A Connecticut man who posted threats against Jews and synagogues on a metal music internet forum plans to argue at his sentencing that he has served enough time in prison.
Kendall Sullivan is scheduled to go before a U.S. District judge in Bridgeport on Monday. He pleaded guilty in January to perpetrating a hoax and originally faced three federal charges of making online threats.
The 50-year-old was arrested in July following an investigation that linked him to messages posted that spring and summer on the Metalthrone.net website.
“I will slaughter them and burn their Synagogue to the ground . . . kids, goldfish, old folks. Shove money down their throats,” Sullivan wrote under the screen name KS43. “These Jews of 2016. They think they are safe.”
Investigators searched Sullivan’s Stamford home and found more than two dozen firearms, gun parts, high-capacity magazines and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
Patricia Ferrick, the agent in charge of the FBI’s New Haven division, said at the time that authorities “may have averted a horrific hate crime from occurring.”
Sullivan is in state prison serving four consecutive 90-day sentences after pleading guilty to weapons charges. Prosecutors plan to argue he also should serve at least a year in federal prison on the hoax charge.
But Sullivan and his attorneys say he’s been punished enough. They contend his posts were not meant to be taken seriously and were part of a heavy metal music culture rooted in themes that “society deems off limits, including the occult, war, death and destruction.”
“Mr. Sullivan has found mostly disappointment and punishing loneliness in this life,” they wrote. “It is no small mystery that he turned to the internet to express his frustrations among other dejected, frustrated white men from suburbia. He spouted off nonsense for shock value among others who took pleasure being shocked.”