Hanukkah stabbing rampage suspect is charged with hate crimes, expressed anti-Semitic views in his journal

Federal prosecutors on Monday filed hate crime charges against a man accused of going on a stabbing rampage during a Hanukkah celebration at a rabbi’s home north of New York City, saying the suspect kept journals containing references to Adolf Hitler and “Nazi Culture.”

The charges came as the police stepped up patrols in Jewish neighborhoods and stationed officers in front of synagogues and yeshivas across New York and New Jersey.

The United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York filed the charges. A day earlier the suspect, Grafton Thomas, was arraigned on five counts of attempted murder in a state court in the town of Ramapo.

In the criminal complaint, the authorities revealed evidence that could suggest the motivations of Grafton Thomas, who they say went on a bloody rampage on Saturday at the house in Monsey, N.Y., a hamlet northwest of New York City with a large community of ultra-Orthodox Jews.

Officials said they had found handwritten journals at Mr. Thomas’s home in which he expressed anti-Semitic views, including references to Adolf Hitler and “Nazi culture,” and drawings of a Star of David and a swastika, according to the complaint.

The complaint, signed by an F.B.I. special agent, Julie S. Brown, also said that officials had searched Mr. Thomas’s phone, which showed that he had looked online for the phrase “Why did Hitler hate the Jews” four times in the last month.

He also searched for “German Jewish Temples near me,” and “Zionist Temples” in Elizabeth, N.J., and in Staten Island in recent weeks, the complaint said.

Via New York Times