A Massachusetts man has pleaded guilty in federal court to threatening to kill members of the state’s Jewish community and bomb local synagogues.
John Reardon, 59, of Millis, Massachusetts, pleads guilty to one count of obstruction of free exercise of religious beliefs by threat of force, one count of transmitting in interstate commerce a threat to injure a person, and one count of stalking using a facility of interstate commerce.
“This defendant’s threats to bomb synagogues and kill Jewish children stoked fear in the hearts of congregants at a time when Jews are already facing a disturbing increase in threats,” Attorney General Merrick Garland says in a statement. “No person and no community in this country should have to live in fear of hate-fueled violence.”
Jodi Cohen, the special agent in charge of the FBI Boston Field Office, says the guilty plea sends a message that “you cannot call and threaten people with violent physical harm and not face repercussions.”
“People of all races and faiths deserve to feel safe in their communities,” she says.
In January, Reardon called Congregation Agudas Achim in Attleboro, Massachusetts, and left a voicemail making several threats to kill congregants and bomb the synagogue, including that “if you can kill the Palestinians, we can kill you,” federal authorities said. Ten minutes later, he allegedly made a call to another local synagogue and a Jewish organization.
Reardon was arrested days later.
(AP)
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2 Responses
Congregation Agudas Achim in Attleboro, Massachusetts is a Reconstructionist temple, the temple of a religion other than Judaism. Therefore, it is not a synagogue. YWN should get its facts straight before publishing articles.
Jane, it doesn’t matter what kind of place it is, the point is that it’s a place where Jews gather and are vulnerable, and this person threatened to bomb it and to kill the Jews. He doesn’t care about what religion they practice, and neither should we, at least for the purposes of this case. His threat was against all of us, not just those particular Jews.
It wouldn’t make a difference even if it had been a Buddhist ashram where Jews were known to assemble, or a Baptist church where deluded Jews hold their foreign worship; he threatened them because they were Jews, not because of anything else. And even if they weren’t actually Jews, the point is that he thought they were.