White Separatist Admits To Making Bomb, Anthrax Death Threats

BRIDGEPORT, CT — A 52-year-old New Haven man who identified as a white separatist has pleaded guilty to threatening to kill, injure and intimidate people including the president and explode property in Connecticut and elsewhere.

According to a press release from the United States Attorney for the District of Connecticut, Gary Joseph Gravelle, also known as Roland Prejean, pleaded guilty to five counts of maliciously conveying false information about an explosive, one count related to the sending of hoax Anthrax letters, and one count of making threats against President Donald Trump.

According to the indictment released last spring, Gravelle said he was a member of the white separatist group American Knights of Anarchy.

In total, he faces up to 60 years in federal prison.

Gravelle, Or Prejean, Had Already Spent 5 Years In Prison For Similar Crimes

In July of 2013, Gravelle was sentenced to nearly six years in federal prison for mailing numerous threatening letters in 2010.

Then from Thomaston and Morris, and then going by the surname Prejean, he mailed a threatening letter to the Thomaston Post Office claiming that he had planted a hidden bomb on a remote timer in the post office. The letter resulted in the evacuation of the post office, the Thomaston Town Hall and a Thomaston public school.

And he also had mailed a letter to a Connecticut Superior Court Judge in New London that included a substance that was represented to be “Liquid Anthrax,” and he sent threatening letters to a private individual and a probation officer in Connecticut.

Prosecutors said he made threats to blow up an Islamic Center in Groton and a synagogue in Middletown. In the letters he threatened to kill numerous people, including a federal employee, and had sent more than 50 other threatening letters before he was arrested and while he was in custody, according to the Department of Justice. He was released from prison on those cases in 2015 and, in September 2018, was still under federal supervision.

The New Case Against Prejean/Gravelle

In court Monday, Jan. 6, 2020, he admitted that he violated the conditions of his supervised release that followed his earlier federal convictions for sending threatening communications.

According to court documents and statements made in court, in September 2018, Gravelle used the U.S. mail, e-mail and telephone to threaten to harm people and explode property in Connecticut, Vermont and Washington. Certain letters that Gravelle mailed contained a white powdery substance and statements that the substance was Anthrax, a biological agent and toxin. Gravelle made threats to various mental health providers and facilities in New Haven, U.S. Probation Officers, a U.S. District Court Judge, an international airport in Vermont, a federal prison in Washington, occupants of a building in Old Saybrook, a credit union in Bristol, and organizations and religious centers in Connecticut. He also sent a letter threatening to kill the President of the United States.

In pleading guilty, Gravelle also admitted that he failed to comply with conditions of his supervised release, namely not violating any federal or state law by engaging in the threatening conduct in September 2018, federal prosecutors said. He'll be sentenced March 26.

Numerous local agencies assisted in the investigation led by federal law enforcement from the FBI, Secret Service, Postal Inspection Service, and the Bureau of Prisons. Those local agencies include police and fire departments from Bristol, Guilford, Groton, Hartford, Middletown, New Haven, Old Saybrook, Southington and Stamford, as well as Yale University.