Police Probe Gay Link to White Supremacist Murder

South African police investigating the murder of well-known white supremacist Eugene Terre'blanche are looking into allegations that he attempted to have sex with the suspects accused in the crime.

A lawyer for the two black laborers charged with the murder has claimed that Terre'blanche attempted to have sex with at least one of the defendants, according to the Associated Press. Police in Johannesburg had earlier claimed an unspecified pay dispute between Terre'blanche and the two men was at the heart of the slaying. Officials have not commented on the defense lawyer's account.

"We will investigate all pertinent facts that have a bearing on the matter," one official said.

A leader long on the margins of South African politics following the end of the apartheid era in the early 1990s, Terre'blanche was known for his racist and homophobic diatribes as founder of the Afrikaner Resistance Movement. He served six years in prison beginning in 2001 for assaulting a gas station worker and the attempted murder of a security guard in 1996.

Terre'blanche was found half-stripped and beaten to death on April 3 at his family farm near Ventersdorp, 60 miles west of Johannesburg. Thousands of his followers waved apartheid-era flags at his Friday funeral.