CHICAGO – A white supremacist awaiting sentencing for soliciting the murder of a federal judge denied that his supporters were involved in the slayings of her husband and mother, saying in a statement yesterday, “I totally condemn it.”

“There is no way that any supporter of mine could commit such a heinous crime,” Matthew Hale said in the statement released by his mother after her weekly telephone call to him at Chicago’s Metropolitan Correctional Center.

U.S. District Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow arrived home after work Monday to find the bodies of her husband, attorney Michael Lefkow, 64, and her mother, Donna Humphrey, 89, in the basement, shot multiple times.

Chicago police were not discussing the investigation yesterday, but members of area anti-hate groups said investigators met with them about the killings. Police have said white supremacist groups are just one avenue of their investigation into the slayings.

Authorities are analyzing evidence from the home and neighborhood, including a broken window with a fingerprint, a bloody footprint, and cigarette butts. A source told the Associated Press that police also found two .22-caliber casings.

Authorities released sketches late Wednesday of two white men described as “persons of interest” who were seen near Ms. Lefkow’s home the day of the killings.

The Chicago Tribune, citing unidentified sources, said a federal grand jury had been convened to issue subpoenas.

Officials with the Center for New Community and the Anti-Defamation League said investigators also met with their organizations; they declined to give specifics. Both anti-hate groups maintain records of hate group members, including photos.

The shootings came a month before Hale was to be sentenced by another judge for soliciting an undercover FBI informant to murder Ms. Lefkow after she ordered him to change the name of his extremist group as part of a trademark lawsuit.

Hale’s father, retired police officer Russell Hale, spoke to his son by telephone yesterday morning and said the younger Hale was despondent over the turn of events and “knows it’s going to bode terribly bad for him if they don’t find out who did this.”

“I only hope they sincerely wish to apprehend the animal instead of railroading the innocent,” Matthew Hale said in his statement yesterday. “Only an idiot would think I would do this.”

Hale, who has been acting as his own attorney, had argued in a court filing that he shouldn’t be sentenced to more than eight years in prison and contended authorities owed him and the judge apologies for causing Ms. Lefkow and her family “to think that her life was in danger needlessly and wrongly.” The papers were filed the week before the killings but made public Monday, according to the Tribune.

Ms. Lefkow is now under guard, along with her four daughters.

Hale was moved this week from a cell with a radio and legal materials he used while serving as his own attorney to a cell with nothing but a bed, sink, and toilet, his father said.