Chicago ? A jailed white supremacist who has been a focus of the investigation into the slayings of a federal judge’s husband and mother will no longer be allowed to visit or speak with his parents, the family said Tuesday.

An official from the Metropolitan Correctional Center, where Matt Hale is being held, called Hale’s parents Monday and told them they would not be allowed their weekly telephone calls and every-other-week visits, the parents said.

They said the official did not give a reason or explain when they would be able to talk to their son or see him again.

“I was just so stunned that I didn’t think to ask why,” said Hale’s father, Russell Hale, a retired police sergeant. “It’s especially hard because we need him now and he needs us.”

Authorities have said white supremacists are just one avenue of the investigation. On Tuesday, Chicago detectives and FBI agents searched the law office of the judge’s husband and spent hours examining his files, a source familiar with the investigation told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

Neither the FBI nor the U.S. attorney’s office would comment on the visits between Hale and his parents or the search of the law office.

Matt Hale, 33, was convicted last year of soliciting an FBI informant to kill Judge Joan Humphrey Lefkow after she ordered him to stop using the name World Church of the Creator for his group because of a trademark lawsuit.