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FBI releases records about FedEx mass shooter. Here's what they show
Four years after a mass shooting left nine people dead at a FedEx facility in Indianapolis, the FBI is beginning to release records that provide a behind-the-scenes look at law enforcement's interactions with the killer.
The records, which IndyStar first requested in 2021, include 147 heavily redacted pages. They confirm that 19-year-old Brandon Hole was on the FBI's radar more than a year before he murdered eight employees and killed himself at his former workplace on April 15, 2021.
As early as March 4, 2020, the FBI opened an assessment of Hole for possible adherence to racially motivated violent extremism. The assessment began when IMPD seized a shotgun from Hole's residence after his mother reported that he had threatened suicide by cop.
During the intervention, officers "observed computer monitors in Brandon's bedroom that displayed opened websites related to Nazi and Neo-Nazi killings along with a popular Neo-Nazi 4-chan forum that uses the moniker 'My Little Pony'. The forum was in German and a German to English translator website was converting the messages in the forum."
In an email, an FBI task force officer said IMPD officers told him there were "20 tabs of nazi related material" and that Hole was posting on a forum about a gun he had recently purchased.
Agents interviewed Hole on April 21, 2020, at his mother's home. He denied having extremist views and said his father killed himself when Hole was 3 years old. Hole said he played video games such as Warhammer 40,000, which has scenes of German soldiers fighting with gasmasks, and belonged to an Internet group for adult fans of the animated children's series ''My Little Pony."
Members of the forum are also known as "Bronies" and while some genuinely enjoy watching the show with its bright colors and positive messages, it has also been a home for sexual, violent and racist fan art.
Hole told the FBI agent he "enjoys Anime related to the TV Show."
"Hole seemed to already know that some followers/fans of My Little Pony have been tied to White Supremacy, but denied any affiliation," according to the FBI's summary of the interview.
Two days later, the FBI closed the assessment, noting Hole did not warrant further investigation.
Read the records: Here's what the FBI has released so far on FedEx shooter Brandon Hole
A few months later, on Aug. 19, 2020, Hole called the FBI task force officer who had previously interviewed him. He demanded to know why the FBI had interviewed him. Hole asked the officer if he "kneeled at BLM protests like other cops, and asked if White Supremacy was illegal."
The records are consistent with IndyStar's reporting in 2021 that identified multiple warning signs and failed interventions in the months leading up to the massacre. That included more than a dozen mental health care and law enforcement encounters.
The reporting was part of a series, "Red Flagged," that identified numerous instances where police and prosecutors had failed to understand and enforce Indiana's red flag law. The project was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
The newly released records show that after the FedEx shooting, the FBI re-opened its investigation.
During a walk-through of Hole's home the day after the shooting, agents made the following observations:
"All four walls of the bedroom contained blankets, posters, tapestries, and painted murals of 'My Little Pony' characters. The bed was 'My Little Pony' themed and had a large stuffed animal of one of the characters from the tv show. In the closet there was the torso of a mannequin dangling from a hanger. This mannequin had a dress on it. Also in the closet was a box adorned with what appeared to be Japanese writing and a picture of a sex doll. In this bedroom, there was no visible literature, pictures, symbols, or trinkets that would be apparent representation of an extremist ideology."
The records show agents also called or visited multiple gun stores in an effort to learn more about Hole's activities. Agents traced a Ruger AR-556 rifle that Hole purchased before the shooting to Indy Trading Post at 2851 Madison Ave. The store has since closed.
Several records released by the FBI pertain to interviews agents conducted in May 2021 with employees at an Amazon warehouse in Plainfield, where Hole worked briefly in 2020.
Hole got into an argument with another employee and became confrontational on June 12, 2020, according to the interviews. One employee "was worried about the possibility of HOLE committing workplace violence due to his violent outbursts and antiauthority inclinations."
When questioned by management, Hole denied making any threats. During a meeting with human resources, Hole made repeated sarcastic comments and claimed he was being unfairly targeted because he was gay. At one point, he showed an FBI business card and said the company could call his FBI contact. A few minutes later Hole left the building. Security suspended Hole's badge and swept the parking lot, but he was not located, according to the records.
Later that summer, Hole took a job with FedEx Ground near the Indianapolis International Airport, but he left the company in October 2020, about six months before the shooting.
The motive for the shooting remained a topic of speculation for months. Many of the facility's employees were Sikh, and four of the eight people Hole killed in the shooting were Sikh.
More than three months after the shooting, authorities announced that the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit had determined the shooting was "an act of suicidal murder" in which Hole decided to kill himself "in a way he believed would demonstrate his masculinity and capability while fulfilling a final desire to experience killing people."
"Only the shooter knows all the reasons why he committed this horrific act of violence," then-FBI Indianapolis Special Agent in Charge Paul Keenan said, adding that Hole "did not appear to have been motivated by bias or desire to advance any ideology."
Keenan said authorities reviewed Hole's online activity, but that World War II and Nazi-type propaganda was only a small percentage of his overall viewing.
"I believe we reviewed about 175,000 files this computer and it was somewhere in the neighborhood of less than 200 files mainly of German military, German Nazi things," Keenan said.
The records released so far are limited in scope. In addition to the heavy redactions, the FBI withheld hundreds of additional pages altogether, citing exemptions to public records laws for medical privacy and confidential law enforcement techniques.
The FBI says the four batches of records that have been made public so far represent an "interim" release and that additional releases may come in the future.
