‘You will have your face ripped off and eaten by me, personally’: R.I. man charged for allegedly sending threatening emails to Mass. professor

A Rhode Island man allegedly sent threatening emails to a Massachusetts college professor back in March, one of which said, “I will rip every limb from your body and eat it, piece by piece,” according to federal authorities.

Matthew Haviland, 30, of North Kingstown, was arrested Wednesday and is charged with cyberstalking and transmitting a threat in interstate commerce, a news release from the Massachusetts U.S. Attorney’s office said. He was scheduled to appear in federal court in Boston on Wednesday.

Haviland allegedly sent 28 emails to the professor within a span of hours on March 10. In them, he allegedly made various threats, including, “I will bite through your eyeballs while you’re still alive, and I will laugh while you scream.” Haviland’s alleged emails also referenced abortion — the professor targeted has publicly supported abortion rights, authorities said.

“In two successive e-mails, for example, Haviland wrote, ‘You will be held accountable for every [expletive] baby you murdered through your horrible deception of they are not humans,’ and ‘You will have your face ripped off and eaten by me, personally. I will enjoy raping your body after you’re dead. And that will only be the start,’” authorities said in the release.

Haviland also allegedly called a women’s medical center and left roughly 114 messages regarding abortion starting on April 4. He also allegedly sent text messages to an acquaintance referencing abortion. According to authorities, these included: “It never was a Woman’s rights issue. It’s literally killing babies. That’s All it is, and We want you to stop it. Or we will kill you to do it. It’s that Serious. It’s not a Joke.”

In addition, Haviland allegedly emailed a professional school at the targeted professor’s university between March 15 and March 16.

“These e-mails touched on the subjects of race, gender, and physical disability, and included the messages: ‘[Expletive], my existence is not a blight on society. Yours is, for pushing the idea that if you are able-bodied or white or okay WITH THE [EXPLETIVE] GENDER YOU WERE BORN WITH, you are a bad person. You people are Evil, putrid, and somebody shoudl [sic] BOMB your school for spreading the idea that it’s okay to HATE people because of their race,’” the news release said.

A subsequent email allegedly said the recipient “should be Murdered in cold blood.”