The Missouri man prosecutors have linked to the death of a Black woman found in a barrel and charged with the rape and kidnapping of another Black woman called for the return of “severe” punishment for criminals, including chain gangs, and said he supported “racist, oppressive” policing of Black people.
The comments by Timothy Haslett, who is white, were posted on Facebook in 2014 and 2020 and confirmed by NBC News.
Haslett advocated for harsh prison punishment nine years ago in the comment thread of a Facebook post calling for the executions of rapists and murderers. Other comments were posted in a Facebook group for Excelsior Springs, the city of 10,500 just north of Kansas City where Haslett lived.
Haslett, 40, was banned from the group in 2020 for making threatening comments, including after another user called him racist, according to one of the group’s administrators, Micky McKown.
A local news outlet, The Kansas City Defender, previously reported Haslett’s comments about policing.
Haslett was indicted in February on nine charges, including rape, sodomy and kidnapping. He has pleaded not guilty in the case, in which authorities said he held a 22-year-old woman captive for weeks in his basement before she escaped in October.
The woman had a metal collar around her neck and duct tape on her mouth, authorities have said in law enforcement documents. The body of a second woman whom authorities described as a “potential witness” in the kidnapping was found in a barrel in the Missouri River.
Haslett hasn’t been charged in the death of the woman, Jaynie Crosdale. Her remains were identified last month.
A spokesman for the Clay County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office, Alexander Higginbotham, declined to comment on Haslett’s social media posts, citing the integrity of the ongoing case.
Citing state Supreme Court and Missouri Bar rules, Higginbotham has declined to say whether race is believed to have played a role in the crimes.
In the 2014 Facebook comment, Haslett wrote that criminals “aren’t scared of ‘rehabilitation’. Nobody does ‘hard time’ anymore. Take the luxuries out of prison. Institute statutory sentences for crimes. Eliminate parole and good time awards. If you go to prison it should be 24 hours in a concrete box with no ac, no heat, no Internet, no gym, and no school.”
Haslett added: “You work the chain gang in 100 degree heat in full coveralls and shackles. You do your full time. Make prison a PUNISHMENT. Make the cost of committing crime so severe that criminals decide it is not worth it. We can’t rehabilitate these people.”
Chain gangs, which were introduced in the U.S. in the 19th century and abolished around the time of World War II, were largely reserved for Black people and are widely considered a racist and brutal form of incarceration, said a spokesperson for Vera Institute for Justice, a nonprofit research group that advocates for criminal justice reform.
The person who posted the initial Facebook comment calling for executions didn’t respond to a request for comment Monday.
In another exchange, on Oct. 8, 2020, Haslett responded to a comment posted in the Excelsior Spring Facebook group with a racist rant about Black people and comments expressing support for “racist, oppressive” policing.
The deleted rant was provided to NBC News by Joseph Allen, who was tagged in the comment.
McKown, the group administrator, didn’t recall the Oct. 8 post but said that around the time of the 2020 election, Haslett, Allen and another user were regularly getting in arguments that “resulted in name calling and over-the-line stuff. We were constantly having to delete content. But I wouldn’t say he stood out more than anyone else.”
Allen was also banned for “inciting conflict,” McKown said.
Allen, 34, didn’t recall what prompted Haslett’s rant, though he said he’d likely used “colorful language” to call out what he viewed as racism on the site.
When Haslett responded, Allen said, he captured a screenshot of the exchange.
“I was like, I’ve got to let people know this guy is an awful racist,” Allen recalled. “People probably wouldn’t want to trust their kids around him.”
Haslett’s lawyer didn’t respond to a request for comment. A message left at the phone number listed under Haslett’s mother’s name wasn’t returned.
Allen said he sent the screenshot to a local racial justice group and contacted a contractor identified on Haslett’s Facebook profile as his employer. The company didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
In another exchange on the Excelsior Springs group about Michelle Obama and school lunches, a user called out Haslett for his “racism.”
He responded: “Why is the only person bringing race into this the same one calling everyone a racist?”
Another user chimed in, using an expletive to describe Haslett as racist.
“OK,” Haslett responded. “Let’s pretend that your right? Just what” are “you going to do about it?” he said, using an expletive.
A third user asked whether the comment was a threat.
“If I threatened you, you wouldn’t have to ask if I did,” he said, adding that the commenter was virtue-signaling and “changing the world one typo at a time.”
McKown pointed to the exchange as one of the reasons Haslett was kicked out of the group.
Two years later, when authorities announced that Haslett had been arrested, Allen sent the screenshot and another comment Haslett posted about Breonna Taylor, the Black woman shot and killed by police in Louisville, Kentucky, in 2020, to The Kansas City Defender. Allen said he believed Haslett was likely to hurt someone, given his comments in the Facebook group.
But, he added, “I didn’t think it would be like this.”
Source : NBC News