The 47-year-old transgender woman charged with multiple felony counts of threatening to shoot and rape school children seemed to draw inspiration from Nashville’s Covenant School killer Audrey Elizabeth Hale, according to the Illinois sheriff involved in the arrest.
An earlier report suggested the school shooting threats were a call to action for the transgender community.
More than a month before news broke of the federal charges brought against Jason Lee Willie, also known as Alexia Willie, feminist magazine Reduxx reported on Willie’s August 14 arrest in Perry County, IL.
As the magazine noted, Springfield-area FBI intercepted a live stream on social media they deemed “suspicious.” In the video, an individual ultimately identified as Willie was seen making “disturbing threats towards schools and local children, specifically indicating there were plots in-progress to commit a school shooting, though no single institution was named.”
Perry County Sheriff Chad Howard told Reduxx that, during an interview with law enforcement, Willie (pictured above) referenced the last March mass shootings at Nashville’s Covenant Presbyterian School. Hale, a 28-year-old biological woman who identified as a transgender man, shot and killed three 9-year-olds and three adult staff members at the private Christian elementary school before being fatally shot by responding police officers.
“I didn’t even bring it up,” the sheriff told the publication. “Willie mentioned that the transgender individual in Tennessee was tired of being made fun of, and he used that as a reason why he was speaking on behalf of the transgender community.”
Howard said law enforcement officials initially thought Willie was among others involved in a wider plot because the suspect repeatedly spoke in terms of “we” and “us.”
“At the time, we were under the impression that, possibly, there was more than one person involved. As it turns out, he was speaking about the transgender community,” Howard told Reduxx.
The sheriff did not return multiple calls from The Tennessee Star.
Washington County (IL) Sheriff Ross Schultze also did not return a request for comment. The Washington County Sheriff’s office assisted Perry County deputies in Willie’s August arrest.
As The Star reported earlier this week, Willie is accused of making threatening statements while on video in online chatrooms with victims across the country. The indictment highlights 14 alleged instances in which the trans woman threatened to walk into schools or public restrooms to shoot or sexually abuse children.
“There’s a lot of transgenders out here that are tired of being picked on and we’re going to go into the schools and we’re going to kill their fu**ing children out here, and that’s the end of it. We’re at war,” Willie said online, according to the indictment.
The transgender woman made several comments about sexually assaulting children, particularly threats against “your daughters in the bathroom” as someone who is “openly a pedophile,” court filings state.
In one communication, Willie made racist comments against black people, threatening to use a syringe to “infect them with HIV.”
“They’re trash, they’re Christian trash. They’re transphobic, they’re homophobic. They’re no different than the f****** white supremacists,” Willie said, according to the indictment.
“Law enforcement agencies take threats against children seriously and will extensively investigate adults who threaten to endanger them,” Rachelle Aud Crowe, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Illinois, said in a press release issued Tuesday.
On March 28, a day after the Covenant School shootings, “the FBI received a report that Willie posted on Facebook that there would be many more and larger attacks on Christians by transgender people and that Christians would come to know fear like never before,” states a proffer of evidence, presented by federal prosecutors to convince the judge to hold the defendant in jail.
Willie remains in custody awaiting a January 16 trial in federal court.
Willie was originally released in August on a non-monetary bond about two days after being booked, Reduxx reported. The suspect was initially charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, but Howard told the publication that the charges related to the threats were dropped due to a lack of specific target.
“Because there was no one individual person or individual school directly threatened, the disorderly conduct did not stick. It was not capable of being filed,” the sheriff told the publication.
Illinois’ SAFE-T Act on pre-trial release was upheld by the state’s supreme court in July, making Illinois the first state in the nation to eliminate cash bail entirely.
Now, Willie faces 14 federal felony counts of Interstate Communication of a Threat to Injure and a maximum of 70 years in prison.
“This indictment is a result of the public’s vigilance in reporting threats to law enforcement. The FBI will diligently investigate reports of threats, especially when directed at our most vulnerable,” said FBI Springfield Field Office Acting Special Agent in Charge Joe Rodriguez in the press release. “As always, we continue to ask the public to report immediately any online activity or behavior that appears suspicious.”
But Willie was known to investigators years before.
The Nashville, Illionis, resident has made threats against different groups.
Court records show that in 2018, the suspect claimed on Facebook to have murdered a preacher suspected of molesting hundreds of children, including Willie. As Newsweek reported, the FBI previously spoke to Willie about a separate threat made on the streaming platform Twitch, in which Willie threatened to bomb people who discriminate against transgender rights.
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M.D. Kittle is the National Political Editor for The Star News Network.
