An Ohio man and self-described “incel” who was convicted of plotting a sorority mass shooting now lives two blocks from one of his potential targets — the Ohio State University campus.
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And the Justice Department wants Tres Genco evicted from his home in Columbus.
“The government has serious safety concerns,” the Justice Department said in a motion filed May 26 with U.S. District Judge Susan Dlott of the Southern District of Ohio.
So does Ohio State.
“We support the DOJ motion,” an OSU spokesperson said Wednesday. “Student safety is our top priority.”
In its motion, the Justice Department requested that additional conditions be added to Genco’s supervised release. They would include requiring Genco to reside “more than 2 miles from any Ohio university or college and that his residence location be pre-approved by the probation office.”
The Justice Department also asks that Genco be banned “from entering upon the grounds of any Ohio university or college without prior approval from the probation office.” And it wants computer monitoring software added to his electronic devices.
Genco, who is from Hillsboro, Ohio, was arrested in 2021 and pleaded guilty the next year to one count of attempting to commit a hate crime. He was sentenced to six years in prison, followed by five years of supervised probation.
Specifically, Genco wrote in a document titled “A Hideous Symphony, a manifesto written by Tres Genco, the socially exiled Incel,” that he had been plotting to “slaughter” women “out of hatred, jealousy and revenge” at a university in Ohio.
One of his potential targets was a sorority at OSU, the Justice Department said.
Genco went so far as to buy a bulletproof vest and a skull mask, a rifle and handgun magazines. But he was arrested in July 2021 before he could carry out the plot after his mother reported that he had threatened her and barricaded himself in his room.
Deputies found Genco’s document, in which he detailed his plans to attack women, as well as his arsenal.
“Incel” is a mashup of the words “involuntary celibate” that refers to a mostly online misogynistic male community that hates women, who they believe owe them sex.
In addition to the residency restrictions, the Justice Department requested that Genco have no contact with Thomas Develin.
Develin, Genco’s former cellmate and a former Ohio National Guard member, is serving a 71-month prison sentence for making and selling “ghost guns,” which are untraceable homemade weapons, and threatening a Jewish school, according to the Justice Department.
In their May 30 response, Genco’s public defenders called the Justice Department’s concerns “unfounded” but agreed to the monitoring.
They also agreed to the request that Genco steer clear of Develin, even though they said Genco has had a positive influence on him. They said Genco, who is Jewish, helped Develin shed his antisemitic views by sharing his grandmother’s Holocaust survival story with him.
Develin’s parents helped Genco move into his new apartment near OSU in mid-May, the lawyers said in their response. Genco “strenuously objects” to the Justice Department’s request for “residential restrictions” and having to report to probation if he wants to set foot on a college campus, his lawyers wrote.
“These two restrictions would serve to unjustifiably destabilize Mr. Genco physically, financially, and psychologically,” they wrote. “Specifically, the restrictions sought by the government would have the effect of ousting Mr. Genco from his Probation-approved residence, causing him and his lease-guarantor to incur financial harm, and would significantly impair his freedom of movement.”
Genco’s lawyers said in their filing that the government could have asked for such conditions before his supervised release but did not.
If the Justice Department’s motion is granted, Genco would be branded with a “stigma more sweeping and devastating” than that imposed on sex offenders, and it would ostracize him when he has made “great strides” in rehabilitation.
“It defies logic that the government would seek to impose a more onerous residency restriction than the restrictions codified into law for registered sex offenders,” the filing reads.
Before he moved to the apartment near Ohio State, the court records say, Genco lived in an unspecified halfway house from August to April. During that time, he was employed and incurred no violations.
Dlott has not yet ruled on the competing motions, a survey of available court records indicated.
