A white Colorado supremacist who calls himself a neo-Nazi was sentenced to more than 19 years in prison for plotting to blow up a Colorado synagogue, the Justice Department announced on Friday.
Richard Holzer, 28, received a 235-month sentence, which amounts to about 19 and a half years, in prison for his plot to attack the Temple Emanuel Synagogue in Pueblo, according to the Colorado District Attorney’s Office. Holzer was also sentenced to 15 years of supervised freedom.
Holzer, who was arrested and charged with a federal hate crime in 2019, pleaded guilty to his charges in a plea bargain last October. He admitted to undercover FBI agents at the time he was arrested that he wanted to “do something that told Jews in the community that they are not welcome in Pueblo and that they should leave or die,” according to the Justice Department.
Federal officials said Holzer’s scheme to fire explosives in the synagogue met the definition of domestic terrorism, although the dynamite bombs and tubes he received from secret FBI agents could not have been detonated.
“Mr. Holzer chose a place of worship for violence and destruction to remove people of Jewish faith from our community,” said Michael Schneider, special FBI agent in charge of the Denver office, in a statement.
Holzer also made threats of violence on social media and posted a photo of him pointing a gun and wearing clothes with symbols of white supremacy on his Facebook account in 2019.
Colorado District Attorney General Jason Dunn called Holzer’s sentence “one more step forward in our ongoing struggle against extremism”.