A 23-year-old Ohio woman was arrested on Saturday after purchasing black powder and screws for making a bomb. According to the Washington Post, Elizabeth Lecron was charged with transportation of explosives and explosive material for the purpose of harming others, and had been sending letters to Dylann Roof, the man who killed nine people at a historically black church in Charleston in 2015.
The FBI told CBS News that Lecron revealed to an undercover agent that she intended to target a Toledo bar, as well as to bomb a pipeline or attack a farm.
“She stated she had been involved in a plan to commit an ‘upscale mass murder,’ as she called it,” said Jeff Fortunato, an FBI assistant special agent in charge.
Washington Post reports that authorities started monitoring Lecron earlier this year when one of her associates “expressed a desire to conduct a violent act,” and found that she had a bizarre obsession with mass killers; she ran a Tumblr page filled with a “voluminous” amount of photos of Roof, as well as the Columbine shooters; after it was suspended, she opened another, which she named “CharlestonChurchMiracle.” It also contained photos and GIFs of mass murderers like Ted Bundy, Nikolas Cruz, and Adam Lanza.
The FBI also said that in the weeks leading up to Lecron’s arrest, she had written to Roof while he was in prison, and he wrote back asking her to “mail him several books about civil uprisings and the Nazis.”
“So I guess I’ll talk to you when the deed is done?” Lecron reportedly told an unidentified FBI source after making the purchase. “I’m very excited.”
“Removing Elizabeth Lecron from the ranks of civilized society by virtue of arrest and prosecution thwarts her explicitly stated desire to engage in acts of death and destruction,” FBI Acting Special Agent in Charge Jeff Fortunato said in a news release. “This case is a testament to the value of an ever vigilant public, which had the courage to alert law enforcement as to the evil goals and intentions of this suspect.”
