A white supremacist who blew up his family’s kitchen while manufacturing “substantial amounts” of gunpowder has been jailed for eight-and-a-half years for terrorism and explosives offences.
Vaughn Dolphin, then aged 19, branded himself a “dangerous lunatic” and caused a fireball in the kitchen of the house in Walsall, in the West Midlands, where he lived with his aunt.
Police discovered he had turned the family shed into a weapons factory where he was manufacturing homemade explosives and an improvised musket.
The inside of the shed was decorated with a badge from the Nazi Waffen SS and in a fridge in his bedroom were bags of bomb-making chemicals.
Judge Melbourne Inman KC said Dolphin had made use of terrorist manuals to make explosive substances and a firearm and had shared a video showing the “horrific recording of multiple murders”.
The judge sent Dolphin, now 20, to a Young Offenders’ Institution for four years for explosives and firearms offences and four-and-a-half years, consecutively, for possessing and sharing terrorist material.
Matthew Brook, prosecuting, said Dolphin “clearly intended to make substantial amounts of gunpowder”.
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Dolphin had downloaded bomb-making documents on to a USB stick in a folder titled “Boogaloo” – a reference to a race war during which white supremacists plan to take control of the government.
He had used Amazon to purchase food grade saltpetre and sulphur, two of the ingredients for gunpowder, and also had a tin of charcoal, the third ingredient.
In the shed was a length of aluminium tube with a hole drilled into it to make a crude, homemade gun barrel, and a jar containing nitrocellulose, a propellant used in shotgun cartridges.
On 14 June last year, Dolphin posted a series of video clips to a far-right Telegram chatroom called the Segregation Wagon, showing his kitchen filled with smoke.
Wearing a gas mask, he could be heard saying: “That was a bad f****** idea, it was so bad the f****** carbon monoxide meter went off. I started choking so I had to put this on. Oh my gosh. There’s still smoke everywhere, I’m using some fans to get it out.
“You should have seen the fireball, the fireball was f****** awesome. I definitely put way too much potassium in but it was a massive pink-purple fireball. It burned, it f****** burned, it was sick, absolutely f****** sick.”
In another clip, a boiling mixture could be seen in a pan on the stove and he explained he was making “homemade fuses”.
Dolphin was using Telegram, an encrypted communications app, to access extreme right-wing channels.
He had shared the video made by Peyton Gendron, who shot dead 10 black people at Topps supermarket in Buffalo, New York, in May 2022 and downloaded Gendron’s manifesto, which called on followers to “accept death, embrace infamy”.
He had also downloaded a video of the Christchurch mosque shootings in New Zealand in which Brent Tarrant murdered 51 people, commenting: “Shame it doesn’t have the music.”
In one message Dolphin boasted: “I am seen as a dangerous lunatic by most” and added: “People will get sick of Black Lives Matter and that is when violence will flare. I am going to make and sell weapons but to the Base side” – a reference to a far-right group.
Martin McCarthy, defending, said Dolphin “plainly grew up in troubled circumstances, in the care of his aunt, a very volatile relationship”.
The court heard he had passed “some” GCSEs and went on to college to study for an HNC in public service, hoping to join the army.
However, he struggled with dyslexia and autism and was unable to make friendships, spending large amounts of time on the internet.
Dolphin was found guilty of six counts of possessing articles useful for terrorism, two counts of disseminating terrorist material and two of possessing explosive substances and one charge of possessing a firearm.
