News · Today in Vegas · November 10, 2026
Conor Climo Told KTNV in 2016 He Was Protecting His Neighborhood. In 2019 the FBI Found Bomb Parts and a Synagogue Plan in His Home.
On September 22, 2016, KTNV interviewed a 20-year-old named Conor Climo as he set out on a one-man armed foot patrol near Farm and Tule Springs roads in Centennial Hills. He carried a rifle, a knife and, as he showed the reporter, four 30-round magazines. "If there is possibly a very determined enemy, we at least have the means to deal with it," he said. He said he hoped for a citywide civilian force and that he was working to become a private investigator.
Las Vegas police said he broke no law. Nevada is an open-carry state, and officers told KTNV the patrol was legal as long as he stayed out of restricted places like schools. A day later Climo told the station he "didn't need all that gear" and would put the gun down to recruit volunteers for a neighborhood watch.
Pace Vegas read it differently. Our September 23, 2016 story ran under the headline "Extremist White Terrorist Wandering Centennial Hills" and pointed readers to his YouTube channel, where he ranted about gay people, Black people and "progressives" and laid out what the story called his urban warfare plans.
Pace Lattin, who wrote that story, says he identified Climo at the time as a possible threat and someone who should be followed. He says Climo later turned toward targeting Jews, and that he was told afterward there was a connection to him. Pace Vegas has not independently confirmed that account, and news reports on the federal case do not mention Lattin or Pace Vegas.
What the federal record does show is where Climo went. In April 2019 the FBI's Las Vegas Joint Terrorism Task Force began investigating him over encrypted messages with people who identified with a white extremist group; NBC News reported the group was Atomwaffen Division. Over the following months, prosecutors said, Climo told an FBI informant how to build a "self-contained Molotov," discussed attacking a synagogue close to his home, and described surveilling a bar on Fremont Street he believed catered to LGBTQ customers. CNN reported he tried to recruit a homeless man to help watch both places.
He also told investigators he had spent about two years considering ways to attack Jewish people, including a plan to "mobilize an eight man sniper platoon" to shoot people at a Las Vegas synagogue "or any other area of opportunity," The Daily Beast reported from the complaint. The ADL said its regional Las Vegas office was on his list of potential targets. Investigators also found a 2017 Quora post in which he quoted Hitler.
On August 8, 2019, the task force arrested him. Agents searching his home found hand-drawn attack schematics, drawings of timed explosive devices, flammable liquids, oxidizing agents and circuit boards, plus an AR-15 style rifle and a bolt-action rifle. The criminal complaint cited the 2016 patrol, describing him then as "carrying an AR-15 style assault rifle, four magazines each containing 30 rounds of ammunition, and wearing a tactical vest." He was working as a security guard.
"Threats of violence motivated by hate and intended to intimidate or coerce our faith-based and LGBTQ communities have no place in this country," U.S. Attorney Nicholas Trutanich said at the time.
Climo pleaded guilty in early 2020 to possessing an unregistered firearm, the component parts of a destructive device, admitting that he possessed "materials required to make a destructive device." On November 13, 2020, U.S. District Judge James Mahan sentenced him to two years in federal prison followed by six months of home confinement with electronic monitoring and three years of supervised release. Prosecutors had asked for 30 months. With credit for the time he had already spent in custody since his arrest, he was expected to serve the rest of the term at a facility in Louisiana near his grandparents.
The case now sits in the record of how threats against both Jewish and LGBTQ Americans escalate: a man posting his views in public, showing up armed in public, and then, out of public view, picking targets. The National Community Threat Intelligence Center tracks that pattern in its profiles of threats against LGBTQ Americans.
Sources
- KTNV: Armed citizen on patrol in Centennial Hills (September 2016)
- CNN: A Las Vegas security guard plotted attacks on a synagogue and an LGBTQ bar, the FBI says (Aug. 10, 2019)
- CBS News: Las Vegas man arrested for bomb-making materials allegedly threatened LGBTQ and Jewish community (August 2019)
- The Daily Beast: Las Vegas White Supremacist Arrested After Threatening to Attack Synagogue, LGBTQ Bar (August 2019)
- ADL: Jewish and LGBTQ communities, including ADL office, alleged targets of man arrested in Las Vegas (Aug. 11, 2019)
- ADL / AP: White supremacist pleads guilty in bomb plot case (2020)
- KVIA / KVVU: Las Vegas man sentenced to 2 years in prison after making threats to synagogue, LGBTQ communities (November 2020)
- Instinct Magazine: Conor Climo sentenced to two years (Nov. 16, 2020)
- NCTIC: Threats and violence against LGBTQ Americans
Related
- Extremist White Terrorist Wandering Centennial Hills September 23, 2016