A Riverside woman bombarded the former executive director of Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue with phone calls and threatening voicemails, court documents show, the first in months after the deadliest anti-Semitic attack on U.S. soil , she was sentenced to nearly three years in prison.
Melanie Harris, 59, published anti-Semitic slurs, vowed violence including beheadings and used “vile and inflammatory language,” according to FBI agents in Miami.
Harris, who Pleaded guilty in MarchFor intentionally spreading threatening messages in interstate commerce, he was sentenced by a Miami judge to 32 months in prison, followed by three years of supervised release. The federal Bureau of Prisons will decide where Harris will serve her sentence.
Calls and emails to an attorney representing Harris were not returned.
Markenzy Lapointe, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, said Harris’ “anti-Semitic threats terrified a Jewish family.”
“Her hateful phone calls and voicemails are abhorrent,” Lapointe said in a statement. “No one should live in fear of threats, harassment and hateful violence.”
The calls began in February 2019, just months after Robert Bowers fatally shot 11 worshipers at a Pittsburgh synagogue on Oct. 27, 2018, according to court documents. He was sentenced to death for espousing white supremacist views. Before the shooting, he vigorously promoted his hatred of Jews on the Internet.
Harris hid her identity using the *67 feature, which blocks caller identification and left voicemails filled with “anti-Semitic and harassing language,” according to court documents.
She initially made three calls within three minutes, first to Tree of Life and then twice to a man identified in court documents as Victim No. 1, who was Tree of Life’s former executive director at the time. Live in the Pittsburgh area.
According to court records, Harris called Victim No. 1 an additional 53 times between February 2019 and March 2022. An analysis presented in court showed Harris attempted 190 phone calls between October 2022 and February 2023, including 129 in November. However, many of those calls went unanswered or were immediately hung up, according to court documents.
All calls to Victim No. 1 were made from Harris’ home in Riverside, authorities said.
On October 3, 2022, Harris left 15 voicemails for Victim No. 1, including four threatening and anti-Semitic messages. In one of the documents, Harris twice threatened to behead Victim No. 1’s stepson, whom she used an anti-Semitic slur in reference to, court documents said.
That same day, Harris made three more phone calls, all advocating similar acts of violence against him and his family, according to court documents.
On Nov. 22, Harris threatened to stab Victim No. 1 in another voicemail, according to court documents. On December 6, another call and threat was received.
In voicemails left by Tree of Life, she gloated about the shooting of her Jewish grandmother and used defamatory language, according to court documents. Harris also made anti-Semitic slurs about Victim No. 1 and his wife’s adult children and stepsons, according to court documents.
Neither the victim nor Harris knew each other, court documents and prosecutors said. Harris is not believed to have any connection to the Tree of Life.
Victim No. 1 and his wife eventually left Pennsylvania and moved to Broward County, Florida.
Authorities said Harris also mentioned the death of Anne Frank at the hands of the Nazis and the return of Jews to Auschwitz. In a phone call played in court, Harris repeatedly screamed, “Zig Heyer, [Jew] Court documents show the “killer” made a slur before hanging up the phone.
She was arrested on March 4, 2023.
“The nature of her violent threats against victims and their beliefs was clearly designed to instill a climate of fear and intimidation,” Jeffrey B. Veltri, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Miami field office, said in a statement. said in a statement. “This behavior will not be tolerated.”
