Federal prosecutors have charged a mid-Missouri man with attempting to purchase a “deadly chemical.”

U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Missouri Tim Garrison (2018 photo courtesy of the U.S. Attorney’s website)

U.S. Attorney Tim Garrison has announced that 43-year-old Jason William Siesser of Columbia has been charged in U.S. District Court in Jefferson City, after allegedly trying to purchase a highly toxic poison over the Internet to use as a chemical weapon.

Federal prosecutors say Siesser is in federal custody.

Garrison says federal agents were alerted to him during an undercover FBI investigation.

“There is no allegation in the charging document, that any sort of public attack was planned,” Garrison says in a news release. “Federal agents maintained safeguards from the time they were alerted to a potential threat during an undercover FBI investigation, to the controlled delivery of a safe, inert substance to the residence in Columbia.”

Federal prosecutors say the chemical is a highly toxic poison capable of causing death in minute quantities.

The affidavit alleges that Jason Siesser purchased enough of the substance to be capable of killing about 300 people.

Siesser signed for a package on Thursday, a package he allegedly believed contained the chemical he had ordered online.

Court documents say Siesser acknowledged to the seller that he understood the chemical was lethal.

Garrison says the package actually contained an inert substance.

Siesser is charged in federal court with one count of attempting to possess a chemical weapon.

The 11-page criminal complaint also quotes Siesser as allegedly telling someone that he wanted to be an assassin, and wanted to kill those who have wronged him in the past.

FBI agents raided Siesser’s home on Thursday, and the courts documents say that writings found inside the home “articulated heartache, anger and resentment over a breakup and a desire for the unidentified cause of the heartache to die.”

The court document quotes one of the writings as stating, in part: “But it makes me feel so strong I dream about your ending you burn up in flames. You suffocate on your own blood your soul completely drained. Right now your (sic) happy but that won’t last. My anger is coming and you won’t die fast!”

The criminal complaint also says that Siesser is currently employed by a group home that houses juveniles under contract with the state of Missouri.

The case is being investigated by the FBI and Columbia Police.

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