A white supremacist from Colorado and self-proclaimed neo-Nazi was sentenced to more than 19 years in prison for planning to blow up a synagogue in Colorado, the Justice Department announced Friday.
Richard Holzer, 28, was jailed for 235 months, which equates to about 19 and a half years, in prison for his plot to attack the Temple Emanuel Synagogue in Pueblo, according to the Office of the Colorado District Attorney. . Holzer was also sentenced to 15 years of supervised release.
Holzer, who was arrested in 2019 and charged with a federal hate crime, pleaded guilty to his charges in a plea deal last October. He admitted to undercover FBI agents at the time of his arrest that he “wanted to do something that would tell Jewish people in the community that they are not welcome in Pueblo, and that they must leave or that they will die,” said the Ministry of Justice. .
Federal officials said Holzer’s plan to detonate explosives in the synagogue met the definition of domestic terrorism, although the dynamite and pipe bombs he received from the undercover FBI agents could not have been detonated.
“Mr. Holzer targeted a place of worship for violence and destruction to drive people of the Jewish faith out of our community,” Michael Schneider, FBI special agent responsible for the Denver office, said in a statement.
Holzer also threatened violence on social media, posting a photo in 2019 showing him pointing a gun and wearing clothes with white supremacy symbols on his Facebook account.
Colorado District Attorney Jason Dunn said Holzer’s conviction was “another step forward in our ongoing fight against extremism.”