Woman sentenced to 9 years in prison for mailing racist threats

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) — A Kentucky woman has been sentenced to nine years in prison for mailing racist threats to her neighbors, the Justice Department said.

Suzanne Craft, 55, of Louisville, sent multiple threatening letters through the U.S. Postal Service in 2020 to an interracial family who lived in the same neighborhood, according to court documents. Many of the letters contained threats of violence and racial slurs, the Justice Department said in a statement.

A jury convicted Craft in March of five counts of mailing threatening communications and found that the threats were racially motivated.

“This sentence sends a clear message regarding our commitment to ending hate-motivated violence and threats of violence,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.

Craft’s sentence will be followed by three years of supervised release, the statement on Thursday said.

The FBI Louisville Public Corruption Civil Rights Task Force and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service investigated the case.