‘Crying Nazi’ Cantwell charged with cyberstalking

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Cantwell

KEENE, NH – The man known as Keene’s Crying Nazi, Christopher Cantwell, is facing four new federal charges after prosecutors unsealed new indictments in his cyber-bullying case on Monday.

Cantwell, 39, is being held in the Strafford County House of Corrections without bail, and has been since he was arrested at his Keene home by FBI agents in January. He was originally charged with interstate extortion and making threatening interstate communications in an effort to to get information about a white supremacist with whom he was feuding.

Cantwell is now charged with extortionate interstate communications, threatening interstate communications, threatening injury to property or reputation, and cyberstalking, according to court records. All of the charges stem from Cantwell’s reported attempts to get the name of the leader of the white supremacist group, the Bowl Patrol, from another member, according to court records.

Cantwell threatened to rape the alleged victim’s wife, and call child protective services, if he did not give up the real identity of a Bowl Patrol leader known online as Vic Mackey, according to court records.

“Get a (expletive) life or you will lose the one you have,” Cantwell wrote to the alleged victim, according to the new indictments. “you’re the one who is going to suffer cause you’re the one I can get.”

Prosecutors let the court know in May they planned to bring the new charges, but were delayed in getting the information to a grand jury due to the COVID-19 preventative measures in place in the judicial system.

The original charges were based on a message Cantwell sent to the same alleged victim, trying to pressure him into giving up the identity of Vic Mackey.

“So if you don’t want me to come and (expletive) your wife in front of your kids, then you should make yourself scarce[.] Give me Vic, it’s your only out,” Cantwell allegedly wrote on the messaging app Telegram.

In an odd move, Cantwell himself supplied Keene police detectives, and later FBI agents, with dozens of emails he sent to the victim in the summer of 2019, according to court records.

The heart of the case is Cantwell’s relationship with members of the Bowl Patrol, a white supremacist group that was initially friendly with Cantwell until he decided he did not trust them.

“Cantwell began to believe that the members of Bowl Patrol were ‘Jews trying to make Nazis look bad,’” Assistant U.S.Attorney Anna Krasinski wrote in an earlier court filing.

The Bowl Patrol takes its name from Dylan Roof’s bowl haircut. Roof is the mass murderer who shot and killed nine African Americans during a church service in Charleston, South Carolina.

Members of the group started to prank call his internet radio show, and Cantwell wrote to Keene police that he was afraid he would go out of business. Cantwell then found identifying information on one of the Bowl Patrol members and tried using that member to get the identifying information on Mackey

Cantwell was arraigned on the new charges Monday via video conference.

About this Author

Damien Fisher

Damien Fisher is a freelance reporter and publisher of NHReporter.com