Surveillance footage shows 16-year-old Gabriel Castiglioni walking through a school campus in Aracruz, a small town in Brazil, during a shooting spree in November 2022 in which he allegedly killed four people.
A U.S. leader of the neo-Nazi accelerationist network known as the Terrorgram Collective directly communicated with a 16-year-old who killed four people in a school shooting spree that took place in Brazil in 2022.
The link was disclosed for the first time in a filing last month by federal prosecutors opposing bail review for Matthew Robert Allison, one of two Terrorgram leaders who are charged with soliciting the murder of federal officials and conspiracy to provide material support for terrorists, among other alleged offenses.
Allison’s co-defendant, 34-year-old Dallas Erin Humber, of Elk Grove, Calif., told him that “she had direct messages with a Terrorgram user who was planning to commit a racially motivated school shooting,” according to the government filing. The reference to the school shooting plot surfaced in “secret chat” between Humber and Allison on Oct. 23, 2022. A month later, the government said, the Terrorgram user carried out the shooting, resulting in the deaths of four people.
The details provided by the government match a school shooting spree carried out by a 16-year-old at a public elementary and middle school and at a private school in the small town of Aracruz, in the southeastern Brazilian state of Espirito Santo in November 2022. Gabriel Castiglioni, the alleged shooter, entered the schools wearing military-style clothing, a bulletproof vest and a swastika patch, according to multiple news reports. He reportedly carried out the shootings with a semiautomatic weapon that belonged to the military police and a revolver that was registered to his father, a military police officer.
The disclosure about Humber’s communication with Castiglioni adds to the roster of Terrorgram users that the U.S. government claims were “incited to action” by Terrorgram online posts, publications, videos and instruction manuals, and who were inspired by the group’s culture, which elevates white supremacist killers to “saint” status.
The indictment against Humber and Allison, released at the time of their arrests in September 2024, cites three other attackers, all but one of whom are located outside the United States.
Among those was Juraj Krajcik, a 19-year-old who carried out a mass shooting at an LGBTQ bar in Bratislava, Slovakia in October 2022, killing two people and injuring a third. As previously disclosed in the indictment, Krajcik sent his manifesto to Allison, a 37-year-old Boise, Idaho resident. The indictment also alleges that Humber and Allison had directly communicated with Krajcik.
The government’s filing last month reveals new details about Allison’s ties to Krajcik. Immediately after the attack in Bratislava, according to the government, Krajcik texted Allison: “Not sure how much time I have, but it’s happening.” And then: “Just delete all messages about this convo.”
Krajcik, who was reportedly the son of a far-right politician in Slovakia, killed himself after sending his manifesto to Allison.
In another case inspired by Terrorgram, in August 2024, an 18-year-old named Arda Küçükyetim stabbed five people at an open-air café near a mosque in Eskisehir, Turkey. In the only case cited in the indictment involving an American perpetrator, 18-year-old Andrew Takhistov allegedly solicited a man who turned out to be an FBI undercover special agent to sabotage an electrical substation in New Brunswick, N.J.
As a conspiracy case linked to at least three attacks around the world with charges carrying up to 220 years in prison for each defendant, the Terrorgram prosecution is the United States’ most high stakes white supremacist terrorism case.
The U.S. State Department designated Terrorgram as a global terrorist group, joining the United Kingdom and Australia, just a week before President Joe Biden left office. So far, the Trump Department of Justice has given no indication that it intends to change course on the Terrorgram case. Two attorneys from the National Security Division and two others from the Civil Rights Division assigned while Biden was still in office remain on the case.
Meanwhile, the newly disclosed link between Humber, described as a Terrorgram “leader” in the indictment, and Castiglioni highlights the growing presence of the group in Brazil, alongside an explosion of U.S.-style school shootings in recent years. While designating Terrorgram as a global terrorist entity, the U.S. State Department named a Brazilian, Ciro Daniel Amorim Ferreira, as a sanctioned leader of the group, along with two other men from in Serbia and South Africa, respectively.
Terrorgram has been operating in Brazil since 2021 or 2022, said Michele Prado, who is the founder of Stop Hate Brazil.
“There have been many connections to various violent attacks in schools (more than 40 in just three years),” Prado told Raw Story in a text message.
The U.S. government alleges that Allison and Humber assumed leadership of Terrorgram in the summer of 2022, after one previous leader was arrested and charged with terrorism offenses, and another became aware that he was under investigation.
In 2023, Prado said, she submitted a report about Terrorgram to the Brazilian Intelligence Agency and the Ministry of Justice and Public Security that identified Telegram channels linked to Ciro and another Terrorgram member whose identity remains unknown but uses the pseudonym “Wolf Boy Winter.”
Prado said “Wolf Boy Winter” contributed “several pages” to “The Hard Reset,” one of the signature digital publications created as part of Terrorgram’s propaganda campaign. The indictment alleges that Humber, Allison and others created “The Hard Reset” as part of a conspiracy “to recruit, radicalize, equip, advise, inspire and solicit others to commit attacks in furtherance of Terrorgram’s mission.”
As described by the government, “The Hard Reset” provides “detailed advice for carrying out bias-motivated violence and committing terrorist attacks on critical infrastructure,” with “instructions for making bombs and explosives, including napalm, thermite, chlorine gas, pipe bombs,” and instruction on identifying targets and effectively running a terror cell. According to the government, Krajcik, the Slovakian shooter, praised “The Hard Reset” as “excellent” in a group chat with Humber.
Beginning in 2022, Prado said, Brazil experienced “an escalation in the online radicalization of children and adolescents and the beginning of many school shootings.” At that time, “Wolf Boy Winter” was already interacting with “a lot of these adolescents from harmful online subcultures,” Prado said.
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