Ethan Phelan Melzer, Attempting to Murder Service Members, Kentucky 2022

A former U.S. Army soldier from Louisville, Kentucky, has been sentenced to 45 years in prison for attempting to murder his fellow service members in a deadly ambush.

Ethan Phelan Melzer, 24, pleaded guilty to attempting to murder U.S. service members, providing and attempting to provide material support to terrorists, and illegally transmitting national defense information on June 24, 2022.

Melzer planned a jihadist attack on his U.S. Army unit in the days leading up to a deployment to Turkey and sent sensitive details about the unit to members of the extremist organization Order of the Nine Angles (O9A), a white supremacist, neo-Nazi and pro-jihadist group.

“Today’s sentence holds Mr. Melzer accountable for an egregious and shameful act of betrayal against his own military unit and his country,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the Justice Department’s National Security Division.

“Ethan Melzer infiltrated the U.S. Army in service of a neo-Nazi, white supremacist and jihadist group,” said U.S. Attorney Damian Williams for the Southern District of New York.

Melzer joined the U.S. Army in approximately 2018 and infiltrated its ranks as part of an insight role to further his goals as an O9A adherent. In approximately October 2019, Melzer deployed abroad with the Army to Italy as a member of the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team.

Melzer is a member of O9A, which espouses neo-Nazi, antisemitic and Satanic beliefs and promotes extreme violence to accelerate and cause the demise of Western civilization.

Source: https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/former-us-army-soldier-sentenced-45-years-prison-attempting-murder-fellow-service-members