Kentucky Woman Who Mailed Racist Letters to Neighbors Gets Nine Years in Prison

A Kentucky woman was sentenced to nine years in prison on Thursday for sending threatening and racist letters to her neighbors, according to a release from the Department of Justice.

Suzanne Craft, 55, sent multiple letters to an interracial couple and their children in 2020. The letters frequently contained racial slurs and violent threats.

In one letter, Craft threatened to run over the couple's daughter. In another, she wrote "get out" and included two bullets.

"I am still in fear today, looking over my shoulder everywhere I go," Michella Pineda, one of the victims, told WLKY News. "I heard the message loud and clear. Her intention was to instill fear. Up until the day of her arrest, she harassed us."

During the trial, the judge described the details of this case as "shocking, vile, cruel, degrading, and disturbing," according to the outlet.

After serving nine years in prison, Craft will be under supervised release for three years.

Kristen Clarke, Assistant Attorney General of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, emphasized the importance of this sentence in the release.

“This sentence sends a clear message about our commitment to ending hate-motivated violence and threats of violence,” Clarke said. “There is no room in civilized society for violent threats based on race. We hope that this result brings some measure of peace to victims who had to suffer through the defendant’s terrifying threats of racial violence.”

In 2020, Craft was previously charged with three counts of criminal mischief and three counts of harassing communications for painting the N-word and a swastika on the Pineda family's driveway.