White supremacist Jeffrey Hall saw threats in the protesters who demonstrated outside his Southern California house. He installed a surveillance camera pointed at the cul-de-sac outside the tidy home where strangers might approach.

The threat he feared, however, was not outside. It came, authorities say, from within the home: His 10-year-old son shot him to death last week.

Police arriving at the house in the early morning hours on May 1 for a report of gunfire found Hall's body on a sofa.

Prosecutors won't say if they know the motive, but family court records portray a troubled boy who spent his first years hungry and living in filth while his parents went through a messy divorce that included accusations of child abuse.

Evidence about how he was reared is likely to surface in a case that raises questions about whether the boy is mature enough to know right from wrong and whether his father's extremist views played a role in the shooting.