The NYC Subway Shooting Suspect Was a Self-Declared ‘Prophet of Doom’ on YouTube

The prime suspect in one of the worst mass shootings in New York City history ranted about violence, race, and politics for years over YouTube. 

Frank James, 62, posted angsty, straight-to-camera diatribes under multiple YouTube channels, including prophetoftruth88, in which he sometimes referred to himself as the “prophet of doom.” He glorified violence, criticized Black culture, rambled about Will Smith slapping Chris Rock, held forth on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and declared that global warming means the world’s population “has to be reduced.” He said that thinking about desk-workers dying in the 9/11 terror attacks brought him joy. 

“We live in a world of fuck-faces and scumbags,” he declared. “When you see me happy when I watch videos of 9/11, that’s why.”

Police on Wednesday officially named James a suspect in the Tuesday morning attack on the New York City subway that left 10 people with bullet wounds and another 19 with other assorted injuries. During a nightmarish assault that unfolded inside a locked subway car at the peak of the morning rush hour, a gunman pulled on a gas mask, cracked open two smoke grenades, and let loose 33 rounds from a Glock semi-automatic on other passengers. The shooter remains at large. 

Online, James had long appeared to be focused on violence. 

In a video from April 5, titled “Sensible Violence,” he put together a montage of more than 20 minutes of news clips on recent shootings around the country, including a mass shooting in Sacramento that left six dead.  

“They’re saying that’s senseless violence,” he said. “Well, I’m saying, no, it’s not senseless violence, it’s violence that fucking makes sense if you think about it…. It’s not a fucking mystery.” 

He regularly commented on acts of violence, at times weighing in with conspiracy theories. After the mass shooting at a country music festival in Las Vegas in October 2017, he shared a video to one of his Facebook pages promoting a right-wing conspiracy that the massacre could have been a “false flag.” 

"After 9/11, you just don't know. Any fucking thing is possible. It could have been a false flag shooting,” he said. 

“Those false flag operations are going to inspire other motherfuckers, real lone nuts, to go out here and start shooting motherfuckers,” he said. 

“We live in a sick society,” he continued. “We live in a violent society. Where people are pushed to the edge of their fucking sanity by other motherfuckers. And I can almost understand how a motherfucker could go out here and just start shooting people for no fucking reason. Just based on shit that I've been through. And believe you me, I've had those thoughts and feelings in my motherfucking mind. Thank God I've never acted on them."

He claimed he’d recently moved from Milwaukee to the Philadelphia area, and according to his videos, had made at least one earlier trip into New York. He complained about how much the city had “changed” compared to Philadelphia. 

He rambled about New York City Mayor Eric Adams and the city’s homeless. Police said those comments about the mayor prompted officials to upgrade Adams’ security detail. 

“Eric Adams, what the fuck, what are you doing brother, what’s happening with this homeless situation? I got on the E-train, every fucking car…was loaded with homeless people,” he said. He described going “car to car” while on the train, trying to get away from the unhoused populations sheltering in New York’s subway system. 

Many of his online diatribes also revealed a torrid relationship with women. 

In one video posted to Facebook in 2020, he claimed that he was once “addicted” to patronizing New York sex workers in the early 1980s, which had ruined his ability to have normal sexual relationships with women. 

In a more recent video on YouTube, titled “Forced Equality”, he obsessed over new Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s marriage to a white man. In another, he railed about a white woman whom he appeared to know personally. “I would kill you, but it’s not worth the time in jail,” he said. “Killing you would be like killing a cockroach. You’re not even a human being to me.”

This is a developing story.

Additional reporting by Anna Merlan.