Arrests in Pennsylvania and West Virginia In Separate Anti-Masonic, Anti-Semetic Attacks

Photo: WGAL-TV8

by Christopher Hodapp

A pair of disturbing cases involving threats against Freemasons have surfaced in Pennsylvania and West Virginia — both within the space of just a few days of each other.

In Pennsylvania, police say 37-year-old Joshua Albert Reisinger (photo) of Mountville carried out a bizarre weeks-long campaign against two Masonic halls involving dead animals, cryptic messages and other objects left outside the buildings. Reisinger has now also been charged in connection with antisemitic signs and an apparent threat against a congregant at a Lancaster-area synagogue.

According to Steelton Borough Police, officers began investigating a series of incidents at Paxton Lodge No. 16 (PHA) in Steelton between August 15 and September 20. Someone repeatedly left bizarre objects at or near the lodge that included balloons, spray-painted shoes, a doll bust, playing cards, feathers, candles, hair, written messages and riddles — along with the carcasses of a cat, crow, squirrel and raccoon. Several messages contained language that lodge members regarded as vague or implied threats, and police said the repeated incidents, particularly around scheduled lodge activities, caused increasing concern for members' safety. 

According to their Facebook page, Paxton Lodge is the oldest Prince Hall subordinate Lodge in the state outside of Philadelphia.

Then police learned that Millersville Masonic Lodge No. 476, roughly 40 miles away, had been experiencing remarkably similar incidents. That lodge reportedly had been vandalized repeatedly during August, and Millersville police had already identified Reisinger as a suspect in that investigation. After representatives of the two lodges compared photographs and information, investigators connected the cases.

Reisinger was taken into custody following a traffic stop in Steelton and initially faced charges including terroristic threats, harassment, loitering and prowling at night, disorderly conduct, criminal trespass and scattering rubbish. 

But his story didn't end with the Masonic lodges.

Lancaster Township Police subsequently charged Reisinger with ethnic intimidation, terroristic threats, harassment and disorderly conduct after incidents at Degel Israel Congregation, an Orthodox Jewish synagogue and school in Lancaster Township. Police allege that on September 19 and 20 Reisinger placed derogatory and antisemitic signs on the synagogue property, including one displaying a Nazi SS symbol. According to investigators, when a congregant began removing one of the signs, he spotted Reisinger sitting in a vehicle across the street. Reisinger allegedly formed his hand into the shape of a pistol, pointed it at the congregant and mimed shooting him. The congregant obtained the vehicle's registration number, helping police identify the suspect.

Reisinger's targets of both Masonic lodges and a Jewish synagogue seem to fall in line with the increase in both anti-semitic and anti-Masonic conspiracism being spread throughout social media. 

Reisinger was arrested again on October 2. A district judge set bail at $100,000, which police said he was unable to post, and he was ordered held in the Lancaster County Prison pending a preliminary hearing.

Meanwhile, several hundred miles southwest in Buckhannon, West Virginia, another 37-year-old man was arrested following an explicitly anti-Masonic threat posted on Facebook. The Upshur County Sheriff's Office charged Justin Sayre (photo below) with threats of terrorist acts and making threats of a crime of violence after investigators say he participated in an online discussion concerning Flock automated license-plate-reader cameras.

Justin Sayre

According to the sheriff's report quoted by WDTV, Sayre called for the cameras to be destroyed and described local police officers as terrorists and "mules for the free masons up there at lodge 7," adding that "they need taken out too." "Lodge 7" appears to be a reference to Franklin Lodge No. 7 in Buckhannon, one of West Virginia's oldest Masonic lodges. Franklin Lodge has been part of the Buckhannon community since the nineteenth century and was among the original lodges involved in organizing the Grand Lodge of West Virginia after the Civil War.

Investigators said Sayre's Facebook account contained extensive anti-law-enforcement rhetoric and that the combination of those posts with the direct threat caused public alarm. He was being held in the Tygart Valley Regional Jail on $35,000 cash-only bond following his arrest.

These two cases do not appear to be connected. But for Masonic organizations, the timing is difficult to ignore. Whether these latest incidents ultimately prove to have been driven by anti-Masonic conspiracy theories, personal grievances, generalized extremism or something else will be for investigators and courts to determine. But they join a steadily growing collection of incidents in which Masonic buildings and Freemasons have become targets for people who regard the fraternity not as an innocuous civic organization, but as some sinister enemy that must be confronted.

And that is no longer something lodge officers can simply laugh off.