Draft:Robert Bowers (Mass Murderer)

Robert Gregory Bowers (born September 4, 1972), is an American mass murderer who perpetrated the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in 2018 which resulted in the deaths of eleven people and injuring six others, including several holocaust survivors.

Bowers was sentenced to death on his federal charges on August 3, 2023, nearly four years after the attack. He is awaiting his state trial in which he is charged with 11 counts of criminal homicide, six counts of aggravated assault, six counts of attempted criminal homicide, and 13 counts of ethnic intimidation. The state charges were held in abeyance pending the federal trial.

Early Life
Prior to the attack, Bowers was a resident of Baldwin, Pennsylvania  Bowers's parents divorced when he was about one year old. His father, Randall Bowers, died by suicide in October 1979 at the age of 26 while he was awaiting trial on a rape charge, when Bowers was 7 years old. Bowers's mother remarried, with the family living in Florida before the couple separated one year later.

Upon their return to Pennsylvania, Robert and his mother lived with his mother's parents in Whitehall, a suburb of Pittsburgh. His maternal grandparents took responsibility for raising him because his mother suffered from health problems. Bowers attended Baldwin High School in the Baldwin-Whitehall School District from August 1986 to November 1989. He dropped out of high school before graduation and worked as a trucker. Neighbors described Bowers as "a ghost" who rarely interacted with others.

According to accounts which were given by Bowers's coworkers, and analysis of his recent social media posts, his conservatism became radicalized as white nationalism; at one point Bowers was fascinated by the right-wing radio host Jim Quinn. At a later time he became a follower of "aggressive online provocateurs of the right wing's fringe." He was deeply involved in posting comments on social media websites such as Gab and he also promoted antisemitic conspiracy theories on them. Bowers routinely discussed a conspiracy theory that Jews were assisting "evil Muslims" to take over the United States together.

Gab has been described as friendly to neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and the alt-right. Bowers registered his Gab profile in January 2018 under the handle "onedingo"; he described his account by the following: "Jews are the children of Satan . The Lord Jesus Christ [has] come in the flesh." The cover picture was a photo with the number 1488, which is used by neo-Nazis and white supremacists to evoke David Lane's "Fourteen Words" and the Nazi slogan Heil Hitler. Bowers published posts that supported the white genocide conspiracy theory, such as one that said, "Daily Reminder: Diversity means chasing down the last white person". Bowers said that supporters of the QAnon conspiracy theory were "deluded" and being tricked.

Bowers was very active on social media, posting his own similar antisemitic and racist rants. He often re-posted content by other similarly minded users, such as Patrick Little, who expressed antisemitic, neo-Nazi, white nationalist/supremacist thoughts and denied the Holocaust. In addition, he reposted comments in support of the four men behind the beating of DeAndre Harris and the Southern California-based alt-right fight club Rise Above Movement (RAM) in the August 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. RAM was later arrested by the FBI and convicted at trial for violence against counter-demonstrators. Bowers also posted comments in support of the "Western chauvinist" Proud Boys led by Gavin McInnes, who were arrested the same month for engaging in a fight with Antifa outside the Metropolitan Republican Club in New York City.

His posts on Gab mentioned that he was initially a supporter of US president Donald Trump. Bowers felt that Trump was not extreme enough, and he criticized him as "globalist, not a nationalist" and for supposedly being surrounded by and controlled by Jews.

Bowers also denounced African Americans with racial slurs and images which are related to lynchings, and he also denounced white women who have relationships with black men. He used his online accounts to post conspiracy theories regarding philanthropist George Soros. The Times said that security sources had alleged that Bowers had links to the far-right and neo-Nazis in the United Kingdom.

A month before the attack, Bowers posted photos of results of his target practice. He also posted a photo of his three handguns, calling them his "glock family". In the post, he identified the .357 SIG handguns as Glock 31, Glock 32, and Glock 33.

Bowers coordinated with Brad Griffin (aka Hunter Wallace) of Occidental Dissent, an alt-right associated blogger and member of League of the South on doxxing an unidentified left-wing blogger. Bowers wrote "that address is not the most current for him. I can get you the most recent outside of gab". League of the South was one of the organizations that participated in the Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville.

In the weeks before the shooting, Bowers made antisemitic posts directed at the HIAS-sponsored National Refugee Shabbat of October 19–20, in which Dor Hadash participated. He claimed Jews were aiding members of Central American caravans moving toward the United States border and referred to those migrants as "invaders". Shortly before the attack, he posted on Gab that "HIAS likes to bring invaders in that kill our people. I can't sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw your optics, I'm going in." According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, "the mention of 'optics' references a disagreement that has raged within the white nationalist movement since the Unite the Right rally in 2017 about how best to get their message across to the general public".

After the shooting, Gab suspended Bowers's profile and pledged to cooperate with the criminal investigation. Shortly after the attack, PayPal, Stripe, Joyent, and Medium pulled their support for Gab, and GoDaddy, under which the Gab domains were registered, required Gab to relocate their domain name hosting to a different service, effectively shutting Gab down in the short term.