Melanie Harris, 59, hurled antisemitic slurs, vowed violence, including beheadings, and used “vile and inflammatory language,” according to a Miami-based FBI agent.

Harris, who pleaded guilty in March, was sentenced by a Miami judge to 32 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release for intentionally transmitting a threatening communication in interstate commerce. The Federal Bureau of Prisons will determine where Harris will serve her sentence.

A call and email to the attorney representing Harris were not returned.

Markenzy Lapointe, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida, said Harris’ ”antisemitic threats terrorized a Jewish family.”

“Her hate-filled telephone calls and voicemails were abhorrent,” Lapointe said in a statement. “No one should live in fear of threats, harassment and hate-fueled violence.”

The calls began in February 2019, according to court documents — just months after Robert Bowers shot and killed 11 worshipers at the Pittsburgh synagogue on Oct. 27, 2018. Bowers, who has since been convicted and sentenced to death, espoused white supremacist views and ranted about his hatred of Jews online prior to the shooting.

Harris cloaked her identity using the *67 feature, which blocks caller identification, and left voicemails laden “with antisemitic and harassing language,” according to court documents.

She initially placed three calls in a span of three minutes, first to Tree of Life and then twice calling a person identified in court documents as Victim No. 1, the former executive director of Tree of Life who was then living in the Pittsburgh area.

Between February 2019 and March 2022, Harris called Victim No. 1 an additional 53 times, according to court records. An analysis presented in court demonstrated that Harris attempted 190 calls between October 2022 and February 2023, including 129 in November. Many of those calls, however, were unanswered or immediately hung up on, according to court documents.

All calls to Victim No. 1 were made from Harris’ Riverside home, authorities said.

Harris left 15 voicemails for Victim No. 1 on Oct. 3, 2022, including four threatening and antisemitic messages. In one, court documents say, Harris twice threatened to decapitate Victim No. 1’s stepchild, whom she referred to using an antisemitic slur, according to court documents.

That same day, Harris made three additional calls to Victim No. 1, all advocating similar violence against him and his family, according to court documents.

On Nov. 22, Harris threatened in another voicemail to stab Victim No. 1, according to court documents. There was an additional call and threat on Dec. 6.

In voicemails left at Tree of Life, she gloated about the shooting of Jewish grandmas, using a slur, according to court documents. Harris also lobbed antisemitic slurs at the adult child and stepchild of Victim No. 1 and his wife, court documents say.

Neither the victims nor Harris knew each other, court documents and prosecutors said. Harris was not believed to have any ties to Tree of Life.

Victim No. 1 and his wife eventually left Pennsylvania and moved to Broward County, Fla. Victim No. 1, however, did not change his cell number, wishing to keep ties with the Pittsburgh community, according to court documents.

Authorities say Harris also made references to Anne Frank’s death at the hands of the Nazis, and Jews being sent back to Auschwitz. In one call played in court, Harris repeatedly screamed, “Sieg Heil, [Jew] killers,” using a slur, before hanging up, according to court documents.

She was arrested on March 4, 2023.

“The nature of her threats of violence towards the victims and their faith were clearly meant to evoke a climate of fear and intimidation,” Jeffrey B. Veltri, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Miami field office, said in a statement. “Such conduct cannot be tolerated.”

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Melanie Harris was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Roy K. Altman during a hearing in Miami.

“Defendant Melanie Harris’ antisemitic threats terrorized a Jewish family,” stated U.S. Attorney Markenzy Lapointe for the Southern District of Florida.

According to the facts admitted at her change-of-plea hearing, Harris made multiple calls on Oct. 3, 2022 to victim 1’s cell phone and left four separate threatening voice mails with intent to communicate a true threat and with the knowledge that the communications would be seen as true threats.

In one of the four voicemails, Harris said “I’ll cut your f—— head off k—.” The term has been used as an anti-Jewish slur.

Neither victim 1 nor his wife, victim 2, knew the identity of the person calling with the threatening and harassing calls and voicemails, nor did they know where the calls were coming from because Harris concealed her phone number from being detected by a caller identification system, leaving the victims bereft of any knowledge of who and where the harasser was, putting them in constant fear for their lives until Harris’ arrest in March 2023.

The calls originated from Riverside, where Harris lived at the time, and were received by victim 1’s phone in the Southern District of Florida.

For over four years, Harris harassed and threatened three victims by making more than 240 calls to victim 1, leaving messages and engaging in conversations in which she unleashed antisemitic hate and direct threats against him, his family and Jews in general.

In these calls and voicemails, Harris made incessant references to the congregants murdered in the October 2018 massacre at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.

Harris’ four-year onslaught of harassment and threats of the victims was compounded by the fact that until July 2018, victim 1 had been the executive director of the Tree of Life for over 20 years while his wife and her adult child were all longtime members of and closely associated with the synagogue.

On the same day Harris began her calls to victim 1, she also began calling the Tree of Life, leaving virtually identical hate-filled antisemitic messages referencing the deaths of elderly worshipers.

The FBI’s Miami Area Corruption Task Force, which also investigates civil rights violations, investigated the case. FBI Pittsburgh, FBI Los Angeles Riverside Resident Agency and the Riverside Police Department assisted in the investigation.

Assistant U.S. Attorneys Edward N. Stamm and Nardia Haye prosecuted the case, which was indicted by Executive Assistant U.S. Attorney Harry C. Wallace, Jr.

“Melanie Harris sent threatening communications to a Jewish family using vile and inflammatory language. The nature of her threats of violence towards the victims and their faith were clearly meant to evoke a climate of fear and intimidation. Such conduct cannot be tolerated,” said Special Agent in Charge Jeffrey B. Veltri of the FBI Miami Field Office.

“Violence through words or actions is unacceptable and the FBI will continue to do everything we can to identify, arrest, and bring to justice those who engage in similar conduct,” Veltri said.

In September 2022, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland started the United Against Hate program to convene local forums that connect community groups to federal, state and local law enforcement to increase community understanding and reporting of hate crimes, build trust between law enforcement and communities and create and strengthen alliances between law enforcement and other government partners and community groups to combat unlawful acts of hate. More information on the United Against Hate program can be found at justice.gov/hatecrimes/spotlight/united-against-hate.

Anyone with information about a possible threat or believing to be a victim of a hate crime was encouraged to contact 911 and the FBI at fbi.gov/tips or at 800-225-5324.

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