a shrinking manufacturing town,
working as a part-time cook at a
cheap take-out joint. He was 29 and
unmarried, with red hair and white
skin, described as polite by his
coworkers, as the mild-mannered
guy next door by his neighbors. He
liked to hang out and play cards and
watch soccer. He also wanted to kill
a s ma ny p e o ple a s he c ou ld.
But no one knew that yet—except
for her.
An elite investigator who tracks
angry men online, she’s known
to some in her field as the Savant
because of her uncanny ability to
suss out when, exactly, hate speech
will morph into violent action. She
came across Finton’s Myspace pro-
file in 2007 and was disturbed by
wh a t s he s aw: v ide o s of e x t r e mi s t s
carrying out brutal killings along-
side quotes glorifying religious
martyrdom. The page gave her a
primal, hairs-on-end feeling she’d
learned not to ignore.
Back then, online rage was still rel-
atively new. This was before Dylann
Ro of u s e d t he i nt e r ne t t o s e l f-
radicalize, before men flocked to
message boards to tap out screeds
a g a i n s t wome n , b efor e ma s s s ho o t-
ers shared their delusional final
ma n i fe s t o s on s o c i a l me d i a. B a ck
when you could post all the crazy
shit you wanted online and no one
really took you seriously.
She started screenshotting every-
thing Finton posted. She dug into his
past and found out he’d spent time in
prison for assault and robbery and
seemed to have adopted radical
views behind bars. She kept watch-i n g. A nd a s s pr i n g t u r ne d t o s u mme r,
Finton’s posts got even darker. That’s
when she called the FBI.
Wh a t h a p p e ne d ne x t r e a d s l i ke a
movie script, except more dramatic
and all true. Federal authorities set
up a sting operation that resulted in
Finton getting into a van he thought
was rigged with nearly one ton of
explosives. He told his accomplice, in
reality an undercover FBI informant,
that the blast would be a “historic
occasion.” He parked the van outside
a federal office building in Spring-
field, Illinois, where hundreds of
people worked. And then, from a
few blocks away, he made a call that
he thought would trigger the explo-
sion. When nothing happened, he
called again.
It could have been one more mass-
casualty event on our grim, ever-
lengthening list. Columbine.
Orlando. Charleston. But it wasn’t.
Because Finton was immediately
swarmed by FBI agents and mem-
bers of the Joint Terrorism Task
Force. He was shackled, locked up,
and indicted, eventually pleading
guilty to one count of attempted
use of a weapon of mass destruction
against property owned by the
United States. He’s now serving
28 years in federal prison.
There were plenty of news articles
about Finton’s arrest, but you won’t
find her name in any of them.
Instead, in articles about her cases,
you’ll see words like “tip,” “alerted,”
“uncovered.” Words that basically
mean her. Even the existence of
her work has been largely a mystery.
At least, until now.This was the plan:
For 96 hours, I’d disappear. No one
could know where I was going—not
my editor, not my husband, not my
mom. I’d heard about the Savant
from one of her colleagues at the
Anti-Defamation League (ADL),
where she works closely with law
enforcement agencies. After several
weeks of discussion, she’d agreed to
s p e a k w it h me on ly i f I pr omi s e d t o
withhold major details, including
her location and exactly how she
does her work. Two weeks before I
met her, I still didn’t know her name.
One week out, I bought a plane ticket
that would take me to a small town
in the U.S. (I can’t even say which
r e g ion .) Whe n my f l i g ht de p a r t e d , I
had no direct contact information
for her, just the cell number of one of
her handlers.
What I can reveal: Her house is a
six-song-playlist’s drive outside of
town. When I land on a Monday
morning, I head north and west into
a flat horizon in a rented silver Kia,
passing a Target and a Texas Road-
house. One of the nation’s premier
investigators of extremism, hidden
here amid the capitalist camouflage
and exurban sprawl. I end up in a
development for families on their
way up: three-car garages, lawn
crews, giant trampolines. The brown
a nd p owde r - br ow n hou s e s work h a r d
to distinguish themselves from one
another—a fountain in the front
yard here, an orange wreath on the
door there. Everything blends and
blurs together; nothing stands out.
This is the point.Mic hael Finton
w as living in
Dec atur, Illinois,
120
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