MANHATTAN (CN) - About six months after he was charged with stabbing a Muslim worshiper outside a Queens mosque, a self-described operative for an elite, Jewish anti-terrorism unit apparently blew the cover for his nom de guerre on Google Plus.
"I made it to Number 1 on the NYC Most Wanted List for fighting against the Islamic Brotherhood in the U.S.," the first post associated with the user name Bernard Richards states. "My real name is Bernhard Laufer."
Laufer, 56, faces hate-crime charges in Queens for the Nov. 18, 2012, attempted murder of a man who had been opening the doors of Flushing's Masjid al-Saalliheen Mosque for morning prayers.
It took the Queens County District Attorney's Office nearly eight months to link Laufer to the crime, but their suspect has kept busy on the road to trial.
Death threats that Laufer admitted to sending the leader of the Council on American Islamic-Relations last year landed him in jail for 13 months. A federal judge sentenced him to time served, and he has been free on bail since July 7 with the condition of federal monitoring and outpatient psychiatric treatment.
Prosecutors agreed to the lenient sentence in that case in light of a forensic psychologist's finding that Laufer has been forcibly institutionalized multiple times in his 45-year struggle with mental illness.
As for Laufer's still-pending prosecution for the mosque attack, defense attorney Alex Eisemann revealed his plans last month for Laufer to pursue a possible insanity defense.
"My client has suffered from an extremely serious bipolar and schizoaffective disorder since the age of 17," Eisemann said in an email. "He's struggled to get it under control his entire life and he's had long periods of success and stability."
The "Bernard Richards" Google Plus account seems to showcase that struggle.
On May 7, 2014, four months after coming out as Laufer in his debut post, "Richards" spoke about using a "temporary head fake" to escape his recent trouble with the law.
"I guess it took me 56 years to turn into a real basket case, and I have the record to prove it," the post states. "That was a temporary head fake because I have friends from all over the world that want to cut off my head and my balls including the Queens District Attorney's Office, NYPD and the NYC Penal Department."
For Eisemann, however, Laufer's "grandiose statements disavowing his mental illness" are not his "true belief."
"Richards" gloated in a later post that he "stunned 8 million Muslims" and "got their idol Allah shaking too" with his "payback" for Hamas rocket attacks that rained down in Southern Israel.
The Flushing mosque stabbing occurred during the height of Israel's strikes on Gaza named Operation Pillar of Defense.
After Laufer's attorney spoke to Courthouse News about the social media posts Thursday, the accounts named for "Bernard Richards" on Google Plus and YouTube were deactivated. A Facebook page with that name remains online as of this writing.