Neo-Nazi guilty of plotting massacre at gay pride event
Jury told white supremacist was ‘ashamed bisexual’
A NEO-NAZI who plotted a machete massacre at a gay pride event is facing jail after being convicted of terrorism.
Ethan Stables, who claimed to be an ‘ashamed bisexual’, was caught minutes before he intended to carry out the attack on a pub.
He was arrested after a woman contacted police when he posted details on a far-Right Facebook group of his plan to ‘slaughter every single one of the gay b ****** s’.
When officers searched his home, which had a large swastika flag on a wall, they found weapons including a machete, knives, an axe, an air rifle and a ball-bearing gun.
Yesterday a jury found Stables, 20, guilty of preparing terrorist acts, making threats to kill and possessing explosives.
Leeds Crown Court was told he lived a ‘lonely and inadequate’ life and had ‘a deep-seated hatred of black, Jewish, Muslim and especially gay people’.
When he heard about plans for an LGBT Pride event at the New Empire pub in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, near his home he became ‘enraged’.
On the day of his arrest in June last year his comments on the far-Right Facebook group, which he had set up, included: ‘I’m going to war tonight.
‘If I don’t reply tomorrow then I’ll be sleeping on the cold, hard floor of Haverigg prison most likely. There is a “pride night” with free entry. I’m going to walk in with a f ***** g machete and slaughter every single one of the gay b ****** s. I’m going to make the f ***** g news.’
A woman who had been added to the group responded: ‘That’s not right Ethan’, but he replied: ‘I’ve had enough… Tonight is going to be a good night, and the beginning of the end.’
She contacted police and posted a warning of her own on Facebook before armed officers surrounded the area around the pub and arrested Stables.
He was unarmed but the jury heard he was on his way home ‘to collect his machete, knives and axe, which were ready at hand’.
Katy Bolger, 48, who was working behind the bar, said: ‘I was so frightened. He has terrorised the town and the LGBT community. If he hadn’t been caught, I think he would have gone through with it.’
Police found he had researched how to make a bomb from matches and there was a collection of cut-off match heads in his flat. Records of his online activity revealed he had swapped messages with racists and once blamed his joblessness on ‘f ***** s, n ***** s, spastics’ and the Equalities Act.
He expressed his hatred of Muslims and Jews, and claimed in a WhatsApp message: ‘My country is being raped. I might just become a skinhead and kill people.’
In one video Stables, who was also interested in the Columbine High School massacre in the US, burnt a rainbow flag and said: ‘Gays look nicer on fire.’
His Google search history included terms such as ‘I want to go on a killing spree’, ‘how to make chemical poison’ and ‘what is prison like for a murderer’.
After his arrest he refused to answer questions or give detectives access to his Facebook account but was released on police bail because it was decided that there was insufficient evidence to charge him.
He promptly bought a new swastika armband to replace one that the police had confiscated.
He was arrested again days later and admitted he had posted threats online. In his defence, he claimed he made the comments on Facebook to impress neo-Nazi friends and that he was in fact ashamed because he was bisexual.
He insisted he was not homophobic, saying he had sexual encounters with men in the past and that he had a favourite uncle who was gay. He did not mention any of this in police interviews.
Prosecution barrister Jonathan Sandiford told him: ‘I put it to you that this is something you have made up in order to try and advance yourself a defence.’
A picture that emerged yesterday showed Stables laughing with a toy rifle as an 11-year-old at a carnival. It mirrored another more sinister photo, shown to the court, of him as an adult posing shirtless with an air rifle.
His mother Elaine Asbury suggested he had been radicalised on a trip to Germany to see a young woman, and Stables told the court he was ‘brainwashed’ by Rightwing extremists he met when he lived in hostels.
Mrs Asbury said: ‘When he came back he started another one of these fantastical delusions. He was saying the Germans weren’t as bad as you think, it wasn’t about ethnic cleansing but maintaining the purity of the race.’
Stables, of Barrow, will be sentenced tomorrow.
‘I want to go on a killing spree’