Richmond Writer May Have Inspired Terrorist Attack on Power Grid in Nevada
On February 19, 2026, Dawson Maloney attempted to ram his car into a power station in Boulder City, Nevada. Maloney traveled over 2,500 miles from Albany, New York.
According to a Las Vegas Metro Police press release, Maloney had a extremist propaganda, explosive materials, firearms, and other weapons in his car and at his hotel room when law enforcement found him dead in his car from an apparent self inflicted gunshot suicide. According to law enforcement, Maloney sent a message to his mother referring to himself as " a dead terrorist son."
The reason Maloney traveled so far to that specific power station might have to do with a writer from Richmond.
Franklin Pierce Skinner known simply as Pierce Skinner on his writing projects. Some of those works include poetry and science fiction. In the summer of 2020, Skinner followed the activities of the George Floyd protests in Richmond. He was on hand to see the Stuart Confederate Statue removed. But by December 2021 and January 2022, he had a letters of correspondence with Kaczynski. One of those letters would be leaked on Telegram and cause the public to first find out about Kaczynski's terminal cancer.
One of the other projects from Skinner was a bimonthly zine titled "Garden." This zine published 4 issues in 2022 and described itself as anti-tech and neo-Luddism and professed support for Ted Kaczynski, The Unabomber. Skinner lived in an apartment in Jackson Ward when he claimed his home was raided by the Department of Homeland Security in August 2022. This unconfirmed raid was announced in a GoFundMe campaign. This would be shared on the social media page of Seneca Careto, a self described "anarcho-totalarian" aligned with white nationalists and provides artwork to covers of far right books like Mike Ma's Harassment Architecture. Skinner was able to raise over $900 for his legal fund The third issue of Garden did more than profess support of the Unabomber, it included a list of locations of power substations that were referred to as "The Most Critically Important Electric Substations in the United States."
Three of those substations listed included locations in Boulder City, where Maloney attempted his alleged terrorist attack. Months after the publication of Garden, power substations across the United States were attacked. The most notable was in Moore County North Carolina that lead to tens of thousands without power. Most of the substations hit were not listed in Garden, and there were none listed near Moore County but was about an hour and half drive away to the prison that held Ted Kaczynski at the time. In the months following the publication of Garden, neo-Nazi and Atomwaffen founder Brandon Russell was indicted for conspiring to destroy energy facilities. This was not Russell's first time accused of doing such. In 2018, Russell was convicted of possession of illegal explosives in Flordia, when his roommate murdered the other two alleged co-conspirators.
Ali Winston from the Guardian reported that at Russell's sentencing, the prosecution referenced Skinner's Garden zine and stating that a successful attack would cause chaotic blackouts.
Modern attacks on the power grid draw inspiration from a mysterious 2013 attack on a power substation in Metcalf, California. Garden has a breakdown of the timeline and investigation into this attack. Italicized in Garden in a bullet point that reads, "If this attack was carried out in the middle of winter or summer it could have resulted in blackouts throughout the San Jose area." Garden states that they oppose acts of violence like in their third issue "We denounce violence as a matter of pragmatism, not a matter of principle. It would be anathema to a nascent anti-tech organization to openly incite violence, which would prompt law enforcement to hinder our ability to spread our message." In the publication, it is also clear they lay out successfully attacks would cause hospitals to fail and patients dependant on life support would die. In the substation attack in Moore County, a woman died during the blackout when she could not access her oxygen tank and investigators ruled it as a homicide. Garden also calls for the opposition of neo-Nazi viewpoints. "We vehemently oppose racism, nationalism, ethno-nationalism, any form of fascism or defense of the rule of law." However, with the case of Brandon Russell and Attomwaffen, white nationalism and neo-Nazism is the core of their beliefs. By the summer of 2022, Pierce would need help for legal troubles but one completely different than for publishing Garden. After attacks on power grids and arrests for neo-Nazis conspiring to carry them out, Skinner began to seek sexual partners. Skinner was not seeking just seeking another adult to carry out a fantasy but instead for a father that would watch their daughter get sexual abused. Skinner would also send Child Exploitation Sex Material to who he believed to be a father that would allow his 12 year old daughter to be sexual abused but was actually a undercover detective. By August 2, 2023, Skinner was arrested by Virginia Beach Police after meeting up with an undercover detective. He would plead guilty to felony charges in January 2024 and is serving his sentence until November 2027.
Skinner published locations of vulnerable points of the power grid that terrorists might be using to carry out attacks but he is currently serving time for child sex abuse material.
