Record of Suspect in Anti-LGBTQ Beating Reveals Previous Hate, Criminal Activity

Calfy qualified for early release from an Arkansas prison because he met state requirements for shortening his term. Although released from prison in 2016, Calfy returned to a cell June 21. He’s one of three suspects accused of luring a gay man to a house and attacking him. Calfy sits in an Arkansas jail charged with felony second-degree battery charges.

While in prison, Calfy finished two anger management courses in 2014 and 2015, records show. He also completed a “thinking errors” group and a domestic violence program while imprisoned.

A review of judicial and prison documents shows that Calfy, 23, has been in and out of jails since his teen years. He has been adjudicated as a delinquent, was arrested for threatening a Columbine-like slaughter at his high school and said of his mother, “I’m fixing to f-----’ kill her.”

An examination of his record shows:

· Calfy’s mother testified seven years ago that her son made “racial statements” regularly.

· He was expelled from his high school and banned from school property for making threats against the school and its students.

· Prosecutors, in one case, claimed Calfy had a history of making racial and hate statements, and assaulting his classmates.

Soon after his arrest, Hatewatch reported that Calfy has a tattoo that appears to represent a white supremacist ideology, the “Phineas Priesthood.”

As he remains jailed with a $50,000 bond for the most recent battery charges, Calfy calls himself the regional recruiter with the white nationalist hate group Shieldwall Network. The road he took to get there winds through California and Arkansas and into the world of white nationalism. (Billy Roper, the former deputy membership coordinator for the neo-Nazi National Alliance, runs the Shieldwall Network.)

Much of this reporting is based on documents obtained from the Yell County Circuit Court in Arkansas. The papers address Calfy’s unsuccessful appeal of his conviction for terroristic threatening and criminal possession of explosive material. Witnesses testified they had direct contact with Calfy and knowledge of his actions.

Julian Calfy was born on July 7, 1995. His mother moved her family from Apple Valley, California, to Arkansas during the summer of 2010. Calfy enrolled in Dardanelle High School in Yell County.

Witnesses describe Calfy in the court testimony as a young man prone to racial outbursts. Calfy’s mother said in her testimony that her son displayed behavioral issues while in California. “There were accusations at the school that he said something racial to other students,” she testified.

She described her son as “making racial statements on a regular basis since I can remember.” Prosecutors cited his California school records they say documented “not only … issuing racial statements and hate statements then, but also assault on his classmates.”

His outbursts and violent incidents would only increase in Arkansas. From Oct. 8, 2010, to Oct. 14, 2011, Calfy was adjudicated as delinquent four times and placed under supervised probation, which prosecutors say he violated repeatedly, the court records show.

In September 2010, school resource officer Lonnie Moore testified Calfy “deceived” two students into consuming tea laced with a vomit-inducing agent. His mother testified Calfy pleaded guilty to battery, and the school expelled him.

But Calfy would soon find trouble again. He attended a football game on school property three months later and was placed in custody for criminal trespassing, according to court testimony. During this time, court records show Calfy took a family member’s Nissan pickup truck and totaled it in a rollover accident.

Calfy’s problems continued while he was in a detention facility. A juvenile intake officer, Leanne Duvall, testified Calfy would scratch paint from his bunk, his door and other places. He was charged with criminal mischief for that behavior.

Duvall testified the damage to his bunk included a swastika and “ASK 4 LOKI IF YOU CALL 1488 WRA.” Duvall said Calfy adopted the nickname “Loki,” a reference to the trickster god of Norse mythology, sometime prior. "1488" is common white supremacist code. The "14" represents the "14 Words," a slogan coined by the late David Lane, who assassinated a Jewish talk show host. The slogan is "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children."  The "88" represents "Heil Hitler," as "H" is the eighth letter of the alphabet. Duvall said Calfy described WRA, or the White Resistance Alliance, as his “little gang.”

Then, on Dec. 8, 2011, Moore, the school resource officer, arrested Calfy outside his classroom at Dardanelle High School. Moore, in an affidavit, said he received a tip that Calfy had placed threatening posts on Facebook.

And Dardanelle’s police chief testified Calfy's binder “caused me concern” because the drawings in it depicted what appeared to be a bomb and males shooting other people. Calfy’s backpack also contained references to the mass shootings at Columbine High School and Virginia Tech and a map marking the doors of Dardanelle High with a list of items like chains and locks to secure the doors.

Testimony also showed worry about Calfy’s writings. One of his Facebook posts, which is part of the court record, read: “I love wen ppl say to me ‘Do u think ur like the next Hitler?’ But u know wut I tell em? ‘Nope Im the next Eric Harris just lookin for my Dylan Klebold,’” referring to the two Columbine mass murderers.

Calfy, who was then 16, was expelled from Dardanelle High School on Dec. 19, 2011, after police notified school officials that he “[made] serious threats about damaging the school and students,” an Arkansas television news station reported.

His troubles did not end there.

Shane West, a criminal investigator with the Conway County Sheriff’s Office, testified that in 2011 Calfy admitted to vandalizing the property of a man who lived in that county. West described how Calfy lashed out at his mother, who was in the interview room, during the investigation of the vandalism charges.

West said Calfy threatened his mother, who tried to console him when “he was upset because he had told on his friend.”

Calfy snapped, “Get this b---- away from me, I’m fixing to f-----’ kill her,” West recalled.

In 2014, Calfy pleaded guilty in two cases: criminal mischief for the 2011 vandalism, for which he received a suspended sentence, and the terroristic threats case involving the school.

Prosecutor Tom Tatum of Yell County, Arkansas, said his office briefly sought an additional charge of first-degree attempted murder in relation to the school threat. But the prosecution dismissed the charge as part of a conditional plea.

“The problem with the attempted first-degree murder was having sufficient evidence to prove all the elements of that offense beyond a reasonable doubt,” Tatum told Hatewatch. “He made kind of a veiled generic threat. His conduct fit more into terroristic threatening and possessing explosives.”

Photo illustration by SPLC