Well done the FBI

Radio NZ reports:

A Hawke’s Bay man who distributed “repugnant” videos and images showing the sexual abuse of children, and who was dubbed a national security threat by police for planning a mass killing, can now be publicly identified.

A court order suppressing the name of Ronndog Elliot Keefe, 22, during court proceedings against him lapsed at 5pm on Friday.

Keefe collected and distributed thousands of videos and images of young children being sexually abused and violated by adults.

The self-declared “soldier of Christ” was also planning to attack either a mall or a mosque and kill men by stabbing them.

Police have told the courts he intended this to be a suicide mission.

Police searched Keefe’s house in September 2024 and found two bladed weapons – a machete and a bayonet.

An evil extremist.

Keefe’s lawyer Matt Dixon asked for name suppression to continue even after Keefe had been sentenced.

In part, he argued that naming him in public might impair his prospects for rehabilitation.

You could use that to argue every single criminal should get name supresssion.

Keefe’s threat to kill people came to police attention after a tip-off to New Zealand authorities from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation, which had been alerted by a young American woman with whom Keefe had been communicating for about two years.

The American woman was not the girl he coerced into sending him images.

Court documents say he told the young woman in America “repeatedly and in detail” about his desire to commit a mass killing, wanting to copy high-profile terrorist and extremist attacks to gain public notoriety.

We should be very thankful to that young American woman, and the FBI.

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