Georgia man charged with making bombs from inside prison, mailing to federal addresses in DC, Alaska

Caption

David Cassady

Credit: Georgia Department of Corrections

A Georgia inmate is facing federal charges for allegedly building bombs from behind bars and mailing them to a federal facility near the White House and a federal courthouse in Alaska.

David Cassady, 55, constructed bombs in 2019 and early 2020, prosecutors said, while he was incarcerated at the now-closed Georgia State Prison in Tattnall County, about 50 miles west of Savannah.

As described in the indictment, Cassady in January 2020 deposited two packages in the mail, each containing a bomb, addressing one to 1400 New York Avenue N.W. in Washington, D.C., and another to the United States Courthouse and Federal Building in Anchorage, Alaska.

Cassady, who is currently serving a life sentence at Phillips State Prison in Gwinnett County for a 1992 kidnapping, has not been arraigned on the new federal charges.

The Washington, D.C., address corresponds to the Bond Building, a shared office building used by commercial and government entities, including the Department of Justice's fraud division. Prosecutors did not specify the exact target, describing it only as a “federal facility.”

The indictment does not state whether the packages arrived at Cassady's intended destinations, nor does it indicate if they exploded.

Few details are given beyond that Cassady allegedly acted with “intent to kill and injure a person” with regard to the Washington package and, through the Alaska package, “created substantial risk of injury to a person."

“Protecting our personnel and facilities is a fundamental role of our office and of our law enforcement partners,” U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Georgia Jill Steinberg said in a statement. “We also will take action against inmates who seek to commit crimes and harm the public from behind bars.”

An amended indictment is expected to soon be filed by prosecutors, in order to correct what they described as a clerical error which resulted in an erroneous charge being mistakenly listed in the indictment's caption.