Warren County Man Sentenced for Threatening North Carolina Court Employees

ALBANY, NEW YORK – Fredrick Eli Knapp, age 52, of Pottersville, New York, was sentenced today to 24 months in prison for interstate transmission of threats to injure another person.

The announcement was made by Acting United States Attorney Antoinette T. Bacon; Acting United States Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina G. Norman Acker, III; William T. Bowman, Marshal of the Supreme Court of North Carolina; Special Agent in Charge Robert Wells of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Charlotte Field Office; and Chief R.E. “Chip” Hawley of the North Carolina State Capitol Police Department.

In November 2019, Knapp sent profanity-laden emails from Warren County, New York, to court employees in North Carolina threatening, among other things, to “kill[] court employees,” and posted a message to the North Carolina court system’s Facebook page threatening to “find a way to get back to that state just to kill people in your courthouses.”  He also left a voicemail for a North Carolina police officer stating that police officers “don’t deserve to live.”  In response to Knapp’s threats, bomb-detection dogs were dispatched to a North Carolina courthouse. 

United States District Judge Mae A. D’Agostino also imposed a 3-year term of supervised release, which will start after Knapp’s release from prison. 

This case was investigated by the State Marshals of North Carolina Judicial Branch, FBI, and the North Carolina State Capitol Police Department, and was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Sebastian Kielmanovich of the United States Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of North Carolina and Assistant U.S. Attorney Cyrus P.W. Rieck of the United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of New York.