Documentary record Bound by Fear
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Conviction Left-hand-path / Satanist / occult Left-hand-path and Satanist movements Vicenza, Italy · 2022

Ethan Melzer (O9A): 45 years, plot to ambush his own Army unit

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Record class

Context only

Evidence status

Convicted

Authority role

occult ideological network participant

Organization

No organization assigned

Archive classification

This is the archive's application of its published inclusion test. The cited record appears below.

This record is retained as context. The cited evidence documents violent occult ideology, but does not establish that spiritual doctrine, practice, or authority materially enabled the harm. The relevant recorded role is occult ideological network participant.

  • Violent occult ideology or sacrifice

Evidence structure

Proceedings

  1. 2023-03-03 · guilty plea and sentence

    U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York. Forty-five-year federal prison sentence following guilty pleas to attempted murder, terrorism-support and national-defense-information offenses.

Documented coercion mechanisms

  • violent occult ideology

Research clusters

Order of Nine Angles

Cited record

Sources

Task & Purpose (2023) 'Neo-Nazi ex soldier sentenced to 45 years for plotting to murder soldiers', Task & Purpose [reporting the US DOJ/SDNY prosecution]. Available at: taskandpurpose.com (Accessed: 14 July 2026).

'Former Army soldier Ethan Melzer was sentenced to more than four decades in prison for an attempted plot to ambush and kill his comrades in a ‘jihadi attack’ while deployed abroad. Melzer... was a member of the Order of Nine Angles, a Neo-Nazi and Satanic organization which has praised both Adolf Hitler and al-Qaeda. Melzer pleaded guilty in June 2022 to charges of attempted murder of U.S. Army soldiers, illegally sharing national security information and providing and attempting to provide terrorists with material support.'

prosecuting authority disposition U.S. Department of Justice, “Former U.S. Army Soldier Sentenced to 45 Years in Prison for Attempting to Murder Fellow Service Members in Deadly Ambush” (Mar. 3, 2023).

The Justice Department records Ethan Melzer’s guilty pleas, forty-five-year sentence, O9A membership, and use of the group’s violent occult-extremist ideology in planning the attempted ambush.

Source provenance

Source access and integrity log

This log records source retrieval and file integrity. It does not mean that an automated process independently confirmed every statement in the source.

Source and tier basis
https://taskandpurpose.com/news/neo-nazi-ex-soldier-ethan-melzer-sentenced-45-years/ Legacy citation preserved without a normalized source tier or evidentiary-role code. SHA-256 7dd8de7e92ee1cd0f12e2ac628c999ebb7f67b115e7dcf27dfd2ec344158b025
Retrieval
2026-07-20 · Preserved
Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger
Source and tier basis
https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/former-us-army-soldier-sentenced-45-years-prison-attempting-murder-fellow-service-members Corpus classification: prosecuting-authority; evidentiary role: disposition. SHA-256 ce75311bbfc66ceff17fb3997230471b19455edd4912dbe9cf6537345d232592
Retrieval
2026-07-20 · Preserved
Bound by Fear automated source-preservation ledger

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