A White Plains man has been arrested for threatening to “snap the neck” of an FBI agent who testified against him in 2019 for sending a threatening and anti-Semitic message to Greenburgh Town Supervisor Paul Feiner.
Timothy Goetze, 48, was accused of retaliating against a federal officer and interstate stalking at a Nov. 6 hearing held in U.S. District Court, White Plains.
On Nov. 2, according to the criminal complaint, Goetze placed a 911 call from a relative’s house, identified himself and referred to an email sent to Feiner.
“So if you guys don’t go over there and arrest that f–king kike for f—king with me and my family in the next f—king 25 minutes,” he allegedly stated, “you are going to have a serious problem in this f—king county, OK.”
And if the FBI agent comes to his house again, the caller went on, “I’m going to f—king snap his neck. … So, Timothy Goetze, White Plains, you f–k with me again, you’re all f–king dead. OK. I didn’t send that email to that f–king kike.”
The FBI agent, who is not identified in the complaint, had participated in the original investigation of Goetze, had met him at his house, and testified at his 2019 trial.
Feiner had received three emails in 2017 after he questioned the appropriateness of a 60-foot obelisk erected in 1897 at Mount Hope Cemetery, Hastings-on-Hudson, in memory of Confederate soldiers who had moved North after the Civil War.
An inscription reads, “Sacred to the memory of the Heroic Dead of the Confederate Veteran Camp of New York.”
Feiner, according to news accounts at the time, said that the obelisk honored soldiers who advocated white supremacy and he questioned whether the monument or the wording on the monument should be removed.
The emails had the same message but different subject lines — Human Rights Education, Letter to the Ugly Dumb Jew, and Letter to the Parasite — and were signed “Anti-Zionist.”
“You better run and hide you stupid f–king jew.” the message stated. “We are coming for you and your family.”
Investigators determined that Goetze was the sender.
He was charged with three, misdemeanor counts of aggravated harassment and was found guilty in a bench trial in White Plains City Court. The judge sentenced him to a one-year conditional discharge with 75 hours of community service and a protection order for Feiner and his family.
Goetze had defended himself on First Amendment grounds and appealed the judge’s decision.
“Although defendant correctly argues that he has the right to express his political views no matter how virulent those views may be,” the Second Appellate Court ruled in 2021, “he does not have the right to threaten physical harm to another person as part of his political expression.”
The emails constituted true threats, the justices ruled, and “rose to the level of criminally sanctionable speech.”
U.S. Magistrate Judge Victoria Reznik declined to approve bail at the detention hearing on Nov. 6, and instead ordered Goetze to be detained “on grounds of risk of danger to the community and risk of non-appearance.”
