White supremacist Hardy Carroll Lloyd was arrested Thursday on federal charges, accused of trying to influence witnesses and testimony in the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting trial through emails and blogs posts calling for violence against Jews and threatening to dox jurors, witnesses, and anyone who pushed back against his hateful rhetoric.
Federal charges were filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Northern West Virginia. The complaint against Lloyd was unsealed Thursday morning after he was taken into custody by federal agents at his Follansbee, W.Va., home.
Lloyd, 45, has a long history of antisemitism, violence, and making threats against the Jewish community, the LGBTQ community, and anyone else who is not straight and white.
“Jury trials are a hallmark of the American justice system, and attempts to intimidate witnesses or jurors will be met with a strong response,” said U.S. Attorney William Ihlenfeld. “The use of hateful threats in an effort to undermine a trial is especially troubling.”
In a series of emails and blog posts that escalated as the death penalty trial against Pittsburgh synagogue shooter Robert Bowers progressed, Lloyd called for so-called lone wolves to target synagogues and Jews.
“Walk into a synagogue and gun down 11 Jews and one rabbi,” he wrote in late May. “That’s how you make a difference, people.”
Lloyd also took aim at jurors in the case, writing in one website post: “Y’all who are on the jury, make sure to vote what you know in your heart is morally correct.”
In another email, he expressed a desire to obtain jurors’ names after the proceedings.
“Hope the jurors get told that and vote the right way,” he allegedly wrote.
Lloyd is the self-appointed reverend of the hate group dubbed the Church of Ben Klassen, named for the late Florida congressman and white supremacist. He founded the hate group/religious movement known as the Creativity Movement. He has taken responsibility for racist and antisemitic flyers and stickers left across Pittsburgh in recent months and weeks.
"Threats of violence used to intimidate or influence a community or jury cannot and will not be tolerated,” said Mike Nordwall, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Pittsburgh office.
In addition to the threatening emails and online posts, Lloyd or someone working with him placed antisemitic stickers in and around Squirrel Hill over the course of the trial. The stickers directed people to Lloyd’s website where he posted his threats and other vitriol.
Shawn Brokos, director of security for the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh, said the flyers, stickers and emails increased as the trial began.
Much of it, she said, was hateful but free speech, but some of it, like Lloyd’s emails, went beyond the pale.
There is a fine line between protected hateful speech and the vitriolic threats and direct calls to action that filled Lloyd’s emails and online posts, Ms. Brokos said, and it’s often difficult to discern which side of that line some things fall on.
Targeted threats can be a deciding factor.
“They may be not targeted at one particular location but rather targeted at the Jewish Pittsburgh community,” she said. “This particular individual is very familiar with the Pittsburgh Jewish community. The emails had a continual call to action by ‘lone wolves.’”
She said context also matters.
“Does this individual have a history of violence? Access to weapons? Yes. Together, that is a very concerning recipe for danger,” she said.
Indeed, Lloyd is from the Pittsburgh area and has a history of making violent threats and illegally possessing weapons.
He was acquitted of homicide in 2006 in connection with the 2004 shooting death of a former girlfriend, Lori Hann, after his defense attorney argued he’d shot the unarmed woman in self-defense. A jury found Lloyd not guilty of murder but convicted him on charges of illegally possessing a handgun.
His federal court saga in Pittsburgh began in 2009 when he was indicted on a federal charge of carrying firearms without a license. Those firearms, according to court records, included at least three pistols, two shotguns, two rifles and two revolvers.
He ultimately pleaded guilty to the one-count indictment in 2010 and was sentenced that August to 30 months in federal prison followed by three years of supervised release.
In October 2015, the government asked that Lloyd’s supervised release be modified to dictate that he not have a computer or cell phone with internet access. The request was based on blog posts by Lloyd that, among other things, called for the murder of parents who circumcise their children.
The judge signed off on that modification.
In August 2016, a judge revoked Lloyd’s release after he was charged with harassment by Pittsburgh police. Court filings indicate Lloyd wrote a threatening blog post calling for the victim’s personal information because the victim was “a bigot promoting anti-white hate.”
Lloyd was ordered to spend 14 months in prison to be followed by 22 months of supervised release.
Similar cycles played out in 2017 and 2019: Lloyd was released, violated the terms of that release with bigoted and antisemitic internet posts, and sentenced to more time in federal prison and more supervised release. In 2019, he was sentenced to two years in federal prison. He was released in late 2020.
He popped up next in Texas in 2022 when the state Department of Public Safety offered a $1,000 reward for information leading to Lloyd’s arrest. He was wanted on charges of making terroristic threats after he made comments online threating to bring a gun to the state Capitol grounds and “challenge any law enforcement officers who tries to take enforcement actions against him.”
It was not clear whether Lloyd is still wanted on those charges. The Texas Department of Public Safety did not immediately return requests for comment.
“The offender in this case targeted the Jewish community for years with hate, vitriol, and calls for violence,” said Michael Masters, director and chief executive of the Secure Community Network, a nonprofit dedicated to securing the safety of Jewish communities in North America.
“He is well known to the Jewish community. He is also well known to the security professionals at the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh and SCN, and to the members of law enforcement.
“Now he can become well known — once again — to those in our penal system,” he said.
Even months before the trial began, Lloyd was making comments on YouTube that prompted Google to reach out to law enforcement.
On Feb. 25 he wrote: “See my website, I openly advocate killing Jews and cops” and included a link to his website, according to the new federal charges against him.
On March 16 he allegedly wrote: “We just start killing Jews now!!” Minutes later he posted another comment: “I only fear that the Jews will win. We must start killing Jews now.”
The complaint cited nearly a dozen other similar YouTube comments left throughout February and March. Most called for the killing of Jewish people, Black people, and members of the LGBTQ community.
Lloyd began making comments about the Bowers trial in early May, according to the complaint. The comments began on the Russian social media website VK and eventually began appearing on Lloyd’s website.
“Robert Bowers is a hero,” one website post read. “Any juror who finds him guilty is an anti-white criminal and to be [sic] treated as such.”
Many posts and emails misidentified the synagogue shooter as “Richard Bowers.”
On May 18, he made an appeal for personal information on the jury pool:
“If anyone has the doxing info, legally, for the 70 jurors on the Richard Bowers trial in Pgh, send to us so we can legally post said public info as a useful guide to keep the trial honest [sic]. … Y’all who are on the jury, make sure to vote what you know in your heart is morally correct.”
The post ended with a warning: “Free Richard Bowers, City of Pittsburgh, or else there will be ‘legal consiquences [sic].”
In a May 19 email to an unnamed individual, Lloyd allegedly wrote that he planned to file for the release of juror names after the trial ended.
“Hope the jurors get told that and vote the right way,” he wrote.
Racist and antisemitic stickers emblazoned with Lloyd’s website began appearing in Pittsburgh around the same time. Investigators said license plate reader information showed Lloyd was in the area, specifically around Oakland, the night before the stickers were first noted.
A May 28 email sent to an unknown number of recipients — including the Post-Gazette — included a call to action:
“Jews rabbis, CEOs, bank presidents, corporate presidents, those who run the large investment firms and trans-national corporations, etc … These are the scum we need to kill. The lowly [racial slur] is NOT a good target. If ya got to go to prison, go in for whacking 11 [antisemitic slur]. Go in for for committing a mass [slur] church shooting. Get them Lone Wolf scores up, people!! It’s the jews who run the world. KILL THEM!!! [sic]”
Cell phone data showed Lloyd was in Pittsburgh — specifically Oakland and the East End — for more than 12 hours over the course of May 29 and May 30. Testimony in the trial began May 30.
In early June, he began posting photos to his website of survivors and witnesses in the synagogue shooting trial. One post included the full name of one witness set to testify in the trial and a note that that witness lived in Squirrel Hill.
Emails and online posts made after jurors convicted the synagogue shooter of all 63 federal charges against him encouraged violence against Jews:
“If you are a lone wolf who lives in PA, Ohio or Western NY I pray you take this out on random [antisemitic slur]?!? And if you do kill, make sure you do it smart, not emotional, and get away. Legally, of course [sic].”
He also alluded to violence at that weekend’s Taylor Swift concert in Pittsburgh:
“Wouldn’t it be nice if some [lone wolf] shot it up??? Not that we would EVER suggest something so ‘illegal.’ (Wink Wink) [sic].”
Posts and emails threatening and calling for violence if jurors returned a death sentence continued through July and early August.
“Shed jew blood till none is left to spill [sic],” he wrote Aug. 3. “Bowers showed us the way. Time to follow him.”
A Regent Square resident who asked not to be named out of safety concerns said she called and emailed the group when flyers were left on cars in the neighborhood over the weekend. She, then, became the target of Lloyd’s vitriol.
“I did what any thoughtful, caring person whose neighborhood was soiled by the filth, hate and absolute evil these people espouse, would do,” she said.
She said that while she did act a bit on impulse, but she’d have done the same thing if she’d caught the person who placed the flyers in the act.
“But they’re cowards who only strike in the dead of night,” she said. “So I emailed and I called and I told them to keep their filth out of my neighborhood.”
She’s been doxed, harassed and threatened. She was listed on the “enemies” page of Lloyd’s website alongside others ranging from synagogue shooting survivors, former and current public safety officials, and anyone else who pushed back against the hateful rhetoric.
“I’m disgusted. I’m scared and I’m heartbroken,” she said. “The best I can do is block them and move on.”
On Tuesday, a post allegedly made by Lloyd indicated a plan to target two random members of the Jewish community in both Pittsburgh and Austin. The post contained a postscript: “The above is protected under the [First Amendment] as a general call to violence.”
Ms. Brokos, the director of community security for Pittsburgh’s Jewish federation, said they set up a security command post and 24/7 intelligence center at the start of the trial, tracking threatening and derogatory social media posts.
The uptick in flyers, stickers and internet postings continued throughout the trial but especially ramped up after jurors sentenced the synagogue shooter to death Aug. 2.
“Individuals participating in this chatter on social media have largely fallen into one of two groups: Those praising Bowers and those claiming that the trial was staged,” she said.
Social media and message board posts increasingly referred to the shooter as a martyr and saint and called for more death. She said no other credible threats have been found among those posts.
Lloyd appeared briefly before U.S. Magistrate Judge James P. Mazzone late Thursday morning. He is being held by the U.S. Marshals pending a detention Tuesday morning.
First Published: August 10, 2023, 1:52 p.m.
Updated: August 11, 2023, 2:47 p.m.
