Busted! Tried to frame girlfriend with Jewish center bomb threats
We’ll admit it: we were wrong. We thought white supremacists were behind the wave of bomb threats targeting Jewish community centers (remember this?). Well, it tuns out there is a suspect in the threats – a disgraced journalist allegedly trying to frame his ex-squeeze.
A jilted boyfriend’s festering hate for his ex-lover spawned bomb threats against eight Jewish community centers in a twisted plot to destroy her life, federal officials charged.
The anti-Semitic threats from disgraced journalist Juan Thompson were part of a months-long cyberstalking that increased in intensity and insanity, authorities said.
Thompson, 31, of St. Louis, was arrested over the menacing messages phoned or emailed to Jewish organizations between Jan. 28 and Feb. 22 — a period when the number of anti-Semitic incidents soared nationally. The feds investigated 122 bomb threats to nearly 100 Jewish schools, community centers and other facilities in more than 30 states since Jan. 9.
The New York offices of the Anti-Defamation League were twice targeted by Thompson, as were three other Manhattan locations: A Jewish middle school, a Jewish history museum and a Jewish community center.
The suspect invoked his ex-girlfriend’s name in making four of the bomb threats, the FBI said in court papers. In the other four, he used his own name — and then accused her of trying to frame him.
Three of those messages made a chilling reference to “a Jewish Newtown,” referencing the mass slaughter of 20 first-graders and six staffers at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012.
