A neo-Nazi leader who went by the nickname “Commander Butcher” and inspired a school shooting with his “Haters Handbook” manifesto got 15 years in prison Wednesday for a sick plan to poison minority and Jewish children in New York City.
Michail Chkhikvishvili, 22, who led an international, racially motivated, extremist group, wrote about how Satan was his spiritual leader and Hitler was the greatest man in history, and gave detailed instructions on how to make bombs, commit racist attacks, make video recordings of atrocities and evade capture, according to the feds.
His words inspired a teenage school shooter at Antioch High School in Nashville, Tenn., a man who committed a mass stabbing outside a mosque in Turkey, and other would-be mass shooters, according to federal prosecutors.
“It was very difficult to read the ‘Haters Handbook,’” Brooklyn Federal Court Judge Carol Bagley Amon said before handing down his sentence.
Chkhikvishvili, a citizen of the nation of Georgia, was busted in July 2024 for trying to recruit someone, who turned out to be an undercover fed, into taking part in murder, bombing and arson plots.
He sent the undercover instructions on how to make Molotov cocktails and other explosives, and came up with a wild scheme — his new would-be recruit could dress as Santa on New Year’s Eve and hand out candies laced with ricin to minority children.
If the plot couldn’t happen by Dec. 31, Chkhikvishvili suggested an alternative — targeting “some Jewish holiday” at “Jewish schools full of kids,” adding, “Dead Jewish kids.”
“This was his M.O. He was someone who explicitly stated that he would make others kill,” said Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Reich, who was seeking a 17-and-a-half year sentence. “He was also giving them the resources necessary to do those things themselves.”
Court evidence
Michail Chkhikvishvili (left) is the leader of an international neo-Nazi group called the “Maniac Murder Cult,” according to federal prosecutors.
Chkhikvishvili’s lawyer. Zachary Taylor, who was asking for a five-year sentence, described him as an impressionable young man who suffered from depression and was pulled into the algorithmic vortex of hate speech on social media. “It has a pernicious ability to worm your way into your psyche and have a profound impact on you as a person,” he said.
“Michail was 15 years old when his radicalization began,” Taylor said. “He was just a kid… There is no off switch for someone who has been radicalized, for someone who has become an extremist himself.”
Rather, the attorney said, his client’s two years behind bars after his arrest, away from the internet, served as the catalyst to better himself, with Chkhikvishvili reading the biography of Nelson Mandela and Greek literature as he came to reject his hate-filled worldview.
Taylor also tried to argue that his client’s heavy alcohol use factored into his crime. But the judge was skeptical, asking, “Was he in an alcoholic stupor the entire time he was drafting these books? I don’t know how it computes to this type of conduct.”
Taylor also suggested that giving Chkhikvishvili a long sentence might, paradoxically, send the wrong message to his followers and make him into “some kind of martyr for the people who are extremists.”
Reich dismissed that suggestion out of hand, and said of his jailhouse turnabout, “I am not impressed, your honor, that the defendant read a book of Greek literature at MDC.”
He pointed out that Chkhikvishvili tried to convert a guard to his neo-Nazi beliefs while jailed in Moldova, and he was caught with a cell phone with Telegram installed in the MDC Brooklyn federal jail.
One of the victims in the Antioch shooting read a statement over the phone calling for a long sentence.
“Before the shooting, school was a place where I felt safe. That sense of safety was taken from me and has not returned,” the student said. “Because of this crime, my childhood was interrupted by trauma… The defendant’s actions caused real harm to real people.”
The 17-year-old shooter at Antioch, Solomon Sahmad Charlie Henderson, said he was taking action on behalf of the Maniac Murder Cult and at least one other group, and mentioned Chkhikvishvili by name in his own manifesto, according to the feds. He opened fire in the school cafeteria on Jan. 22, 2025, killing 16-year-old Josselin Corea Escalante and injuring a 17-year-old student before killing himself.
Court evidence
In 2023, Chkhikvishvili gave an undercover FBI instructions on distributing poisoned candy to children in New York.
Chkhikvishvili, who wore thick-rimmed black glasses and a beige jail jumpsuit, wept and leaned back as Reich laid out his argument. He apologized to the Antioch student who spoke, and praised her resolve, saying, “If I was in the victim’s place, I would probably cry more like a girl and say much worse things.”
Chkhikvishvili described himself as a “foolish coward,” and said he wished he could tell young people not to follow his path. “This stuff that I promoted with my worldview, I was cowardly,” he said.
Judge Amon said she took into consideration the defendant’s youth when he was radicalized, and the abhorrent conditions at the Moldovan prison where he was held for 11 months before he was sent to the U.S.
Still, she said, “He is not being sentenced for his warped views. He is being sentenced for his call to action.”