The survivors of a school shooting are speaking out against the neo-Nazi leader whose writing inspired the killer — in the hopes he’ll get a heavy sentence for trying to plan a terror attack against minority and Jewish children in New York City.
“This man manipulated a vulnerable and impressionable boy and turned him into a self-hating murderer,” wrote one teacher at Antioch High School in Nashville, Tenn., who watched a 16-year-old girl die at the hands of a teenage gunman on Jan. 22, 2025.
The shooter took his cues in part from the writings of Michail Chkhikvishvili, the leader of a neo-Nazi group called the Maniac Murder Cult, according to federal prosecutors.
Chkhikvishvili, 22, also known as “Commander Butcher,” penned several versions of a manifesto called the “Hater’s Handbook” — which was shared online and inspired several acts of real-world violence, the feds say. The one-time Brooklyn resident is a citizen of the nation of Georgia.
Now he is slated to be sentenced in Brooklyn Federal Court Wednesday after pleading guilty to trying to solicit someone who turned out to be an undercover agent into taking part in murder, bombing and arson plots.
One of those plots involved a bizarre scheme to dress as Santa and give poison candy to minority children on New Year’s Eve.
Prosecutors are asking U.S. District Court Judge Carol Amon to give him 17-and-a-half years behind bars for the charges of soliciting violent felonies and distributing bomb- and poison-making information. They’re also seeking approval to let one of the shooting victims deliver a statement at his sentencing.
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 his manifesto mentioned Chkhikvishvili by name, according to the feds. He opened fire in the school cafeteria, killing 16-year-old Josselin Corea Escalante and injuring a 17-year-old student before killing himself.
AP Photo/George Walker IV
Families wait for loved ones after a school shooting at the Antioch High School in Nashville, Tenn., on Jan. 22, 2025. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
“She is wearing a small pink backpack that sits askew just enough to reveal a bullet hole through her chest. Blood is pooling around her, and I am helpless,” wrote the Antioch teacher, whose written statement appears in part in a letter prosecutors wrote to the judge Wednesday. “Why? Because Michail Chkhikvishili wrote a ‘Hater’s Handbook’ and manipulated children to fulfill his murderous desires.”
The girl’s mother wrote, according to court filings, “The first year without her has been more than a nightmare for us; very emotional memories of her, we remember her dreams, aspirations, goals, that are gone with her now.”
Another student at the school wrote about how he used to see the school as a safe place.
“I now live with constant fear and anxiety. Loud noises make me panic. I struggle to concentrate in class, to sleep at night, and to trust that public spaces are safe,” the student wrote. “What happened was not random. The shooter was influenced and encouraged by the hate-filled ideology promoted by the defendant. That ideology did not stay online or in words — it became violence that entered my school and permanently changed my life.”
Court evidence
Michail Chkhikvishvili. (Court evidence)
Chkhikvishvili was arrested in 2024 after an FBI agent posing as a prospective member of his group, which goes by the initials MKY, started chatting him up on encrypted internet channels in September 2023.
Chkhikvishvili pitched the Santa scheme to the undercover agent, pitching it as “a bigger action than Breivik without getting caught” — believed to be a reference to Anders Behring Breivik, a neo-Nazi who killed 77 people in a 2011 bombing and mass shooting spree in Norway, according to the feds.
In one message, he offered a point-by-point plan, instructing, “If doing by yourself, stick sweater to gloves by duct tapes, same for socks and (leggings) inside Santa uniform, use white Santa gloves and bag full of candies…. After giving around poisoned candies to many racial minorities and traitors, just go to taxi, pay to go somewhere, where you will have alternative clothes.”
He suggested using ricin to poison the candies and said if the plan couldn’t come together by New Year’s Eve the undercover could target “some Jewish holiday” or “Jewish schools full of kids.”
Court evidence
In 2023, Chkhikvishvili allegedly gave an undercover FBI instructions on distributing poisoned candy to children in New York. (Court evidence)
Chkhikvishvili’s “Hater’s Handbook” has surfaced in a number of other would-be terror and mass shooting plots, including an August 2024 attack outside a mosque in Eskisehir, Turkey, where an attacker wearing a tactical vest with Nazi symbols distributed a link to the manifesto before stabbing five people.
“I’m Commander Butcher National-Socialist since birth and curator of MMC also known as Maniacs Murder Cult …. I can proudly say I’ve murdered for white race and willing to bring more of chaos in this rotten world,” the intro to the most recent version of the handbook reads, according to the feds. “Our main goal is to spread flames of Lucifer and continue his mission of ethnic cleansing, great drive of purification.”
Chkhikvishvili also communicated with another neo-Nazi leader in 2022 and 2023, the head of the Feuerkrieg Division, who in 2025 was sentenced to 44 months for making death threats against a Brooklyn journalist.
Chkhikvishvili’s lawyer, Zachary Taylor, is asking for just five years behind bars, saying that his client was himself radicalized online when he was a vulnerable teenager who emulated his father’s drinking and contemplated suicide.
“Michail explored bulletin-board websites like 4chan and 8chan, whose lax moderation makes them a mine for extremist content. Posts on those sites led him to extremist Telegram channels. Guided by algorithms designed to hold his attention, he fell under the spell of the violent extremist content, which spoke to his own feelings of inadequacy and grievance,” Taylor wrote the judge on April 29. “Now, Michail renounces Nazism, antisemitism, racism, and violence. His deprogramming has been a process.”
He’s already served “11 months of solitary confinement in Moldova’s notorious Prison No. 13,” followed by about two years in the MDC Brooklyn federal jail, Taylor wrote.
“I am very sorry for my conduct and my apologize goes to Jews, Blacks and basically all people that I was targeting,” Chkhikvishvili wrote in a letter to the judge. “I’ve read letters of Antioch School Shooting, after which I couldn’t sleep normally for few weeks, I’m very ashamed that back then I allowed myself to promote violent actions and authored Haters Handbook.”
“I’m very ashamed authoring Haters Handbook, hoping one day it will disappear,” he added. “I wish I never wrote it.”