Update: Shortly after the publication of this article, O9A leader Brett Stephens provided the following statement in response to the newly released FBI file: “The O9A is a distributed entity and individual nexions make choices such as this, but we can say that we were inspired by the events in Norway during the 1990s where churches were burned in order to reject Abrahamic means-over-ends morality.”
(Ken Silva, Headline USA) In 2019, three African American Baptist churches were set ablaze in an act of arson.
When the alleged perpetrator, Holden Matthews, was caught and sentenced to 25 years imprisonment in November 2020, officials blamed his crime on the fact that he was a “black metal” musician—saying he set fire to the churches in late March and early April 2019 to promote himself in the heavy metal sub-genre.
But on Thursday, the FBI released a batch of records suggesting that a Satanic cult may also have been involved in the church burnings. The FBI records linked the church burnings to a Satanic cult that calls itself the Order of Nine Angles, or O9A—a group that seeks to accelerate the collapse of the West by, among other things, encouraging people online to commit acts of terrorism.
O9A has been in the news in recent years due to its links to right-wing extremism. O9A fomented several neo-Nazi terrorist plots over the last several years, an O9A-linked neo-Nazi participated in the 2017 Charlottesville Unite the Right rally, and one of the network’s leaders, Joshua Caleb Sutter, was revealed to be a longtime FBI informant.
Now, O9A is also linked to the 2019 black church arsons. An April 11, 2019, FBI report about the three churches—St. Mary Baptist Church, Greater Union Baptist Church and Mount Pleasant Baptist Church—as victims, seemingly in relation to a probe into O9A activities.
🚨NEW🚨The FBI has released a few pages on the notorious Satanic accelerationist cult Order of Nine Angles (O9A).
The documents are heavily redacted, but appear to link O9A to the 2019 arsons of 3 black Baptist churches.STORY COMING SOON! pic.twitter.com/DXtcA7zIOd
— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) October 25, 2024
According to that FBI report, the FBI’s Dallas office had been probing O9A. When the church arsons happened in Louisiana, the bureau’s New Orleans office called Dallas to learn about the Satanic cult.
Much of the report is redacted, so the outcome of the meeting between the FBI’s Dallas and New Orleans offices is unclear.
The report does reiterate that “O9A is a satanic cult that encourages violence, terrorism, sexual abuse, and child pornography. O9A follows strong anti-Judaic, anti-Christian, and anti-Western ideologies and aims to incite chaos and violence in western civilization.”
Headline USA was unable to find any other information linking O9A to the 2019 church burnings. A transcript of the sentencing hearing for the arsonist, Matthews, does reveal that he had been bragging about his crimes to Satanists.
“You’re also aware he was communicating with pagans and Satanists and Luciferians? … And he was excited about the fact that he could tell pagans, Satanists, and Luciferians about the fact that he was destroying buildings? He was not just destroying buildings. He was destroying these religious communities?” a prosecutor asked Matthews’s clinical psychologist, Dr. Mary Lou Kelly, during his sentencing hearing.
In response to those questions, Kelly said that Matthews had taken on the persona of a Satanic character.
“I feel like he was acting in that role, which included church burnings,” she said.
O9A didn’t respond to an email inquiry about the FBI records or the allegations that it’s linked to the 2019 church burnings.
O9A International
Along with the 2019 FBI report on O9A, the bureau also released a 2021 “foreign dissemination legal statement”—indicating that the investigation into O9A went international.
Like the 2019 report, much of the FBI’s 2021 statement is redacted. Interestingly, some of the redactions were made pursuant to section b7(d) of FOIA—which is used to protect the identity of FBI informants.
The 2021 FBI report does deem O9A as an “international satanic organization with ties to [right-wing extremist] ideology.”
“Investigative information indicates ONA has demonstrated ties with the US [REDACTED] of [right-wing extremist] organizations [REDACTED] known for promulgating violent rhetoric directed at minorities.”
An international investigation into O9A would make sense, as the group has been linked to terroristic activity in the UK, Eastern Europe, Canada and elsewhere.
More recently, O9A has seen an offshoot group called “764” take its place in the media spotlight.
The DOJ is currently prosecuting several O9A- and 764-related cases.
The government’s crackdown on the Satanic pedophile groups started in November 2021, when the FBI arrested 764 member Angel Almeida. Details of Almeida’s 764 activities weren’t made public until records about his case were unsealed late last year.
More recently, the Justice Department filed charges in December against another 764 member, Kalana Limkin, for allegedly promoting child pornography, sexual extortion, and trafficking, animal cruelty and self-harm of minors.
Additionally, U.S. Marshals arrested 764 member Kyle Spitze in February on child porn charges. Spitze’s disturbing story can be read here.
Also in February, Canadian police announced the arrest of a 14-year-old male who was affiliated with 764.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
