Pittsburgh Synagogue Massacre: City Endured Previous Hate Crimes

PITTSBURGH, PA - For longtime Pittsburgh-area residents, Saturday’s massacre at Tree of Life Synagogue in Squirrel Hill revived memories of two other notorious homicidal hate crimes that scarred the region. They occurred within a month of each other in 2000.

In March 2000, Ronald Taylor, 40, a black man with a history of mental illness, set his apartment on fire and then embarked on a racially motivated shooting rampage in Wilkinsburg. Gunned down were John Kroll, 55, a carpenter, Joseph Healy, 71, a former priest and Emil Sanielevici, a 20-year-old college student. All of his victims were white.

In addition to the homicide charges, Taylor was charged with ethnic intimidation after police recovered anti-white and anti-semitic writings.

Taylor was sentenced to death in 2001 and remains on death row.

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In April 2000, Richard Baumhammers, an emotionally unstable unemployed immigration attorney from Mt. Lebanon, walked to the home of his next-door neighbor, Anita “Nicki” Gordon. He shot the Jewish woman to death and set her house on fire.

Baumhammers then drove to the Beth El Congregation in Scott, fired shots into the windows of the synagogue and spray-painted swastikas on the building.

>>> Synagogue Massacre Victims Suffered Multiple Wounds

From there, he drove to an Indian grocery in Scott where he shot to death Anil Thakur. Store manager Sandeep Patel was shot in the neck and paralyzed in the attack and was confined to a wheelchair before dying in 2007.

Baumhammers then drove to the Ya Fei Chinese restaurant in Robinson Town Centre, where he gunned down manager Ji-Ye Sun and cook Tony Pham in front of horrified diners. Before finally being apprehended, he drove to the C.S. Kim School of Karate in Center Township, Beaver County, and murdered Gary Lee, an African-American man.

During his trial, prosecutors alleged Baumhammers read racist literature and saw Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and Adolf Hitler as heroes. Baumhammers has been on death row since 2001.

Armed law enforcement officers walk through the street in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh where a shooter opened fire during services at the Tree of Life Synagogue on Saturday, Oct. 27, 2018. (AP
Photo/Keith Srakocic)

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