FBI says arson suspect targeted Mississippi synagogue because it's a Jewish house of worship

JACKSON, Miss. — A suspect in an arson fire at a synagogue that was bombed by the Ku Klux Klan decades ago admitted to targeting the historic institution because it's a Jewish house of worship and confessed what he had done to his father, who turned him in to authorities after observing burn marks on his son's ankles, hands and face, the FBI said Monday.

Stephen Pittman was charged with maliciously damaging or destroying a building by means of fire or an explosive. The suspect confessed to lighting a fire inside the building, which he referred to as ''the synagogue of Satan,'' according to an FBI affidavit filed in U.S. District Court in Mississippi on Monday.

There was no attorney listed for Pittman in the court docket Monday.

A crime captured on video

The fire ripped through the Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson shortly after 3 a.m. on Saturday. No congregants or firefighters were injured. Security camera video released Monday by the synagogue showed a masked and hooded man using a gas can to pour liquid on the floor and a couch in the building's lobby.

The weekend fire badly damaged the 165-year-old synagogue's library and administrative offices. Five Torahs — the sacred scrolls with the text of the first five books of the Hebrew Bible — located inside the sanctuary were being assessed for smoke damage. Two Torahs inside the library, where the most severe damage was done, were destroyed. One Torah that survived the Holocaust was behind glass and was not damaged in the fire, according to the congregation.

The suspect's father contacted the FBI and said his son had confessed to setting the building on fire. Pittman had texted his father a photo of the rear of the synagogue before the fire, with the message, ''There's a furnace in the back.'' His father had pleaded with his son to return home, but ''Pittman replied back by saying he was due for a homerun and ‘I did my research,''' the affidavit said.

The FBI later recovered a burned cell phone believed to be Pittman's and took possession of a hand torch that a congregant had found.

A congregation determined to rebuild

Yellow police tape on Monday blocked off the entrances to the synagogue building, which was surrounded by broken glass and soot. Bouquets of flowers were laid on the ground at the building's entrance — including one with a note that said, ''I'm so very sorry.''

The congregation's president, Zach Shemper, has vowed to rebuild the synagogue and said several churches had offered their spaces for worship during the rebuilding process.

With just several hundred people in the community, it has never been particularly easy being Jewish in Mississippi's capital city, but members of Beth Israel have taken special pride in keeping their traditions alive in the heart of the Deep South.

Because Jewish children throughout the South have attended summer camp for decades in Utica, Mississippi, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) southwest of Jackson, many retain a fond connection to the state and its Jewish community.

''Jackson is the capital city, and that synagogue is the capital synagogue in Mississippi,'' said Rabbi Gary Zola, a historian of American Jewry who taught at Hebrew Union College in Cincinnati. ''I would call it the flagship, though when we talk about places like New York and Los Angeles, it probably seems like Hicksville.''

A rabbi who stood up to the KKK

Beth Israel as a congregation was founded in 1860 and acquired its first property, where it built Mississippi's first synagogue, after the Civil War. In 1967, the synagogue moved to its current location.

It was bombed by local KKK members not long after relocating, and then two months after that, the home of the synagogue's leader, Rabbi Perry Nussbaum, was bombed because of his outspoken opposition to segregation and racism.

''He had this strong, strong sense of justice,'' Zola said.

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