HARRISONBURG (WINA) – A 63-year old former Civil War re-enactor from Winchester has pleaded guilty in federal court to referencing Unite the Right in emailing threatening letters and planting a pipe bomb during a 2017 event at the Cedar Creek Battlefield. The U.S. Attorney’s office says Gerald Leonard Drake in mailings to victims and two newspapers claimed to be “a member of Antifa”, and threatened harm.

In a letter received September 23, 2017 at the Cedar Creek Battlefield Foundation in Frederick County, Drake in his posing of Antifa wrote a scheduled re-enactment “clearly celebrates the war to keep African-Americans in chains… and warned failure to cancel it would result in “trouble Antifa would inflict making Unite the Right look like a Sunday picnic”. At that October event, an unexploded pipe bomb containing metal nuts, ball bearings and more was found in a merchant tent toward the end that was later traced to Drake.

Drake has pleaded guilty in Harrisonburg federal court to possession of an unregistered explosive device and stalking.