Neo-Nazi activist William A. White remains in the Roanoke City Jail, a prisoner of his own words.

In ordering that White be held without bond, at least for now, on charges of encouraging violence against a federal juror in Chicago, U.S. Magistrate Judge Michael Urbanski said Sunday that he was most concerned about a passage White posted in May to his Web site, overthrow.com.

White wrote at the time that he had developed an intricate plot to murder 15 or 20 people, including some of Roanoke’s “Negro nuisances and their annoying counterparts at The Roanoke Times.”

As the head of a Roanoke-based white supremacy group, White has a history of posting incendiary commentaries about race-related issues, both local and national. His online diatribes have often included personal attacks against people in the news — and sometimes at the newspaper for its coverage of the resulting controversies.

In most of the posts, White seems to choose his words carefully, stopping just short of the line between free speech and criminal activity.

While not directly advocating the murder of a federal judge’s family, for example, White once wrote that he understood why someone who shared his neo-Nazi beliefs would feel compelled to commit such a crime.

But the May posting to overthrow.com was different, Urbanski said.

“That troubles me the most,” the judge said of White’s stated plan to murder 15 or 20 people. “He’s talking about doing something himself.”

White was depressed at the time of that post as he dealt with the illness of his wife and newborn daughter, defense attorney William Cleaveland told the judge.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Tom Bondurant countered that White’s comments represented “a danger to the community, no matter how you look at it.”

At the end of an unusual Sunday afternoon hearing in U.S. District Court in Roanoke, Urbanski decided to keep White locked up until Wednesday, when he will consider a report on White's background and prior criminal history before making a final decision on bond.

White was arrested Friday on charges of threatening a juror in the case of Matthew Hale, a fellow white supremacist who was convicted in Chicago in 2004 of soliciting the murder of a federal judge.