A 47-year-old artist accused of posting seemingly “terroristic” notes around Juneau that indicated he might shoot children has been shunned by the progressives of the capital city who used to call him a friend.
Mitchell Watley, illustrator of children’s books that have been sold all over the capital city and on Amazon, is no longer featured at any of the stores that used to display his work, which is a collaboration with his wife, writer Sarah Asper-Smith. Books such as “I Would Tuck You In” and “You Are Home With Me” have been removed from stores such as Kindred Post, Alaska Robotics, Rainy Retreat, and Hearthside Books.
The owner of Kindred Post wrote a long Facebook post condemning Watley, who has not yet been convicted.
The book illustrator’s relationship with his publisher, Sasquatch Books, an imprint of Penguin Books, has been terminated.
Watley has been released on bail from Lemon Creek Correctional Institution and is on supervised release with conditions, as he awaits trial for the charges of having made terroristic threats. He is required to stay away from children, schools, and parks and to turn in all guns that he may own to police.
Watley, whose only other encounter with the court system was an expired tag on a vehicle back in 2011, will have a preliminary hearing on April 11 for one Class C felony charge of making terroristic threats.
Although the media has all but convicted him, it’s unclear if Watley intended to make a threat or was improvising off of a popular social media trend known as the “Feeling Cute Challenge.” The challenge is to take a photo of yourself and label it “Feeling Cute. Might (fill in the blank) later. idk [I don’t know].”
Watley is accused of terroristic threats for designing small cards with imagery of a transgender flag, an automatic weapon, and the words “Feeling Cute, Might Shoot Some Children.”
The cards were left at Foodland, the State Office Building, and Costco on the weekend of April 2, which was had been declared by transgender activists as “Transgender Day of Vengeance,” which had not been labeled a terroristic threat by law enforcement.
Some residents of Juneau were frightened and alarmed by Watley’s notes because earlier that week, a 28-year-old who identified as transgender shot three children, all age nine, and three adults at a Christian school in Nashville, Tenn., killing them all.
That was the backdrop that made Watley’s alleged crime so concerning. Police traced the license plate that was seen on a Costco surveillance camera to Watley and he was arrested on April 3 at a home two blocks from where he and Asper-Smith live in downtown Juneau.
It’s unclear if Watley was making a threat or an editorial comment in the notes, but Juneau, the Alaska media, and national media reports have decided it was indeed a threat against exclusively trans children. Whatever Watley was trying to communicate — humor, irony, or thinking outside the box — he clearly sent a scary signal to an insular community that has turned on him with an over-the-top reaction.
Whether Watley will be able to get a fair trial in the capital city is also not clear, since the entire town appears to have turned against him. His court records still do not list an attorney.
