Joshua Sutter: Tempel ov Blood, Atomwaffen, and the FBI

Joshua Caleb Sutter is a convicted neo-Nazi occultist who worked as a paid FBI informant for roughly two decades while continuing to run a publishing operation that supplied propaganda to some of the most violent far-right and nihilist networks in the world. The bureau paid him at least $140,000 to infiltrate extremist groups, including the Atomwaffen Division, even as his own books and imprints helped radicalize members of those same movements.¹

How He Became an Informant

Sutter briefly served in the U.S. Navy in 2000, washing out of basic training the next month. By the early 2000s he had risen inside the Aryan Nations to the title of “High Counsel,” operating under the alias “Wulfran Hall” and living on an Aryan Nations compound in Pennsylvania.¹²

In February 2003, federal agents arrested him in Philadelphia for trying to buy a silencer and a Glock .40 pistol with a defaced serial number from an undercover agent. He pleaded guilty in May 2003 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania and was sentenced that August to 24 months in prison and three years of supervised release.³ After serving about 22 months, he began cooperating with the FBI.⁴ His recruitment apparently traded intelligence for cash and sentencing consideration.

His cover was not airtight. In 2005, an Aryan Nations pastor publicly accused him of being an informant, and his alias was pulled from the group’s online platforms.² He moved on to other extremist projects and kept working for the bureau.

What the FBI Paid Him and What He Delivered

Over roughly two decades, the FBI paid Sutter at least $140,000 for infiltrating far-right organizations. Between February 2018 and August 2021 alone, he received $78,133.20 in payments plus $4,378.60 in expense advances, a stretch that overlapped with his work on the Atomwaffen Division investigation.²

Beginning in 2017, Sutter began working his way into Atomwaffen, a neo-Nazi group of roughly 60 to 70 members aimed at inciting a race war in the United States.⁵ His occultism was the entry point. He later testified that his role in the Tempel ov Blood led him to John Cameron Denton, a senior Atomwaffen figure known online as “Rape.”¹

The intelligence he produced fed two of the group’s most prominent federal prosecutions. Kaleb Cole, an Atomwaffen leader accused of mailing threatening communications to journalists and Jewish organizations, was convicted by a federal jury in the Western District of Washington and sentenced in January 2022 to 84 months in federal prison.⁶⁷⁸

What He Was Doing on the Side

Sutter was not only reporting on extremists. He was running them a bookshop. He founded the Tempel ov Blood, a U.S. cell, or “nexion,” of the Order of Nine Angles, an international occult neo-Nazi network out of the United Kingdom. He co-led the cell with his wife Jillian Hoy from a property in central South Carolina, describing it as “a hybrid between a traditional satanic coven and a militant order.”⁹

From the same base the couple operated Martinet Press, with Hoy listed as director.¹⁰ The imprint distributed titles including Iron Gates, Liber 333, and Bluebird, works that promote rape, child abuse, and civilizational collapse. Sutter later pushed these books to Atomwaffen as “required reading.”¹

Around 2022, Sutter mothballed Martinet Press and launched Agony’s Point Press, which sold occult titles through Amazon and Barnes & Noble and focused on what he called “Wamphyrism,” “Satanic Theory,” and “predatory spirituality” drawn from O9A practices. On X and Substack, he used Agony’s Point to promote the 764 network, an international online group that coerces minors into self-harm, sexual exploitation, and violence. He also published a zine called Drums of Tophet that featured an interview with Michail Chkhikvishvili, a Georgian national known as “Commander Butcher” and the leader of the nihilist skinhead group MKU.¹

Chkhikvishvili was later extradited to the United States, pleaded guilty, and was sentenced in May 2026 to 15 years in federal prison for soliciting hate crimes and planning a mass casualty attack, including a scheme to distribute ricin-poisoned candy to Jewish children in Brooklyn.¹¹ Sutter’s O9A books have also turned up in 764 investigations. When investigators searched the Queens apartment of Angel Almeida, arrested in November 2021 and later charged with child exploitation, they recovered O9A books, a blood covenant, and a flag bearing the Tempel ov Blood insignia.¹²

How His Informant Status Came to Light

Sutter’s status was publicly surfaced during the 2021 trial of Kaleb Cole. A defense motion to suppress argued that the FBI’s search of Cole’s residence was illegal because the affidavit failed to disclose that the bureau’s primary source was a paid informant. The defense described the source as a “convicted felon” who “currently owns and operates a publishing company that distributes white supremacist writings.”² The government never officially confirmed the identification, but internal documents, court filings, and testimony from other militants established it beyond serious dispute.¹

The Criticism His Case Has Drawn

Sutter has become a reference point for critics of the FBI’s reliance on paid informants inside extremist movements. Harvard Law School professor Alexandra Natapoff, an authority on informant law, has called the practice a “deal with the devil,” noting that the bureau often rewards people for continuing to operate within the same criminal circles they are supposed to be monitoring. According to Natapoff, roughly 41 percent of federal terrorism cases since September 11, 2001 have involved confidential sources.¹

The specific concern with Sutter goes beyond the usual informant dilemma. A conventional informant observes and reports. Sutter was actively producing the ideological material that radicalized the very people the FBI was trying to catch. His books celebrated violence against children, his press expanded O9A’s reach, and his social media accounts promoted networks whose members went on to commit serious federal crimes. Critics have asked what level of “blowback” the bureau is willing to tolerate, and how it holds informants accountable for conduct that appears to go well beyond intelligence gathering.¹ The Cole suppression fight added a procedural question: whether the FBI violated the law by not disclosing in its search affidavit that its primary source was a paid informant, information a judge might have weighed in assessing credibility.²

Where Things Stand Now

The FBI has consistently declined to comment on Sutter’s conduct or his status as an informant, and Sutter has not responded to media requests. As of March 2026, the Agony’s Point Press account on X had been taken offline.¹ Sutter has not been publicly charged in any of the recent federal crackdowns targeting 764 or its affiliates, despite reporting documenting his continued promotion of extremist and predatory materials through 2025. Federal investigations into the broader network of groups he helped shape, including MKU and 764, remain active, with the FBI reporting more than 350 open investigations connected to 764 and related nihilist violent extremist groups across all 56 field offices as of early 2026.¹³

1
WIRED. The Dangerous Exploits of an Extremist FBI Informant
2
The Jerusalem Post. FBI Paid Over $100,000 to Neo-Nazi for Insider Info
3
CourtListener. United States v. Sutter, 2:03-cr-00158
4
CaseMine. Joshua Caleb Sutter
5
PBS Frontline. An Atomwaffen Member Sketched a Map to Take the Neo-Nazis Down
6
U.S. Department of Justice. Leader of Neo-Nazi Group Sentenced for Plot to Target Journalists and Advocates
7
U.S. Department of Justice. Former Atomwaffen Division Leader Sentenced for Swatting Conspiracy
8
The New York Times. John Cameron Denton, Atomwaffen Division Leader, Is Sentenced
9
Mapping Militants Project. Tempel ov Blood
10
VICE. FBI Bankrolled Publisher of Occult Neo-Nazi Books, Feds Claim
11
U.S. Department of Justice. Georgian National Sentenced to 15 Years in Prison for Soliciting Hate Crimes and Planning Mass Casualty Attack
12
The Guardian. New York Satanic Cult 764 FBI
13
FBI. Open Letter to Parents, Guardians, and Caregivers