\n<\/p>\n
Matthew Mahrer as a boy wrote a 25-page book about his grandfather\u2019s experiences as a prisoner in a Nazi internment camp.<\/p>\n
Christopher Brown did favors for the Orthodox rabbi across the street, who needed someone to turn on electrical devices during the Sabbath or Jewish holidays.<\/p>\n
In November 2022, they were both in free fall. Christopher Brown, then 21, posted on Twitter that he wanted to \u201cshoot up a synagogue and die.\u201d<\/p>\n
Matthew Mahrer helped him get the gun.<\/p>\n
They were drunk or high, heading into New York City with a Glock 9-millimeter pistol, an extended magazine and 19 bullets. When they were arrested in Pennsylvania Station that night, it rattled a Jewish community that was still on edge from the massacre of 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue four years earlier.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Their arrest was a chilling story \u2014 an \u201cantisemitic sicko<\/a>\u201d bent on mass murder \u2014 made more sensational by the revelation that his accomplice was Jewish.<\/p>\n \u201cThere were 19 bullets in that ammo clip,\u201d said Glenn Richter, who attended a synagogue near the Mahrers. \u201cHad they decided to go around the corner and go into the synagogue, I and others could have been among those 19 casualties.\u201d<\/p>\n Underneath the fear were the more complicated stories of two young men living with mental illness, thrown together by institutions that left them more troubled than when they went in.<\/p>\n Bullied as children, medicated from a young age, Christopher Brown and Matthew Mahrer followed a line of failings, personal and institutional, to the brink of atrocity.<\/p>\n Fifteen minutes into my first conversation with Matthew Mahrer, he blew up at his parents and stalked out of the apartment, apologizing on the way out.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n When he returned soon afterward, calmed, it was as if the blowup had never happened.<\/p>\n \u201cHave you ever heard of post-traumatic growth theory?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n We were in his grandmother\u2019s apartment on Manhattan\u2019s Upper West Side in early January, three weeks before he was scheduled to be sentenced for criminal possession of a weapon. Prominently displayed was a framed fabric gold star with the word \u201cJude,\u201d from the camp where his grandfather was interned as a teenager.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n At 24, out on bail, Matthew displayed a quick intelligence and low social awareness. He wore his hair in loose curls that partially hid his eyes, and he spoke in unfiltered gushes.<\/p>\n His parents, retreating to the room\u2019s periphery to avoid upsetting him, wore the weight of the years on their faces.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Matthew\u2019s troubles began at age 3, when he couldn\u2019t sit still at preschool, and his parents had to pull him out. The diagnosis then was sensory integration disorder \u2014 \u201cbecause at that age they\u2019re too young to be diagnosed with anything else,\u201d his mother, Susan, said. From then on, his life was a roller coaster of different diagnoses, different therapies and \u2014 starting at age 5 \u2014 more and more medications.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n He was assessed as having A.D.H.D., then later pervasive developmental disorder, anxiety disorder, PTSD and, in high school, autism spectrum disorder. Twice he was hospitalized for psychiatric care, once because he was cutting himself. \u201cThat was his childhood,\u201d his mother said.<\/p>\n He was also bright enough to test into a gifted and talented program in elementary school.<\/p>\n Social skills eluded him. He was the squirmy kid, bullied, unable to sit still. Classmates he thought were his friends beat him up or humiliated him.<\/p>\n By high school he was failing, disappearing in the middle of the school day. His parents began looking for residential schools that provided therapeutic environments.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n It was at one of these programs that he met Christopher Brown.<\/p>\n The Mahrers entered the mental health care system as a solid family unit with a lot of resources. Matthew\u2019s father taught in the public schools. His mother had a background in early childhood education and ran a small business. They had experience in navigating bureaucracies and excellent health insurance.<\/p>\n Christopher Brown\u2019s family, in Stony Brook, on Long Island, had none of these.<\/p>\n \u201cWe didn\u2019t have electricity in half of our house, we didn\u2019t have any running water, the heat wasn\u2019t working,\u201d his younger sister, Kayla Brown, now 22, said. \u201cWe were very neglected. C.P.S.\u201d \u2014 Child Protective Services \u2014 \u201cwas involved in our life a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n In interviews with Christopher, his parents, an aunt and his sister, each labeled different family members as abusive or neglectful, but all said that a lot of that fell on Christopher.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In the visiting room at Clinton Correctional Facility in January, near the Canadian border, the man who met me was nothing like his numerous toxic tweets. Now 23, he wore a kufi skullcap, signifying his jail-cell conversion to Islam, and spoke softly and thoughtfully about the actions and bigotry that landed him there.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI\u2019m sorry to Matthew for ruining his life,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n As a child, Christopher was, like Matthew, smart, socially challenged and bullied by classmates. He\u2019d cling to his mother or close himself off in his room and play video games, refusing to bathe or go to school.<\/p>\n Home life was volatile, both of his parents said. His mother, who has Crohn\u2019s disease, moved out when he was around 9; his father left a year later, leaving him with his grandmother and an aunt. Christopher would ask, \u201cWhy did you even bother having me?\u201d his mother, KerryAnn Brown, said.<\/p>\n His sister thinks he started to unravel when their mother left.<\/p>\n \u201cI just remember he was more angry,\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019t want to say he would get violent, but he would have tantrums a lot, which he never had before. He almost changed into a completely different person.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, Shalom Ber Cohen, the rabbi whom Christopher helped on the Sabbath, remembered him as a pleasant child living in a troubled home. Asked about later events, Rabbi Cohen said, \u201cIt\u2019s scary to think it\u2019s the same boy.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Around the time that his parents left, Christopher developed compulsive blinking and other tics that led the school to send him for psychiatric evaluation. The diagnosis was schizophrenia.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Like Matthew, he received therapy and medications, which he resisted taking, to the extent that his grandmother would make him open his mouth to show that he had swallowed his pills.<\/p>\n He, too, started skipping school, finding refuge in the computer. At age 11 or 12 he discovered Facebook and, with it, neo-Nazi discussion groups. \u201cWhat attracted me to them was the sense of community, camaraderie, and a sense of purpose,\u201d he wrote in an email from prison. Suddenly, he was part of a crowd that not only welcomed him but also told him the problem was not him but other people.<\/p>\n He never met any of them off-line, he said. But in a flat, affectless tone, he said, \u201cThey corrupted my malleable mind.\u201d<\/p>\n When he was 15, workers from Child Protective Services saw the state of his grandmother\u2019s house and removed him to the first of several group homes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The two boys met at St. Christopher\u2019s, a home in Westchester County for students with intellectual and emotional disabilities.<\/p>\n If the Mahrers thought the school would help Matthew, they quickly learned otherwise.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was a lot of verbal and physical abuse and students attacking students and staff inflicting rough treatment on the children,\u201d his father, Michael, said. (The home filed for bankruptcy<\/a> protection last year, after dozens of lawsuits were filed under the state\u2019s Child Victims Act, alleging child abuse.)<\/p>\n Many of the students had severe intellectual disabilities or had been sent there after being arrested.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWe thought we were sending him to a treatment center,\u201d Matthew\u2019s mother, Susan, said. \u201cHe got PTSD from it. And it formed his outlook, in a sense. This was his peer group.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Paired as roommates, Matthew and Christopher initially clashed. \u201cWe hated each other LOL,\u201d Matthew wrote in an email from prison.<\/p>\n Christopher thought Matthew was \u201cnoisy.\u201d Matthew objected to Christopher\u2019s racism. Christopher knew Matthew was Jewish.<\/p>\n But they would talk late into the night, united by boredom and a shared interest in video games. Sometimes Christopher mentioned suicide. Neither saw the world as a benign, friendly place.<\/p>\n Matthew says now that he\u2019d viewed his roommate\u2019s neo-Nazism as a reaction to trauma and rejection. These were feelings he knew well, he said.<\/p>\n Matthew, in turn, was drawn to the criminal types at the school, for similar reasons. He had previously explored gang culture only vicariously, through hyper-gritty drill rap. He was tired of being \u201ca Jewish kid from the Upper West Side,\u201d he said, and wanted to belong to something bigger than himself.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n After graduation from St. Christopher\u2019s, Matthew returned home in early 2020, at age 19.<\/p>\n Moving back with his parents meant adjusting to new rules. Almost immediately, Covid hit, and New Yorkers were told to stay at home to avoid spreading the virus. This was especially important in families like Matthew\u2019s, with his grandparents living upstairs. But it was too much for Matthew, who would frequently bolt from the house to wander the neighborhood.<\/p>\n After a 2 a.m. confrontation with his father, at the height of Covid\u2019s first wave, Matthew went to a homeless shelter in the Bronx. His first week there, he said, he watched a man die of an overdose in a bed near his. He would remain homeless for 10 months.<\/p>\n Whatever supports his parents had arranged for him were now gone. The city was in an acute mental health crisis, with therapists too overwhelmed to take new patients. \u201cI was literally begging for therapy, and all I was ever getting was meds,\u201d Matthew said. He started getting into fights, getting kicked out of one shelter after another.<\/p>\n \u201cI felt like such a monster,\u201d his mother said. \u201cLike, my kid was always welcome to come home. He just needed to agree to be safe. He jumped from being exposed to young people with problems to now being exposed to adults with problems. And with bigger problems.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n After one too many fights in the shelters, in January 2021 Matthew finally returned home.<\/p>\n Christopher, who by this time had also graduated from St. Christopher\u2019s, moved to another group home.<\/p>\n He began posting threats against Jews and others on social media, invoking Brenton Tarrant, who in 2019 fatally shot 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. In December 2021, Christopher tweeted, \u201cI\u2019m about to make Tarrant look like a moderate.\u201d<\/p>\n Researchers who study extremist violence struggle to tell which people who post malevolent threats online are likely to go on to actual deeds. They look for concrete steps, like a specific attack plan or a written manifesto. \u201cThe vast majority\u201d of people posting such threats never act on them, said John Horgan, a professor of global studies and psychology at Georgia State University, who studies radicalization and violent extremism. Often, he said, the only way to tell the talkers from the doers is after the fact.<\/p>\n Christopher and Matthew would talk occasionally by phone or text, sometimes mentioning guns: Could Matthew, who had boasted about having gang connections, get him a revolver? Christopher told me he wanted to play Russian roulette, because he wanted to die, but he did not want the certainty that this particular squeeze of the trigger would be the one.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In August 2022, Christopher turned 21 and aged out of his last group home. He had no money, no therapy and only a few doses of his medication. When he returned to his mother\u2019s house, he had not lived outside an institution since he was 15.<\/p>\n His mother was now living on disability insurance at the far end of Long Island, with a man Christopher and his sister both described as abusive. The boyfriend, who died in January, forced Christopher to drink alcohol and would not let him sleep, Christopher said.<\/p>\n Christopher unraveled quickly.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was fine for a while,\u201d Kayla Brown said. \u201cBut then, as the abuse from my mother\u2019s boyfriend started getting worse, that\u2019s when he started to become more argumentative or just more paranoid.\u201d<\/p>\n She added: \u201cIf people knew what was going on in our life at the time, they would understand why he snapped.\u201d<\/p>\n Shortly after Christopher moved into his mother\u2019s home, the county sheriff\u2019s office served her boyfriend with an extreme risk protection order, sometimes called a red flag notice, barring him from buying or owning a firearm. While officers searched the house, they photographed Christopher\u2019s room, where he had a flag with a swastika and another with a Nazi SS insignia.<\/p>\n Recalling this period from prison two years later, Christopher said he was depressed and suicidal, disoriented from alcohol and a lack of sleep. On the chat app Discord in late October 2022, three weeks before his arrest, he mentioned a \u201cplan\u201d involving a synagogue, debating whether he should do it on his own or \u201cjoin the Nazi organization.\u201d Either way, he said, \u201cI\u2019m not living to see my next birthday.\u201d<\/p>\n The same day he contacted Matthew by Snapchat about getting a gun, saying he needed it because some teenagers were threatening him and his family, Matthew said. Matthew, in turn, contacted a man he knew named Jamil Hakime, who worked at the Administration for Children\u2019s Services. Hakime would eventually drive Matthew and Christopher to Pennsylvania and sell them a gun he kept in his house in the Poconos.<\/p>\n Christopher\u2019s past threats had never moved beyond venomous talk for his social media followers. Now he seemed to be taking action.<\/p>\n Sleep-deprived and often drunk, he was posting constantly on Twitter, venting about Jews, women, gay people, any group that caught his ire. One tweet threatened, \u201cI want all Irish out of my country by the time the sun rises or there will be consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Looking back, Christopher said that his tweets were provocations meant to garner likes, and that he did not plan to hurt anyone other than himself. But on Nov. 17 he arranged with Matthew to get the gun \u2014 not a revolver, but a Glock 9 millimeter with an extended magazine. At 2:26 a.m. on the 18th, Christopher, using the handle @VrilGod, tweeted, \u201cGonna ask a Priest if I should become a husband or shoot up a synagogue and die.\u201d He added, \u201cThis time I\u2019m really gonna do it.\u201d<\/p>\n It was almost exactly four years since a gunman had entered the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh and murdered 11 people<\/a>.<\/p>\n The threat to shoot up a synagogue, coming just ahead of the Sabbath, caught the attention of a Jewish organization called the Community Security Initiative, which monitors internet forums for antisemitic threats. They set off a multiagency hunt for VrilGod.<\/p>\nA Jewish Boyhood, Interrupted<\/h2>\n
The Making of a Child Neo-Nazi<\/h2>\n
\u2018Why He Snapped\u2019<\/h2>\n
A Citywide Manhunt<\/h2>\n