In a video from one of his now-deleted Facebook accounts, Frank R. James — the suspect in the Brooklyn subway shooting, who was taken into custody April 13 — called the 2017 Las Vegas mass shooting a “cautionary tale” and admitted, “I’ve had those thoughts and feelings.”
Rolling Stone reviewed the video, which was uploaded to James’ “profitofdoom” Facebook page in 2017, after Stephen Paddock shot and killed 60 people from the window of his hotel room at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino. In James’ video, he called the mass shooting a “cautionary tale” and said such incidents would happen more frequently.
“I can understand why a motherfucker would go out there and just start shooting people,” James said in the clip. “I’ve had those thoughts and feelings. Thank God I never acted on them.”
James’ video on the Vegas shooting was part and parcel with the bigoted and hate-filled videos he shared on his YouTube channel under the username “prophet oftruth88,” as well as his two Facebook pages, “profitofdoom” and “oldrob8859.” As of Wednesday, April 13, all of these channels were no longer functioning.
His YouTube page now contains a message saying his channel was “terminated for violating YouTube’s Community Guidelines.” Jack Malon, a YouTube spokesperson, added in a statement, “Following the tragic event in New York City, our Trust and Safety team identified and terminated a YouTube channel associated with the suspect, in accordance with our creator responsibility guidelines. Additionally, our systems are prominently surfacing videos from authoritative sources in search and recommendations, including by surfacing our Top News shelf above related search results.”
And while his two Facebook pages are no longer active, it’s unclear whether James or the social media giant took them down. The message on both deactivated pages reads, “This content isn’t available right now. When this happens, it’s usually because the owner only shared it with a small group of people, changed who can see it or it’s been deleted.” According to Meta, Facebook’s parent company, the pages were removed from the platform in line with the company’s policies.
According to videos viewed by Rolling Stone before the Facebook and YouTube pages were deactivated, James had spent years uploading lengthy, often racist and anti-Semitic diatribes where he addressed topics ranging from race relations in the U.S. to the policies of New York City Mayor Eric Adams. In one March 2 YouTube video titled “TOLD YOU SO,” James used a news segment on recent subway attacks to go after Adams’ policies against crime and homelessness, as well as the mayor’s subway safety plan, which saw the deployment of 1,000 more NYPD officers to New York City’s subway system.
“He can’t stop no fucking crime in no subways,” James says in the video. “He may slow it down, but he ain’t stopping shit… With this program in place, with all these police — I’d still get off. I know I could get off because they can’t be everywhere.”