Newly unsealed court records from the murder trial of convicted murderer Daniel Perry, who was found guilty of murdering a Black Lives Matter protester in July 2020, might put a slight crimp in Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s plans to pardon Perry for the murder, for which Perry was convicted a week ago, by a unanimous Texas jury. The 76-page trove of evidence taken from Perry’s phone by investigators shows that Perry fantasized often about killing people, regularly posted racist memes, and, in the weeks leading up to the crime, posted again and again about how protesters deserved to be killed.
Just to review, Perry, an Uber driver and sergeant in the Army, was found guilty of murdering Garrett Foster, 28, at a July 25, 2020, Black Lives Matter protest in Austin. Perry ran a red light and drove into a crowd of protesters, after which several of them approached his car, including Foster, who was carrying an AR-15 on a shoulder strap, with the barrel pointed down. Perry claimed Foster had raised the barrel of the rifle toward him, so he had to shoot Foster in self defense, but multiple witnesses — including, oh, Perry while he was being questioned by police — testified that was not the case.
During the trial, prosecutors presented some evidence from Perry’s phone to suggest he’d been fantasizing about killing protesters, including a May 31 Facebook messenger message telling a friend he “might have to kill a few people on my way to work; they are rioting outside my apartment complex.”
The day after the guilty verdict, Abbott tweeted that he was “working as swiftly as Texas law allows regarding the pardon of Sgt. Perry,” saying in a message that Texas’s “stand your ground” law is a defense that “cannot be nullified by a jury or a progressive District Attorney.” That apparently means that as soon as a killer says they were standing their ground, nobody can ever question it. Especially not if the victim was a Black Lives Matter protester carrying a patriotic AR-15 turned to the dark side by Antifa.
The document unsealed this week includes far more information from Perry’s phone than was used in his trial, and presents a very unflattering digital self-portrait of Perry — although we should note the extracted information was compiled by prosecutors in the murder case, so if Perry posted a lot of messages about being kind to abandoned ducklings and school crossing guards, it wasn’t included. Here’s the whole thing, if you want to get some insights into at least part of a convicted murderer’s violent racist mind.
The document includes some searches Perry conducted on topics like George Floyd’s killing, protests around the country (especially those that involved rioting), and searches for protests in various cities around Texas, as well as searches for “boogaloll movement,” “degrees of murder charges,” “good chats to meet young girls,” and the disturbingly specific inquiry “does the federal government have the ballistics of every firearm sold legally.”
The 76-page list also includes itemized lists of memes, generally undated, as well as Facebook comments, text conversations, and other digital detritus that turned out not to be very ephemeral at all. Big surprise: A lot of them are about shooting or running over protesters, and other Rambo fantasies. We’ll give you a content warning right now: Some of this stuff is incredibly racist.
A few funny memes Perry had on the phone, all of them with the note that the date and location aren’t known:
- The meme has a photo on top and a photo on the bottom. The top photo is a police man with the text “YOU CAN’T JUST RUN OVER PEOPLE”. The bottom photo shows a freight truck with the text “IT’S OK. I’M ESSENTIAL.”
- A media file that shows a white box with the text “IT’S OKAY TO BE WHITE.”
- A man dressed in black with a black ski mask on holding a tire iron over his head. The text says “IT’S A PROVEN FACT THAT CRIMINALS COMMIT LESS CRIME AFTER THEY’VE BEEN SHOT.”
- Clint Eastwood aiming a firearm and the text says, “WHEN THERE ARE NO POLICE MOST CRIMES WILL CARRY THE DEATH PENALTY.”
- [A meme saying] “If rioters come to your area, please remember, don’t be a litterbug. Pick up your brass.”
- The text at the top says, ”Me: ‘white people can’t dance lol”, White People: ‘Okay but if I call you a cotton picking nigger then I’m the racist one right? Racism works both ways, pull your pants up if you don’t want cops killing you.”
- A meme with a photo of a woman holding her child’s head under the bath water and the text reads, “WHEN YOUR DAUGHTERS FIRST CRUSH IS A LITTLE NEGRO BOY”
There’s also a 2019 text message in which Perry wrote, “To bad we can’t get paid for hunting Muslims in Europe.”
As the pandemic got rolling, in March 2020, Perry commented on a Facebook post, “It is now when you have to defend yourself it is almost like the apocalypse.”
The memes and messages are full of militia and anti-government themes, mostly around the theme of a tyrannical government coming to take your guns away, plus how Black people are allowed to get away with violence and looting, and several declarations on Facebook saying Perry initially sympathized with protests against police brutality, at least until the rioters turned him into a racist by behaving so badly.
There are LOTS of posts like this one, from June 1, where he whines, “It is official I am a racist because I do not agree with people acting like animals at the zoo. I was on the side of the protestors until the started with the looting and the violence.” If Perry actually posted anything in support of the protests, it’s not listed. Maybe it was with the duckies and records of his donations to orphans.
On May 29, Perry posted in a group text that “They are rioting in Dallas it is on the news,” to which a friend replies “Nobody fucking cares Perry.” Perry, undeterred, replied with a fantasy about how, were it not for his Army duty, he would “probably be spending a few nights on a roof protection farther’s [sic] business from looters.”
He also texted to another friend, “I might go to Dallas to shoot looters.”
The next day, in an exchange with the same friend, Perry fantasized, “I am imagining standing on a roof top with a megaphone and a maga hat saying looters will be shot leave the area immediately and then count down to zero or when they start breaking down the front door just opening up like it is open season.”
His friend, a true Beavis to Perry’s Butt-Head, replied, “Plus heavy death metal in the background.”
In the May 31 Facebook Messenger conversation where he wrote about maybe having to kill some people on the way to work, his Beavis friend asked, “Can you legally do so?”
Perry replied, “If they attack me or try to pull me out my car then yes,” which of course is what he later claimed was exactly what he was defending himself against when he shot Garrett Foster in Austin.
After some back and forth with Beavis about how that might play out (“I will only shoot the ones in front and push the pedal to the metal”), Perry figured that he needed to stock up on ammunition, and Beavis joked, “Can you catch me a negro daddy”
Perry replied “That is what I am hoping” and Beavis messaged back “Yayy.”
There’s quite a bit more, none of it flattering to the convicted murderer whom Greg Abbot wants to pardon because he was merely standing his ground like any law-abiding American, the end.
[Houston Chronicle (paywalled) / Texas v Perry evidence filing / CNN]
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