CHICAGO — Jeffery Lynn Berry, who as leader of the American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan led marches on town squares that cost municipalities thousands of dollars in security costs, has died at age 60.

Berry died May 31 from lung cancer at Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oak Lawn, Ill., said the Cook County clerk’s office spokeswoman Courtney Greve.

Berry spent much of the 1990s as the National Imperial Wizard of the Butler, Ind.-based American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. The Journal Gazette reported that the group marched on town squares, courthouse greens and outside an elementary school.

In 2001, Berry was sentenced to seven years in prison after he was convicted of conspiring to hold a TV reporter and camerawoman hostage in his home.

Lawyers with the Southern Poverty Law Center won a $120,000 judgment against him.

While serving his prison sentence, Berry sent a letter from prison to a DeKalb County judge denouncing his involvement with the Klan.

That letter also said he had “turned his life over to God.”

In 2007, three years after Berry was released from prison, his son Anthony Berry attacked him at a party, leaving Berry with “life-altering” brain injuries.

His son was sentenced to a year in jail and ordered to help cover the costs of the medical bills.