Eleven worshippers at Tree of Life synagogue were killed by Robert Bowers in 2018. Bowers expressed hatred of Jews and white supremacist beliefs online before the attack.
The gunman who stormed a synagogue in the heart of Pittsburgh’s Jewish community and killed 11 worshippers will be sentenced to death for perpetrating the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history, a jury decided Wednesday.
Robert Bowers spewed hatred of Jews and espoused white supremacist beliefs online before methodically planning and carrying out the 2018 massacre at the Tree of Life synagogue, where members of three congregations had gathered for Sabbath worship and study. Bowers, a truck driver from suburban Baldwin, also wounded two worshippers and five responding police officers.
The same federal jury that convicted the 50-year-old Bowers on 63 criminal counts recommended that he be put to death for an attack whose effects continue to reverberate nearly five years later. He showed little reaction as the sentence was announced, briefly acknowledging his legal team and family as he was led from the courtroom. A judge will formally impose the sentence Thursday.
Jurors were unanimous in finding that Bowers’ attack was motivated by his hatred of Jews, and that he chose Tree of Life for its location in one the largest and most historic Jewish communities in the U.S. so that he could “maximize the devastation, amplify the harm of his crimes, and instill fear within the local, national, and international Jewish communities.” They also found that Bowers lacked remorse.
At a news conference after the verdict, attack survivor Rabbi Jeffrey Myers of the Tree of Life Congregation noted that Wednesday was a “day of love” on the Hebrew calendar.
“I don’t believe in coincidences. Today we received an immense embrace from the halls of justice,” he said, taking the jury’s decision as an affirmation that “we have the right to practice our Judaism and no one will ever take that right away from us.”
The family of 97-year-old Rose Mallinger, who was killed in the attack, and her daughter, Andrea Wedner, who was shot and wounded, thanked the jurors and said “a measure of justice has been served.”
Bowers’ lead defense attorney, Judy Clarke, declined comment.
The verdict came after a lengthy trial in which jurors heard in chilling detail how Bowers reloaded at least twice, stepped over the bloodied bodies of his victims to look for more people to shoot, and surrendered only when he ran out of ammunition. In the sentencing phase, grieving family members told the jury about the lives that Bowers took — elderly people and intellectually disabled brothers among them — and the unrelenting pain of their loss.
