public comment on the situation and did not respond to VICE News request for comment. “The Wyandot Chamber Board initially told VICE News it would not be commenting, but on Friday issued a statement saying it “strongly denounces and condemns any intolerant actions or teachings, including those by the Dissident Homeschool network.”

“People aren't as angry about it as I want them to be,” April said. “And it's making me feel less important. It makes me feel less of a person because I want them to fight and be angry. So when they aren't it makes me feel like I'm not as valid.”

The local newspaper, the Daily Chief-Union, was similarly silent on the news, but finally published a story on its website four days after the revelations were made public. The article however does not name the family involved, does not include comment from any Upper Sandusky residents, and simply lists the various statements issued by officials and lawmakers.

The biggest Facebook group in the town, which has as many members as the town’s entire population, refused to post VICE News’ article. One user tried to post the piece, but was denied. 

A VICE News post seeking comment from Upper Sandusky residents was deleted by the administrators of the account, who did not respond to repeated attempts to contact them for comment.

In another Facebook group, a  private homeschool group that Katja Lawrence was a member of, posted a statement condemning the actions of the Lawrences without naming them specifically.

However, in screenshots viewed by VICE News, some members of the Facebook group criticized the statement and defended the Lawrences, calling it “a hateful and judgemental statement against a family being attacked by cowards.”

One user continued to defend the Lawrences, writing that “at best, [the journalists and researchers] identified someone who has an educational focus on cultural heritage and race-pride.”

The Lawrences have yet to respond to the revelations about the Dissident Homeschool network, but Logan Lawrence’s family, which operates an insurance agency in the town, issued a statement last week on their company’s website condemning “the viewpoints and ideology recently expressed by Logan Lawrence and his wife.”

The statement added that Logan Lawrence no longer works at the company in any capacity. A person with knowledge of the Lawrence Insurance Agency told VICE News that the office “is being inundated with harassing and threatening phone calls.”  

In a Facebook post, Logan’s aunt, Stacy Barth, said that the extended family members had no idea what was going on with the Lawrences’ homeschool network.  

“Those who question the knowledge of the family are entitled to believe what you want,” Barth wrote. “I am part of this family. I can promise you this has destroyed all of us. We have been ‘silent’ trying to process all of this. Logan’s immediate family has lost their son, brother, uncle, we have lost our nephew and great niece and great nephews. A comment was made by a family member that it is like they died but are alive. Many of us have cried more this week than we have our entire lives.” 

Members of the family did not respond to multiple requests for comment. 

But not everyone thinks statements like these are exactly true. 

One of Katja Lawrence’s closest friends in Upper Sandusky, who was at her wedding, believes their family is trying to stop people from speaking out about their neo-Nazi activities.

“There is currently a witch hunt for anyone speaking to news outlets,” she told VICE News. “Logan’s extended family members appear to be more concerned about who is speaking to the news than publicly condemning his actions. I’ve been told by locals that  the town, the family and the insurance business shouldn’t suffer because of one bad apple.”