A Maryland stonecutter who is the son of a celebrated sculptor of cathedral gargoyles has been charged with sending three-dozen “threatening mailings,” many of which invoked the war in Gaza and the recent attacks against Jewish citizens, to several Jewish institutions in the Northeast while also threatening them with similar acts of violence.

Clifton “Andy” Seferlis, 55, a stonecutter and licensed tour guide who lives in Garrett Park, Maryland, admitted to FBI agents that he had sent letters and postcards, several of them to one Jewish institution at Philadelphia, which prosecutors did not name, where Mr. Seferlis had previously given tours and was intending to do so again this week. 

In many of these letters, Mr. Seferlis included clippings from the Washington Post that made references to Israel, Gaza, or other events “in which Jewish people were killed or otherwise attacked,” like the May 22 murder of two Israeli Embassy employees outside the Capital Museum at Washington, according to court documents.  

Mr. Seferlis is the son of a master stone carver and sculptor, Constantine Seferlis, who is known for his work on Washington landmarks like the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception and the Capitol. Constantine created more than 200 works for the Washington National Cathedral, including unconventional gargoyles like a dentist working on a walrus’s tusks and a hippie wearing a torn sweater. 

Mr. Seferlis grew up in Washington and attended the prestigious St. Albans School, an all-boys institution that counts the progeny of political dynasties like Harold Ford Jr. and Edward M. Kennedy Jr. as alumni and where tuition is nearly $57,000 a year.

He worked alongside his father for “the better part of 20 years” creating mausoleums and memorials at the Oak Hill Cemetery in Georgetown, according to a 2023 profile in the Washingtonian. Mr. Seferlis also regularly teaches a stone carving class at Oak Hill.

Authorities say that between March 1, 2024, and June this year, Mr. Seferlis sent a total of 36 mailings, two of which were postcards, to Jewish institutions in Washington, D.C., Virginia, and Maryland. In one typewritten letter sent on May 7, Mr. Seferlis warned an employee, “I just wanted to say you are going to have to be more reliant than ever on your donors. But at some point that money too will become less and less.”

“The hatred toward you all, your [institution], and especially the nation of Israel is at an all time high and is only getting worse. Do you – deep down – reallycare [sic] – really – about what is going on in Gaza? Will it take something happening to your beloved [institution] to make that happen,” Mr. Seferlis wrote in his note, according to court documents. 

Some of the mailings made references to Kristallnacht, the violent “Night of Broken Glass” pogroms that took place in Nazi Germany and Austria in November 1938 in which thousands of synagogues and Jewish institutions were destroyed.

Authorities said many of the notes sent to the unnamed Jewish institution at Philadelphia included threats to “physically destroy” the place, making reference to its “many big open windows,” “Kristallnacht,” and “a future need to ‘rebuild’ the institution following the destruction.”

During an interview with the FBI and other federal authorities, Mr. Seferlis admitted to sending the mailings and said that intimidating the recipients “was his purpose in transmitting” them, according to court documents. 

Mr. Seferlis said he had given tours at the institution at Philadelphia in the past “and was planning to give another such tour on Thursday, June 19, 2025,” authorities said. 

Authorities recovered from his home a typewriter and copies of the Washington Post articles that had been cut out and sent to his recipients.

Mr. Seferlis was released from custody and is due back in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania court on June 23. 

He is also a licensed city tour guide at Washington and New York and was described  in a 2019 Historic America blog post as a “gifted tour guide” with  “a happy talent for friendship.”