The son of the transgender shooter who opened fire at a high school hockey game is serving time in federal prison for setting fire to a black church.
Robert Dorgan, 56, who also went by ‘Roberta Esposito,’ took his own life after he fired shots inside the Lynch Arena in Pawtucket, Rhode Island on Monday afternoon, killing his son Aidan Dorgan, 23, and his ex-wife Rhonda, 52.
Dorgan’s in-laws, Linda and Gerald Dorgan, both 75, and her friend Thomas Geruoso, 54, an assistant principal at Shea High School in Pawtucket also remain in critical condition at a local hospital following the rampage.
While investigating the shooting, authorities discovered that Dorgan was the biological father of Kevin Colantonio, 37, who tried to burn down the Shiloh Gospel Temple Ministries in North Providence two years ago.
North Providence Police Chief Alfredo Ruggiero Jr. told the Boston Globe that investigators made the connection on Wednesday and reviewed an interview they conducted with Colantonio’s mother, Marlyse Dunbar, following his arrest.
She told officers at the time that Dorgan – who has a Nazi-inspired tattoo on his bicep and voiced his support for ‘white power’ – was Colantonio’s father.
The development came as police released images of firearms they recovered after conducting a search of Dorgan’s apartment, work locker, and storage unit.
The images depicted a sawed-off shotgun and AR-15 style rifle seized from the storage unit. Two handguns were recovered at the scene of the massacre.
People close with the family have since told WPRI that Dorgan influenced his son’s dangerous fixation on race.
The son even scrawled white nationalist messages in notebooks seized by federal investigators following the fire on February 11, 2024.
One disturbing message read: ‘Hunt them down gun everyone down that isn’t white, if one is white spread the gospel. Always gibe our bloodline a chance.’
‘Eliminate Rich Snob global Elite Pastors, burn churches down to the ground, when congregants move to [the] next church, do the same,’ read another of Colantonio’s messages.
Authorities said Colantonio bought a Bic lighter and $10 worth of gas from a local gas station before walking over to the Shiloh Gospel Temple Ministries, a Pentecostal church with about 100, mostly black, members.
Once at the church, Colantonio poured gasoline around its base and ignited five different fires, all of which were quickly extinguished – but not before causing significant damage to the church.
‘Due to the damage, church congregants were prevented from enjoying their free exercise of religious beliefs as church services were canceled until the church could be reopened,’ federal prosecutors said.
Just one day after the blaze, court documents showed Colantonio privately messaged an unidentified family member and said no one in the community cared about the arson.
In those messages, he called the church ‘Atheist God mockers,’ adding: ‘They’re busy dancing around collecting money.’
Hellbound and Down 