A shooting that killed a Texas lawyer and severely wounded her husband has been revealed to be an antisemitic hate crime, with the shooter calling the couple “Jewish Satan worshippers.”
The El Paso Times reported Saturday that lawyer Georgette Kaufmann, 50, and her husband Daniel, 47, were shot on Nov. 14, 2020 at their residence.
Georgette was shot as she was returning home and was killed outright. Daniel went to the backdoor in response to the sound of the attack and was shot several times, but survived. He then crawled to a neighbor’s house and the police were called.
El Paso police announced last week that they had arrested Joseph Angel Alvarez, 38, in connection with the shooting. The killer apparently stated that he was motivated by antisemitism and a bizarre conspiracy theory involving Satanism and far-right ideology.
Court documents, the El Paso Times reported, show that Alvarez said he was “executing and exterminating the pro-choice Jewish Satan worshippers” he believed were located at the Kaufmanns’ and three other houses in the area of Memorial Park.
A police officer stated in an affidavit that “The defendant’s belief was ‘to end the Satanic activity’ near the crime scene (Memorial Park) and acted out his manifesto by killing and shooting the Kaufmanns and by mentally fabricating the connection he believed the four corner houses on Raynor and Copper to have been involved in ‘satanic activity,’ because of their relative geographic location to the park.”
Police captured Alvarez by obtaining a search warrant allowing them to track cellphone activity in the area on the night of the shooting, through which they identified the suspect.
They then found a Facebook post saying that Alvarez had been fired from a job for stalking a female co-worker, and an email outlining his plans to kill people near the park where he believed satanic rituals were taking place, leading to his arrest.
Alvarez is charged with murder and aggravated assault; he is currently jailed, with bail set at $2.5 million. The investigation into the crime is ongoing.