FILE – A makeshift memorial stands outside the Tree of Life Synagogue in the aftermath of a deadly shooting in Pittsburgh, Oct. 29, 2018. Hardy Carroll Lloyd, a self-proclaimed white supremacist, pleaded guilty on Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2023, to making online threats toward the jury and witnesses at the trial of a man who killed 11 congregants at the Pittsburgh synagogue. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)
A white supremacist from West Virginia who called for “lone wolf” attacks on jurors and witnesses involved in the Tree of Life synagogue shooter trial was sentenced to six years in prison this week.
Hardy Carroll Lloyd, 45, targeted and threatened some of those individuals by spreading a morass of hateful, racist, and antisemitic vitriol through social media, emails, and online forums. Tree of Life shooter Robert Bowers, meanwhile, faced trial for killing 11 Jewish congregants at the Pittsburgh synagogue: David Rosenthal, 54; Cecil Rosenthal, 59; Richard Gottfried, 65; Jerry Rabinowitz, 66; Irving Younger, 69; Daniel Stein, 71; Joyce Fienberg, 75; Melvin Wax, 88; Bernice Simon, 84; Sylvan Simon, 86; and Rose Mallinger, 97. Bowers also critically injured two worshippers while only a dozen others escaped unharmed.
Court records obtained by Law&Crime show Lloyd, who pleaded guilty to obstruction of the due administration of justice in September, fancied himself a “reverend” for a white supremacist movement that originated in the 1970s known as the Church of Ben Klassen or the Creativity Movement. It declared that “Jews and non-whites” were “inferior races who conspire to subjugate whites.”
Followers of the movement call for a “racial holy war” and heed it by committing violent hate crimes.
While the Bowers’ trial was unfolding, Lloyd used his website as well as social media accounts housed on Russian websites to list his “enemies,” according to court records. He began calling on “lone wolves” to attack any trial participants or jurors as soon as the proceedings got underway this May, more than two years after the massacre.
In one message posted online as the trial started in May, Lloyd wrote: “Any juror who finds [Robert Bowers] guilty is an anti-white criminal and to be treated as such!!”
In another, he vowed there would be “consiquences!!!” for jurors and witnesses. In an email to news outlets covering it, Lloyd vowed, “we WILL be watching and we WILL be taking pictures of ALL cars and people who leave the courthouse.”
Lloyd also posted requests online asking for help to expose people’s private information, such as their home and work addresses and phone numbers. He was doing this so he could “keep the trial honest,” records show.
Court records also show Lloyd sent an email to someone who prosecutors believe was a follower of the white supremacist movement or at least used an email address with “creativity” in its domain name, containing a picture of a gunman shooting a woman in the face. The email, with the subject line “ouch,” was also sent to news outlets in Pittsburgh.
In it, he wrote: “This woman was a juror on a case and voted against the defendant. After the trial some a—— posted her PUBLIC record onto social media. B—- went to the grocery store. She never came home. Guess she should have voted the White way?? Looks like it hurt.”
In another blog post, he urged that people “walk into a synagogue and gun down 11 Jews and one rabbi.”
“That’s how you make a difference people,” he wrote.
When Bowers was sentenced to death on Aug. 2, just 24 hours later, Lloyd called for “Jew blood” to be shed “until none is left to spill,” one Telegram post reviewed by Law&Crime shows. When he pleaded guilty, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s office in West Virginia, Lloyd was required to admit that he issued the threats because he believed the jurors, witnesses or others involved were Jewish or had ties to the Jewish community or Bowers’ victims.
The Anti-Defamation League analyzed Lloyd’s extremist history when he was arrested this August.
Hardy Carroll Lloyd photo, courtesy Anti-Defamation League
According to the ADL and the Southern Poverty Law Center, Lloyd has a violent criminal record dating to at least 2004, when he was charged with murdering his girlfriend. He claimed self-defense and was acquitted of homicide but received a three-year probation sentence for a weapons conviction, according to an archived report from TribLive.com in 2006. In 2010, he was sentenced again after pleading guilty to carrying firearms without a license.
Hardy Carroll Lloyd screenshot on BitChute courtesy Anti Defamation League
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