Armed neo-Nazi who went to Charlottesville rally faces terror charge for stopping train: FBI

The FBI said an armed man who stopped an Amtrak train last year had ties with a white-supremacist group and had expressed a desire to kill black people, according to court documents unsealed this week.

The man – 26-year-old Taylor M. Wilson of St. Charles, Missouri – has been charged with a terrorist attack and other violence against a railroad carrier or other mass-transportation system, a federal crime.

According to an FBI affidavit, Wilson’s cousin, who was also his roommate, said Wilson had joined a neo-Nazi group he found while researching white-supremacist groups online. The same relative also told authorities that Wilson had demonstrated his interest in killing black people and had traveled to Charlottesville when white supremacists marched on that city in August, two months before the Amtrak incident.

Court filings describe Wilson as having a history of mental health issues and say he was “charged with attempting to and threatening to wreck an Amtrak train” with other passengers aboard. The eastbound California Zephyr headed from California to Chicago had about 175 people aboard when it was halted.

The train abruptly stopped in a rural part of southern Nebraska on Oct. 22, authorities said. In the FBI affidavit, Special Agent Monte Czaplewski wrote that the train halted when a passenger – later identified as Wilson – “breached a secure area of the train and triggered an emergency stop control panel, applying the emergency brakes.”

When the train stopped, the assistant passenger conductor said he and others searched and found Wilson sitting in the engineer’s seat of the follow engine and “playing with the controls,” Czaplewski wrote. Amtrak staffers attempted to corral Wilson, but he tried to escape, got agitated and, several times, tried reaching for his waistband, the affidavit states.

A sheriff’s deputy from Furnas County, Nebraska, arrived an hour later and found Wilson being physically held by Amtrak personnel, Czaplewski wrote. The deputy searched Wilson and found a loaded .38-caliber revolver tucked into his waistband. Wilson also had a loaded speed-loader, which can help reload a revolver more quickly, and a backpack belonging to him contained three more speed-loaders, a box of ammunition, a hammer, a knife and scissors, among other things, the affidavit states.

Authorities said they later found a cache of ammunition hidden in Wilson’s Missouri home and also located more than a dozen guns belonging to him, according to the affidavit filed Dec. 22. A search of his phone found documents and PDF files explaining how to kill people and evidence showing “the placement of a white supremacist banner” over a highway bearing a message related to a fatal police shooting.

No attorney was listed for Wilson in the case. A public defender who had been assigned to him previously did not respond to a message seeking comment Friday.

The conductor on the Amtrak train told Czaplewski that Wilson appeared to be having mood swings and was “lucid, then would start saying crazy things about going to the moon,” the affidavit states. Wilson repeatedly asked whether Amtrak staff members were going to shoot him, the conductor said. In the affidavit, Czaplewski said that a competency hearing for Wilson was held for his state case in Nebraska and he was deemed competent to proceed.

Czaplewski wrote that the FBI interviewed Wilson’s parents, who said he had gone with his cousin on a trip to California for a college visit that was postponed by wildfires. The affidavit says Wilson’s parents told agents they did not know where Wilson lived, saying it was somewhere in the St. Louis area, but property records later showed Wilson’s mother owned the residence where he was living, the FBI said.

The couple are described in the affidavit as saying that “they would not discuss any discussions they had with Taylor Wilson regarding race relations” and that they did not know their son had any involvement with the white-supremacist movement or drugs. They also told the FBI that their son had multiple legally purchased guns and a concealed-carry permit.

The FBI spoke with Wilson’s cousin and roommate after the Amtrak incident, interviewing him at the home they shared near the Missouri River about 20 miles from downtown St. Louis. Wilson’s cousin said he had been acting oddly since the two moved in together in June.

According to his cousin, Wilson traveled to Charlottesville in August with members of the neo-Nazi group he had joined. That gathering of white nationalists and white supremacists turned deadly when a car plowed into a group of counterprotesters who had assembled to demonstrate against the rally. Heather Heyer, one of the counterprotesters, was killed, and prosecutors charged James Alex Fields Jr., who had long espoused Nazi views, with first-degree murder in the case.

In the affidavit, Wilson’s cousin is described as believing that Wilson was “serious about killing black people.” The affidavit said this desire to kill black people and other nonwhite people was particularly expressed during protests in St. Louis. The specific protests are not identified, but large protests took place in the city last fall after the acquittal of a white former police officer who shot and killed a black man. Wilson’s cousin also said he believed Wilson and others in his group had put up “Whites Only” signs at unspecified businesses. The businesses are not named, though stickers bearing that message were found on St. Louis businesses not long after the protests began in the wake of the former officer’s acquittal.

The FBI also said Wilson’s cousin described being shown 20 to 25 guns that his roommate owned. After the interview, the affidavit states, Wilson’s cousin contacted the agent again to say Wilson used a hidden compartment in the home behind the refrigerator for storing things.

Wilson’s home was searched Dec. 21 by the FBI office in St. Louis. Agents found the “well camouflaged” compartment and, inside, hundreds of rounds of ammunition, a tactical vest, white-supremacy documents and a handmade shield, Czaplewski wrote. Wilson’s father arrived and spoke to FBI agents that day, Czaplewski continued, and later that afternoon gave them guns belonging to his son. The affidavit states that he turned over 15 firearms – a combination of handguns and rifles – as well as ammunition, magazines and a body-armor carrier.

Wilson, who had been released on bond that month, was taken into federal custody two days later, court filings state.