A 67-year-old Dallas man was sentenced to more than 17 years in prison Wednesday for mailing letters filled with fake biological weapons to federal courthouses and officials while he was already incarcerated.
Donald Ray McCray’s sentence was imposed after his April 15, 2026, conviction for three counts of mailing threatening communications and one count of hoax weapons of mass destruction, according to a news release from the United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas.
While in a Texas state prison, McCray sent letters containing white powder to U.S. district judges in Fort Worth and New York and a U.S. courthouse in Amarillo, court documents show.
The filings allege McCray did so “with conscious disregard of a substantial risk” that his letters would be seen as threatening and the intent to “convey false and misleading information that the envelope(s) contained a biological agent.”
Related: Social media data leads Dallas police to 19-year-old suspect months after fatal shooting
McCray also threatened to kill state and federal officials in his letters, and after his June 2025 indictment, he made further threats during one of his federal court hearings.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Dallas Field Office and U.S. Marshals Service investigated with help from the U.S. Postal Inspection Service, Fort Worth police and fire officials, Texas Tech University’s Biological Threat Research Laboratory, and others.
“Threats against federal and state government employees are serious crimes that undermine our system of government,” FBI Dallas Special Agent in Charge Joseph Rothrock said in the release. “No public servant should be forced to confront this kind of intimidation.”
The Dallas Morning News contacted the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Texas via email Thursday for clarification on what the white powder was but didn’t immediately hear back. The News also didn’t immediately hear back from McCray’s defense attorney via email.
More here: Feds indict man accused of shooting Dallas ISD officer with officer’s gun
Subscribe
This article originally published at Man sentenced to over 17 years for mailing fake biological weapons to Fort Worth courthouse.