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GREENSBORO - Councilman Mike Barber said Thursday he's "very skeptical" of claims Officer Julius Fulmore reported the alleged destruction of documents related to the 1979 Klan/Nazi shooting to an assistant city attorney.

Barber's reasoning: "Our legal department has a policy of recording interviews with personnel. There is not a formal record of a meeting or any kind of conversation when Mr. Fulmore brought this forward."

It's equally troubling if Fulmore had an informal conversation with the attorney, Barber said.

"If it was an informal conversation, then we're right back to where we started," he said. "Who did (Fulmore) tell? What did he tell them? And what was done with the information?"

On Wednesday, Fulmore's attorney confirmed that his client is the anonymous source who told three local ministers that investigative files from the 1979 Klan-Nazi shooting were ordered destroyed.

"Officer Fulmore was one of several officers who was asked to destroy approximately 50 boxes of documents when the Truth and Reconciliation project was started," Amiel Rossabi, Fulmore's attorney, said on Wednesday. "He declined to do it. ... He felt that it was wrong and went through the proper channels (with the city), hoping (they) would do the right thing."

Rossabi wouldn't name the attorney Wednesday, saying he hoped that person would come forward on his or her own.

Calls to Rossabi and the city's legal department weren't immediately returned Thursday morning.

The Klan-Nazi shootings happened the morning of Nov. 3, 1979, just as the march was forming in the Morningside Homes community. A heavily armed caravan of Klansmen and Nazis drove into the area and confronted anti-Klan marchers, many of whom were members of what became the Communist Workers Party.

In the ensuing gunfire, five anti-Klan marchers were killed and 10 others wounded. All criminal defendants later were acquitted in state and federal criminal trials. A civil jury found members of the Greensboro Police Department and some Klansmen liable for one death.

Contact Margaret Moffett Banks at 373-7031 or margaret.banks@news-record.com