Tom Metzger, the notorious former Ku Klux Klan leader who rose to prominence in the 1980s while promoting white separatism and stoking racial violence, has died at age 82. Riverside County Department of Public Health spokesman Jose Arballo Jr. said Metzger died Nov. 4 at a skilled nursing facility in Hemet. The former grand dragon of the California chapter of the Ku Klux Klan became one of racism's most prominent figures after he left that organization in the 1980s to form the White Aryan Resistance movement.