Massachusetts man sentenced for threats to synagogues, Israel consulate

BOSTON: A Massachusetts man was sentenced on Friday to more than two years in prison after he threatened to bomb synagogues and kill Jewish children in a series of calls he placed to two local houses of worship and the Israeli consulate in Boston after Israel and Hamas went to war in 2023.

John Reardon, 60, was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Julia Kobick in Boston to 26 months in custody after pleading guilty in November to charges related to what prosecutors said were dozens of violent and antisemitic calls and voicemails he placed to Jewish institutions beginning on October 7, 2023.

Reardon’s attorney did not respond to a request for comment. But in court papers, she argued for a nine-month sentence, saying mental health issues led Reardon to commit a crime that was “terrifying, deeply hurtful, and will cause lasting fear in the victims.”

He was charged, opens new tab in January 2024, as the U.S. Department of Justice began to warn of a growing number of antisemitic threats nationally following the onset of the war.

The war began on October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led militants stormed into southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, according to Israeli figures. Israel has killed more than 61,000 Palestinians in its assault on Gaza since then, according to health officials in the Palestinian enclave.

Prosecutors in court papers, said Reardon in a voicemail left with a synagogue in Attleboro, Massachusetts, on January 25, 2024, said that “you do realize that by supporting genocide that means it’s OK for people to commit genocide against you.”

Prosecutors said Reardon also threatened to bomb Jewish places of worship and said that by “supporting the killing of innocent little children, that means it’s OK to kill your children.”

Prosecutors said he then called another synagogue in Sharon, Massachusetts, and left a threatening voicemail. He also called the Israeli consulate in Boston 98 times over several months, saying in one call it was “time to prepare the furnaces again,” according to prosecutors, a reference to the Nazis’ systematic extermination of Jews in the World War Two Holocaust.