The journals of a Texas college student who torched a synagogue two years ago reveal he had become “consumed” by virulent racist and antisemitic beliefs he developed years earlier and joined the state’s version of the National Guard because he thought it would “give him access to like-minded people who shared his hate.”
A Nov. 20 sentencing memo filed by federal prosecutors unveils an especially disturbing string of diary entries from Franklin Barrett Sechriest, who wrote about joining a neo-Völkisch hate group preaching ethnic Germanic superiority, vandalizing Freemason lodges, and other disquieting pursuits. Perhaps the least worrisome passage is one in which the then-18-year-old decries the “insane prices” of foreskin-replacement gear, and immediately pivots to playing RimWorld, a sci-fi space colony sim.
The memo, which runs to 107 pages and suggests a prison term of no less than 10 years, says Sechrist’s parents rewarded his abhorrent behavior with access to weapons and family trips to the shooting range.
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Sechriest was arrested Nov. 12, 2021, for a Halloween-night arson after investigators with the Austin Fire Department identified the Texas State freshman through security footage of his license plate at Congregation Beth Israel. The fire caused more than $150,000 in damage, destroying the temple’s historic doors, ruining its stained glass windows, and wrecking the sanctuary.
In one of Sechriest’s journal entries released at the time, he wrote, “I set a synagogue on fire.” In another journal entry now being seen for the first time, Sechriest blamed Jews for COVID-19, talked about listening to white power music, and cyberstalking vulnerable people online. He expressed support for Nazism, denigrated the Talmud, and reminded himself to, variously, “be racist” to “[c]onsider actual terrorism,” and to “test Molotov cocktails.”
Sechriest complained in his journals about having to listen to “a third-hand speech about the holocaust and ‘hate,’” and how he “had a long talk with mom about Jews controlling the media.” He took contemporaneous notes memorializing activities such as: “Be so racist it makes mom uncomfortable,” “Feel like total shit and argue with mom for four hours about complacency in the age of the new Civil War,” and “Burn a book called ‘How to be an Antiracist,’ because I am a racist and do not want my mom getting any ideas on curbing my radicalization process.”
The journals suggest that Sechriest’s parents were acutely aware of their son’s antisemitism and hatred for non-whites. Still, they indulged him and his violent fantasies, according to the prosecution’s sentencing memo.
“Pickup [sic] mom, yell at her for a bit, apologize, send her into Academy [Sports + Outdoors] to buy the gun they wouldn’t sell me,” wrote Sechriest, whose orthopedic surgeon father is a high-ranking Veterans Affairs official.
In another journal entry, Sechriest described building homemade .22 caliber zip guns out of pipe he bought at Home Depot, then making modifications “to deal with issues with reloading.” All the while, his parents never stepped in, according to the sentencing memo.
“Dad doesn’t approve, but he does laundry,” Sechriest wrote.
The sentencing memo contains journal entries about Sechriest making his own flamethrower (“Dad freaked out”), shooting crossbows with his father, and going with his mom to buy a derringer and a revolver “because mom is too weak to work the slide on a semi-auto.”
“Test guns out at range,” Sechriest wrote in a subsequent entry. “Take the derringer because I can conceal it. Do homework. Remove trigger guard on derringer.”
Psychiatrists who evaluated Sechriest in 2016 warned his parents that he “should not have access to firearms,”according to a detention memo filed in court last year.
Daniel Wannamaker, Sechriest’s attorney, told The Daily Beast in April that he thought Vernon and Nicole Sechriest were raising their child responsibly.
“I don't believe the parents are at fault,” he said. “They had him checked out at Johns Hopkins, Mayo Clinic and Meninger in Houston. I believe they were trying.”
Sechriest has used mental health issues—he is on the autism spectrum but extremely high-functioning, according to his attorney—to manipulate others, the prosecution memo alleges.
But in a previous interview, Wannamaker told The Daily Beast that his client was radicalized online by “far-right-wing ultra-nationalists who prey on people like my client,” and that Sechriest had been diagnosed with, variously, Tourette’s syndrome, autism spectrum disorder, mood disorder, sensory processing disorder, ADHD, anxiety disorder, and “possible” mast cell activation syndrome, a condition that causes severe allergic reactions.
The sentencing memo says that Sechriest has not shown any remorse for what he did. Before pleading guilty in April to a hate crime-damage to religious property, and arson, Sechriest penned what prosecutors describe as “a missive against Congregation Beth Israel and the Anti-Defamation League.”
“In his note, he exclaimed that ‘[Congregation Beth Israel] and the ADL can rot in hell for buying off my first lawyer[,]’ continuing his embrace of conspiratorial and hateful thinking,” according to the memo. “He went on to claim that the FBI, ‘egged on’ by [the] ADL, would show no mercy to him.”
Six weeks before the synagogue arson, Sechriest committed “an armed robbery of 4 persons, specifically, 3 Black victims and 1 Hispanic victim” on his own school’s campus, the sentencing memo states.
“Defendant concealed his face, approached the victims, displayed a firearm, and ordered them to produce their wallets and other valuables,” it explains, noting that Sechriest was never arrested or charged because the crime remained unsolved until police reviewed his journals.
“In one of his journals, in journal entries dated September 10 and 12, 2021, Defendant admitted to the robbery in racist terms,” using a variation of the N-word in describing the mugging.
Sechriest was obsessed with crime and wrote about shooting at 5G cell towers, slashing people’s tires, and using stolen credit cards. He had enough money to amass a collection of swords, obtain an AR-15 and at least one Taser, and, as he wrote in one April 2019 journal entry, to “buy foreskin restoration gear for insane prices before jacking it on a measuring tape.”
In their sentencing memo, prosecutors emphasize that even though Sechriest was just 18 when he committed his crimes, his bigoted views “appear to have been well-developed by the time he was in high school.”
The memo says Sechriest “claimed membership in white supremacist organizations, including the Asatru Folk Assembly (AFA), which preaches racist doctrines based on a belief in ethnic Germanic superiority.” He “also stated that he planned to get a ring with Thor’s Hammer, a symbol often appropriated by neo-Nazi groups,” prosecutors wrote.
“These vile beliefs consumed him for a long period of time and inspired him to reduce them to writing, and to plan ways to violently act upon his beliefs,” the memo states.
Prior to August 2021, Sechriest had no connection to the State of Texas, when his parents agreed to move there with him from Minneapolis, where his father was working, so he could attend Texas State University and join the Texas State Guard, according to the memo. Sechriest lived with his mother; his dad, now the chief of staff at the Loma Linda, California, VA Medical Center, has since split his time between California and the Austin area.
“Defendant became fascinated with the Texas State Guard and believed it would give him access to like-minded people who shared his hate,” the memo goes on. “Defendant believed that joining the Texas State Guard would also give him the opportunity to train with firearms and other weapons.”
When Sechriest was caught, his car was “filled with the materials for building Molotov cocktails,” the memo states. “Defendant was already dangerous, and he was in the process of making himself a greater danger to the community by arming himself thoroughly and learning how to use his assembled arsenal.”
Prosecutors say that only a long sentence will serve to deter others from acting on similar beliefs and that a 120-month stay in prison is necessary to “protect the public from” Sechriest.
“At the time of his arrest, Defendant was clearly gearing up to commit additional violent crimes based on his hate,” the sentencing memo states. “Even while in custody, Defendant has expressed continued hatred against persons of the Jewish faith, as demonstrated by his anger toward the Anti-Defamation League. The longer Defendant is in custody, and under the watchful eye of the Court and Probation upon release, the better for the protection of society.”
Wannamaker, who did not respond to a request for comment on Sunday, has not yet filed his own argument for what the defense deems an appropriate prison term for Sechriest. Sentencing is scheduled for 9 a.m. Wednesday.
