Emanuel Lutchman (Part 1)

Fragments of a future narrative

December 29, 2015—the dead stretch between holidays. A light rain falling. Emanuel Lutchman and his co-conspirator enter the Hudson Avenue Walmart in northeast Rochester, New York to buy supplies: “2 black ski masks, zip-ties, 2 knives, a machete, duct tape, ammonia and latex gloves.” The co-conspirator pays for everything.

Emanuel had “no money, no job, and no resources.” He idled outside the Merchants Grill, in North Winton Village, gathering cigarette butts. “I would consider him to be an aggressive panhandler,” John Page, the Grill’s co-owner, told the Democrat and Chronicle after the arrest.

The FBI described Emanuel’s plan to ratchet up that aggression—to attack the Merchants Grill on New Year’s Eve. “It’s just you, me and the Lord,” he told his accomplice, like Robert Pattinson’s character psyching up his brother, played by Benny Safdie, in Good Time. “We gotta do this precise.”

They never got the chance. On December 30, as Emanuel sat in a car with his criminal partner, Rochester’s Joint Terrorism Task Forces moved in to arrest him. They let the other man walk—because he worked undercover for the FBI.

Emanuel, the Bureau argued, “attempted to provide material support and resources” to ISIS—the same charge leveled at Jason Ludke. Like Jason, Emanuel felt the U.S. held nothing for him. Syria seemed promising. He would join the caliphate there, after showing his allegiance on New Year’s Eve.

That was the plan federal agents outlined. But Emanuel’s attorney, Steven Slawinski, argued that “this attack could never have happened.”