A Riverside woman was sentenced to almost three years in federal prison for making antisemitic threats against the former executive director of a Pittsburgh synagogue that was the site of a mass shooting in 2018 and members of his family.
Melanie Harris, 59, was sentenced Thursday to 32 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release after she pleaded guilty to knowingly and intentionally transmitting a threatening communication in interstate commerce, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a news release.
On Oct. 3, 2022, Harris “left four separate threatening voicemails” for the former executive director of the Tree of Life Synagogue, where 11 people were shot and killed in 2018. In one of those voicemails, she used a slur aimed at Jews while saying “I’ll cut your f— head off.”
Harris also used the *67 feature to conceal her phone number, meaning the former ED, his wife and his adult child only knew the calls were coming from the Riverside area and were received where the victim was in southern Florida.
The former Tree of Life employee was not alone in receiving the calls; prosecutors said more than 240 such calls were made to the victims over a four-year span, including calls to the adult child referring to them “by their first name, in anti-Semitic and violent terms,” the release said.
“In these calls and voicemails, Harris made incessant references to the congregants murdered in the October 2018 massacre at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania…Harris also made vile references to Anne Frank being murdered by the Nazis, Jews going back to Auschwitz, and in one voicemail, played for the Court at the sentencing hearing, she repeatedly screamed ‘Seig Heil, Kill [anti-Jewish slur]’ over and over before hanging up,” prosecutors said.
“In addition, on the same day in February 2019 that Harris began her calls to Victim 1, she also began calling the Tree of Life leaving virtually identical hate-filled anti-Semitic messages referencing the deaths of the elderly worshippers,” the release added.
U.S. Attorney Markenzy Lapointe said in the release that Harris “terrorized a Jewish family.”
“Her hate-filled telephone calls and voicemails were abhorrent,” Lapointe said. “No one should live in fear of threats, harassment, and hate-fueled violence.”
Harris is being held at Federal Detention Center, Miami, according to federal prison records.