Self-described ‘skinhead’ pleads guilty to trying to blow up a Colorado synagogue
Temple Emanuel in Pubelo, Colorado. Image by flickr
(JTA) — A man who plotted to blow up a synagogue in Colorado has pleaded guilty to federal hate crimes and explosives charges.
Richard Holzer, a self-described “skinhead” and former Ku Klux Klan member who used Facebook to promote white supremacy, was arrested last November for plotting to blow up a 100-year-old synagogue in Pueblo, Colorado. The synagogue, Temple Emanuel, has 35 member families.
Holzer was arrested after plotting with a man he thought was a co-conspirator but who was actually an FBI agent. Holzer had previously attempted to poison the synagogue’s water supply with arsenic.
“This is the most important work that we can do – protecting our communities by stopping an attack before it occurred,” said Colorado US Attorney Jason Dunn in a statement.
Read the FBI affidavit detailing Holzer’s plot here.
A Department of Homeland Security report released this month concluded that white supremacists pose the biggest domestic terror threat in the United States.
The bombing plot profoundly affected the community, which typically meets twice a month. The synagogue’s rabbi has since voiced his support for congregants carrying guns into the sanctuary,
“We’re going to be here. We’ve been here for 119 years,” the rabbi said. “But we’re going to do what we need to do to protect ourselves.”
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism so that we can be prepared for whatever news the rest of 2025 brings.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Membership Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
