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CHRISTOPHER GOFFARDThe podiatrist had pleaded guilty to extensively planning attacks on Muslims.
TAMPA - Robert J. Goldstein planned the massacre of Muslims in minute detail.
The Seminole podiatrist would attack the mosque like a commando, using Napalm and grenades, guns and knives, booby traps and bolt cutters. Muslims who fled the smoking building would die tripping over a mine in the parking lot. If necessary, he would kill them face-to-face.
To hide his fingerprints, he would wear Kevlar gloves and wipe down all the bullets. To escape, he would obscure his license plate with mud. The plan - foiled, some say, only by a fluke - will send Goldstein to federal prison for 12 years and seven months.
Citing the fear Goldstein's crime had engendered in the Muslim community, U.S. District Judge James Moody imposed the term Thursday, the maximum under sentencing guidelines.
In a choked voice, Goldstein, 38, read a prepared statement saying he "deeply and genuinely" apologized to the Muslim community.
"I was so very lost at the time, but I take full responsibility for what I've done," he said, asking for forgiveness.
Prosecutor Colleen Murphy-Davis pointed to Goldstein's extensive plan to attack the Islamic Society of Pinellas County, which he schemed for more than a year and laid out in a detailed "Mission Template" found in his townhome.
Investigators found that Goldstein had been stockpiling an elaborate arsenal, including 20 homemade bombs, a 50-caliber rifle, handguns, and antiarmor rockets. They also found a list he had compiled of 50 Islamic centers across Florida.
Defense attorney Myles Malman said Goldstein suffered from "a serious mental illness, a raging mental illness." He said Goldstein, once a respected doctor, "threw everything away" in his obsession with guns and bombs, an obsession that focused on Muslims after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Goldstein enjoyed firing guns and detonating explosives at a friend's farm, the lawyer said. He said Goldstein's plan was not to kill Muslims but to destroy the Islamic center, "to move the dirt around."
Dr. Bruce Welch, a psychiatrist who has examined Goldstein more than a dozen times, testified that Goldstein's blueprint for the attack was "unrealistic, cartoonish" and "outrageously extensive."
To the psychiatrist, that suggested the plan had the makings of a fantasy, though Goldstein at times believed he could carry it out.
Far from an idle fantasy, the prosecutor said, Goldstein's plan involved "real people, real locations, real bombs." His target was not an individual Muslim, but "an entire population of people."
Investigators found Goldstein's weapons stash after his then-wife, Kristi, contacted deputies in August to report that her husband had threatened to kill her.
Goldstein pleaded guilty in April to conspiracy to violate civil rights, attempting to damage religious property and possession of unregistered firearms. The judge sentenced him to the Federal Medical Center in Butner, N.C., a high-security prison with mental health facilities.
Members of a Muslim group questioned whether 12 years, 7 months was a just sentence. If Goldstein had a Muslim name, they said, he would be called a terrorist and locked away forever. They feared that he might seek revenge when he leaves prison.
Altaf Ali, executive director of the Florida branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the case had frightened Muslims across the state. If Goldstein had planned such an attack while mentally ill, he said, "God help us when he gets well."
In May, Michael Hardee, a Temple Terrace dentist, was sentenced to three years and five months in prison for conspiring with Goldstein. And last week, Goldstein's ex-wife, Kristi Persinger, was sentenced to three years for possessing illegal bombs that were hidden in the bedroom closet of the home she shared with Goldstein.