Mass. man arrested, charged with threatening to bomb Attleboro synagogue

A 59-year-old Millis man has been charged with allegedly threatening to bomb a Jewish synagogue in Attleboro, federal prosecutors said in a statement.

John Reardon will appear in U.S. District Court in Boston Monday afternoon. He faces one count of "using a facility of interstate commerce to threaten a person or place with harm via an explosive," Acting U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts Joshua Levy and FBI officials said in the joint statement.

Reardon has been in custody since his arrest by local police on Jan. 25, Levy said.

“The allegations here about the series of threats Mr. Reardon made against the Jewish community are deeply disturbing and reflect the increasing torrent of antisemitism across our country and right here in Massachusetts," Levy wrote, adding "the numbers do not lie — incidents of antisemitism and Islamophobia are spiking."

Levy said federal, state and local authorities will continue to "track down people who allegedly engage in such hateful conduct."

Jodi Cohen, special agent in charge for the FBI's Boston division added that Reardon left "a threatening message to frighten members of the Congregation Agudas Achim." He faces a sentence of up to 10 years in prison, three years of supervised release and a maximum fine of $250,000.

Prosecutors wrote in the criminal complaint that the voicemail included statements that alluded to the ongoing war in Gaza, such as:

“If you can bomb their f**king places of worship we can bomb yours, if you can kill their children we can kill yours;

End the genocide, or it is time to end Israel and all the Jews;”

"While the FBI does not and will not police ideology, we take all threats to life seriously, and so should anyone thinking about making one,” Cohen said in the statement.

Prosecutors said that within 10 minutes of calling Congregation Agudas Achim, Reardon placed two additional calls to a separate local synagogue and another local organization with ties to the Jewish community. 

The office of the U.S. attorney for Massachusetts said Assistant U.S. Attorneys Elizabeth Riley-Cunniffe and Torey Cummings, with its civil rights and human trafficking unit, will prosecute the case.