USA v. Rathbun, John Michael
Longmeadow, MA

Anti-Semitism

[DMA] John Michael Rathbun was charged with two counts of attempted arson after the authorities said he tried to ignite a five-gallon plastic gas canister outside Ruth's House, a Jewish assisted-living home in Longmeadow, Mass., on April 2, 2020. Federal prosecutors said that Rathbun's DNA matched bloodstains that were found on the handle of the canister and on a partly charred Christian religious pamphlet that had been stuffed in the nozzle as a fuse. Rathbun's mother told federal agents that she prints and distributes Christian pamphlets, but did not recognize the one in the gas canister. In Nov. 2020, a federal jury convicted Rathbun of making false statements to a federal agent, but deadlocked on the arson counts, requiring a re-trial. In June 2021, he was convicted by a federal jury in connection with placing a lit firebomb at the entrance of a Longmeadow senior health care facility and later sentenced to five years in prison and three years of supervised release. As part of his supervised release, the judge ordered that Rathbun not enter the campus of the Longmeadow facility for any reason.