Austin Police Department
The journals of a Texas college student who torched a synagogue two years ago reveal he had become “consumed” by virulent racist and antisemitic beliefs he developed years earlier and joined the state’s version of the National Guard because he thought it would “give him access to like-minded people who shared his hate.”
A Nov. 20 sentencing memo filed by federal prosecutors unveils an especially disturbing string of diary entries from Franklin Barrett Sechriest, who wrote about joining a neo-Völkisch hate group preaching ethnic Germanic superiority, vandalizing Freemason lodges, and other disquieting pursuits. Perhaps the least worrisome passage is one in which the then-18-year-old decries the “insane prices” of foreskin-replacement gear, and immediately pivots to playing RimWorld, a sci-fi space colony sim.
The memo, which runs to 107 pages and suggests a prison term of no less than 10 years, says Sechrist’s parents rewarded his abhorrent behavior with access to weapons and family trips to the shooting range.