RALEIGH — “Nazi Republicans leave town or else.” That was the message spray-painted alongside a swastika on the side of Orange County Republican Party headquarters in October 2016.
While the outside was vandalized, the inside was filled with soot and ash due to a fire caused by a Molotov cocktail thrown into the building through a window.
At the time of the attack, Waddy Davis was the chairman of the Orange County Republican Party. He told North State Journal the firebombing was “not just an attack on Orange County; it was an attack on democracy.”
Davis’ successor, Larry Smith, echoed some of those sentiments in a statement to North State Journal late last year.
“The 2016 firebombing of our office was an attack meant to instill fear and dissuade our party from continuing our conservative message,” Smith said. “It had the opposite effect in that it strengthened our resolve.”
Smith became chairman in April 2025. He is a former Durham Police officer who rose to the rank of interim chief of police before his retirement in 2016.
The firebombing took place a month before the November 2016 election, and then-presidential candidate Donald Trump responded on social media by stating, “Animals representing Hillary Clinton and Dems in North Carolina just firebombed our office in Orange County because we are winning @NCGOP.”
Nearly 10 years later and with Trump back in the White House, the case remains unsolved, and North State Journal has learned the case had been closed by the FBI office in Charlotte due to a lack of “viable leads.”
“In coordination with the U.S. Attorney’s Office Eastern District of North Carolina, the case was closed after all viable leads were exhausted,” the Charlotte FBI’s media communications office wrote in an email to North State Journal. “If new information comes to light, the FBI is prepared to reopen the case.”
Smith said he is thankful for those who supported the Orange GOP during the time of the firebombing and still hopes the case may find resolution.
“We wish to thank everyone for their show of support during that time both with words and finances, including many Democrat friends that also viewed this as an attack on the entire political process,” Smith said. “We would also like to thank all the law enforcement agencies that worked on this case and still hope that someone will come forward with information that may lead to an arrest in this case.”
The $20,000 reward offered following the attack for information helping solve the firebombing apparently bore no tips.
The only lead dried up nine months after the attack when a self-described “social worker and artist” named Kathleen “Katie” Yow refused to answer questions in front of a federal grand jury. Publicly available information shows Yow received her master’s degree from the UNC School of Social Work in 2018.
Yow, who also worked as a teacher in Guilford County Public Schools at some point, was the only individual subpoenaed to testify about the case, likely due to her interest in and ties to anarchism.
In an August 2017 article published by The Nation about her refusal to comply with the grand jury, Yow was described as an “anarchist.” Yow also received a nod of thanks in the acknowledgments section of “The ABCs of Anarchy,” a 40-page book published in 2012 by High Point University professor Brian Heagney.
In 2014, Yow was arrested along with dozens of other protesters for failure to disperse and impeding traffic outside the Durham Performing Arts Center during a Black Lives Matter-related protest. Durham Police later said that a Molotov cocktail had been found at the scene.
An attempt to contact Yow for comment was unsuccessful.
