The wife of white supremacist Augustus Sol Invictus, who is accused of kidnapping his spouse and their two children in December, railed against her husband at his Friday bail hearing, calling him a “master manipulator” with “Charles Manson-like mind control” over his followers.
Invictus, 36, who legally changed his name from Austin Gillespie, has been charged with kidnapping and aggravated domestic violence for allegedly forcing his wife, Anna Invictus, at gunpoint to travel with him from South Carolina to Florida on Dec. 12. In Florida, she was able to escape from her husband and return home, she told police.
On Friday, Judge Hal Harrison denied the white supremacist bail after Invictus said she was afraid he’d kill her if he was released from jail.
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“Many of his devotees know the truth; they have seen the abuse or the aftermath of my beatings, they are witnesses with their own eyes,” Anna Invictus said, reading a statement she prepared for the court. “Yet, because of his Charles Manson-like mind control, they would testify before the court that he is innocent.”
Detailing the emotional, physical, and mental abuse she’s endured over the last six years, the long-suffering wife called Augustus Invictus a violent manipulator who sought out followers for his white nationalist ideologies.
“After nearly six years in this relationship, I have finally found the courage to stand up against Augustus and his perpetual abuse,” she said, before listing 16 examples of his misconduct.
In one harrowing incident, Anna Invictus said her husband beat her so hard that she saw “flashes of light.” In another, she said she was locked in a bedroom for days. She said her husband once “violently choked” her until she passed out, and dragged her through her home “for my teenagers to witness.” He also threatened to kill her multiple times, she told the court.
Anna Invictus said she’d filed police reports against her husband but couldn’t alert authorities to every incident because he would steal her phone.
“This man is not only violent, he is a master manipulator,” she said. “His public face is very different from the one my family and I have endured. If he is released, he will continue to use his knowledge of the law, his impressive vocabulary, and spectacular ability to manipulate and mold his political followers and women into obedient servants, exactly like the ones you see here today.”
Invictus, a prominent white supremacist, was a speaker at the deadly 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where activist Heather Heyer was killed. The lawyer and failed political candidate has also been involved in arranging the legal defense for other members of the movement and was previously accused of domestic violence, according to HuffPost. He was never criminally charged.
“Augustus is not the stereotypical drunken wife-beater,” Anna Invictus said. “His calculated, violent, manipulative intentions deserve special consideration.”
During his last bond hearing, Rock Hill Detective Matthew Beech read from the white nationalist’s online writings to show his destructive mindset. Invictus scoffed in the courtroom when Beech suggested he was a flight risk and demanded an apology from the detective “when” he is found innocent.
“The destruction I insight is not terrorism. The only aim is the destruction of buildings or persons plaguing the Earth. The long term aim is the overthrow of this civilization. It has absolutely nothing to do with causing fear. This is terrorism the same way removing a tumor is terrorism. Although you are cancer, and I am the Earth’s physician,” Invictus wrote in one of the passages Beech read aloud.
In 2014, Invictus’ former roommate told Orlando police that he pointed a gun at him. Invictus claimed he thought the roommate was an intruder and was not charged. Two years later, one of Invictus’ exes told police he had battered her multiple times—but she did not report those incidents until Invictus allegedly threatened to burn her belongings and “shoot her on the spot.” He was not charged in the incident.
In an effort to show how her husband is a “danger to the community” and her family, Anna Invictus also read some of his journal passages at the Friday hearing, including one in which he said “victims will be sacrificed; politicians will be assassinated; wars will be begun.”
“And when the day finally comes, and you gloat that you know it all along, and you say ‘someone should have stopped him’—know that their blood is on your hands, too,” the passage says.
