Texan gets three months for calling a Boston doctor to threaten to kill her during anti-trans frenzy against Children's Hospital

A federal judge today sentenced Matthew Jordan Lindner, 39, of Comfort, Texas, to three months in federal prison for calling a doctor at Fenway Health who focuses on "gender nonconforming youth" to tell her she would "burn" and that a posse was on its way up to kill her on Aug. 31, 2022 - the day after a woman from western Massachusetts locked down Children's Hospital and part of the Longwood Medical Area by calling in a bomb threat.

Lindner pleaded guilty to one count of interstate transmission of threatening communication in December. Catherine Leavy of Westfield, who called in the bomb threat to Children's, pleaded guilty in September to making a bomb threat; she's scheduled for sentencing next month. Both were acting on bogus online accounts that Children's was regularly castrating and performing hysterectomies on young children.

Lindner's sentence was a joint recommendation from prosecutors and his lawyers, who otherwise painted dramatically different pictures of the guy in urging US District Court Judge William Young to go along with their recommendation.

Prosecutors started by reminding Young of just what Lindner said in voice messages at both Fenway Health's National LGBTQIA+ Health Education Center and at a university in Rhode Island where the doctor teaches:

You sick motherfuckers, you’re all gonna burn. There’s a group of people on their way to handle [Victim 1]. You signed your own warrant, lady. Castrating our children. You’ve woken up enough people. And upset enough of us. And you signed your own ticket. Sleep well, you fuckin’ cunt.

So, prosecutors continued:

Lindner called Victim 1 to make her live in fear. His anonymous and menacing voice message was not a well-intentioned statement about his desire to protect children from alleged abuse, as he contends. It was a cowardly criminal act designed to strike fear in the heart of a person he had never met. As such, it had lasting effects on the victim and the community. For those reasons, Lindner’s felony conviction is appropriate, and the Court should sentence him to serve 3 months in prison.

Lindner's attorneys, though, tried to portray him as a salt-of-the-earth, kind-hearted gentle person who not only has gay friends but one transgender friend as well, who comes from the best kind of stock - his ancestors founded the town and when Texas seceded, they remained loyal to the Union, even though that meant many would be "summarily executed" by Confederate soldiers for refusing to sign loyalty oaths.

And, they continued, Lindner was so good and decent and kindhearted, he would do anything to protect the innocent. Why, there was that time an ornery fugitive was about to enter a diner filled with women and children and Lindner stopped him with his bare hands, not only protecting all the innocents in the diner, but keeping assembled police with long guns from opening fire on the guy.

And so when he took a break from "bailing hay in a field in Atascosa County" one hot August day and watched a "news" account about alleged horrors at Children's Hospital in Boston, he was only acting out of that same gentle kindheartedness to protect others, in this case, children, when he found the doctor's name and phone numbers and called her to threaten her life, they wrote, adding he also called his local police to demand they do something about those evil doctors 1,500 miles away.

Yes, they continued, it was a mistake to call her a vile term and threaten to kill her, his parents certainly didn't raise him to speak like that, so he should spend three months behind bars as atonement, but, shucks, he never actually intended to come up to Boston and kill a doctor.

As soon as he learned that the "news story" was false he became concerned for the doctor and was focused on the fact that the perpetrators of the false "news story" where continuing to cause the doctor unwanted attention and opprobrium. He now regrets not vetting the news story or not doing something earlier, even before he made the call at issue, to learn that the story was false.

In addition to the prison time, Young sentenced Lindner to three years of probation and ordered him to pay the doctor $2,986 as restitution.