Ohio Man Admits Plotting to Carry Out Mass Shooting of Women

A self-identified "incel" admitted to plotting to carry out a mass shooting of women at a university in the state, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ).

Tres Genco, 22, from Hillsboro, Ohio, was arrested by federal agents in July 2021. He recently pleaded guilty to one count of attempting to commit a hate crime. As the plot involved an attempt to kill, the charge is punishable by up to life in prison, the DOJ said.

The term "incel" means "involuntary celibate." The online movement is largely made up of men who harbor anger toward women.

The movement is "defined by violent misogyny, pervasive self-loathing and a distinctive lexicon, misogynist incels developed their own insular platform where the hatred of women unifies users across racial and political divides," according to The Southern Poverty Law Center.

The movement gained greater public awareness in 2014 after incel Elliot Rodger killed six people and injured 14 others in a shooting in Isla Vista, California. Part of the shooting occurred outside a University of California, Santa Barbara sorority house.

According to court documents, Genco had profiles on a popular incel website forum from at least July 2019 through to mid-March 2020 and shared hundreds of messages on it. In one post, Genco shared details about spraying "some foids and couple" with orange juice and a water gun. "Foids" is a term incels use to refer to "femoids," or women.

Genco compared his "extremely empowering action" to Roder, who shot college students with orange juice from a water gun prior to his mass shooting.

He also wrote a manifesto where he said he would "slaughter" women "out of hatred, jealousy, and revenge." He said death would be a "great equalizer."

The DOJ said that in 2019, Genco bought tactical gloves, a bulletproof vest, a hoodie with the word "revenge, a bowie knife, two Glock 17 magazines, a 9mm Glock 17 clip, cargo pants and a skull facemask.

He attended Army Basic Training in Georgia between August and December of that year, and was discharged for entry-level performance and conduct.

In January 2020, Genco wrote a document called "isolated," which he would later describe as "the writings of the deluded and homicidal." He signed it "Your hopeful friend and murderer."

Court documents said Genco had carried out surveillance at an Ohio university on January 15, 2020, and that he searched online for topics including "planning a shooting crime" and "when does preparing for a crime become an attempt?"

When police arrested Genco on March 12, 2020, they found the items he had purchased and he subsequently admitted to possessing firearms to carry out his plot.

According to an NPR report, Genco was apprehended after he locked himself in his bedroom and threatened another person who called the police.

When police arrived at the home, the caller said Genco had become somewhat violent over several months. Genco's writings were discovered by officers during a search.

Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division said in a statement: "The gender-based hate and bias-motivated threat of violence exhibited by this defendant simply have no place in our society. The Department of Justice will remain steadfast in our efforts to investigate and prosecute those who carry out, or attempt to carry out or attempt to carry out."

U.S. Attorney Kenneth L Parker for the Southern District of Ohio added: "Genco formulated a plot to kill women and intended to carry it out. Our federal and local law enforcement partners stopped that from happening.

"Hate has no place in our country, including gender-based hate, and we will continue to work with our law enforcement partners to vigorously prosecute any such conduct."

Dr. Lisa Sugiura, author of The Incel Rebellion: The Rise of the Manosphere and the Virtual War Against Women, said misogyny had been normalized in some subcultures and that it could lead to hatred towards women.

"The potential for incel-inspired offline violence as well as the actual deplorable acts that have been committed in the incel name is real and significant and cannot be disregarded," Sugiura told Newsweek. "However, I suggest that it is the everyday violence within the incelsphere—the misogyny, racism, homophobia, and ableism—that requires further consideration from law enforcement and the public.

"These rhetorics have been normalized and within homosocial subcultures can develop into extreme manifestations of hatred," she said. "Also, and it is certainly not to minimize the acts of violence that have been linked with incels, but we need to appreciate them in the wider context of male violence against women and girls and not see them as something novel or distinct from the exponential abuses women are experiencing globally and on a daily basis, acts which are expressions of male supremacism."