Crosby pleads guilty to threatening NPR hosts

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As predicted in the local papers 4/9, John Crosby, 38, of Cape Elizabeth, Maine pleaded guilty 4/15 in U.S. District Court in Portland to sending threatening communications and possession of a firearm by a felon. He could be sentenced to up to 10 years in prison. He was to go on trial in May.


Crosby e-mailed a threat 1/17 to All Things Considered host Melissa Block through NPR’s website, used anti-Semitic slurs and listed his name as “I Kill MellissaBlock.”

Among the emails he penned: “I am going to kill Melissa Block. She is a commissar who is helping to destroy me to use me as a human sacrifice. She will be raped, beaten, tortured, and murdered very soon.”

Another e-mail threatened Guy Raz, weekend host of All Things Considered: “100 years ago a k-ke like him would have been hanging from a tree for disrespecting my privacy like that. If I can make it to DC, I will try to find [him]  and take care of business.”

Those e-mails and 29 others with threats and slurs were sent between 1/23 and 1/26 were traced to IP addresses at the University of Southern Maine. The school then traced the address to Crosby who graduated there in 2009 with an electrical engineering degree. FBI agents arrested Crosby 1/26 at a cafe in the university’s library.

As we had mentioned, the case was not reported until 3/16 – and not by NPR itself, but rather by The Smoking Gun website associated with Turner Broadcasting’s truTV.