A Satanic "soldier of Christ": 764's first NZ convicted member
A history of 764, Ronndog Keefe's heinous crimes, and a foiled terror attack on Muslim men
CW: Descriptions of sexual abuse, child abuse, violence
22-year-old Hawkes Bay man Ronndog Keefe is New Zealand’s first convicted 764 member, pleading guilty to 13 charges last year and losing name suppression late last month. His crimes included CSAM possession and distribution (totalling thousands of files), child grooming, and planning a mass stabbing attack against Muslim men.
Keefe’s story fits into a worrying pattern, being the first charged in New Zealand following dozens of investigations, arrests, and convictions worldwide stemming from the activities of 764 and related Satanic fascist groups, both online and in the real world.
The origins of 764
While there are now many subgroups, offshoots, or imitators, especially following the arrests of key members, 764 was first started by 15-year-old Texas teen Bradley Cadenhead in 2021. Cadenhead had dropped out of high school and retreated online during the COVID lockdowns, and became increasingly fixated on extreme content like school shootings, gore, CSAM, and more.
Cadenhead was influenced and taught by similar online groups and networks that were emerging around the same time, which were in turn influenced by Satanic fascist occult groups like the Order of Nine Angles (ONA) and, more importantly, the newer and more extreme US-based Tempel ov Blood (ToB).
One of these was CVLT, whose Discord server Cadenhead was a member of and learnt tactics from. One of CVLT’s leaders, fellow Texan Kaleb Merritt, was arrested in 2021 for kidnapping and raping a 12-year-old girl he had groomed over Discord.
764 emerged as a splinter of CVLT in 2021, centred around Cadenhead’s Discord server named after his Texas postcode. 764, like others before it, took far-right and occult Satanic imagery and ideology and used it to systematise the exploitation of vulnerable people online, but started engaging in much more depraved acts than predecessors like CVLT.
764, by way of the ONA and ToB’s influence, venerates evil for the sake of evil, promoting a nihilistic worldview through propaganda and literature distributed amongst the network. Members are encouraged to desensitise themselves to extreme content like gore and CSAM in order to be more effective actors for the group. The age of members is also notable, with many ranging from mid-teens to mid-20s. Multiple 14-year-olds have been arrested in connection to the group’s activities.
764’s most notorious practice involves grooming minors through online platforms like Roblox, Minecraft, and other social media, an activity which group members have created detailed guides for. They search for victims, gain their trust, take the individual to a separate messaging platform like Discord, and then solicit compromising material like personal information or nude images.
764 members will then coordinate to harass and blackmail the individual into committing increasingly heinous acts under the threat of exposure. These acts include abuse against themselves (like more compromising photos, self-harm, or even suicide), animals and pets, or other people. These are then compiled into “lore books” on individuals, which are used as further blackmail material and as a sort of trophy that is traded within 764 circles. Status of members within the group is partly determined by the number of people targeted and how extreme the victimisation is.
Crimes connected to the group include CSAM possession and distribution, sexual abuse, kidnapping and rape, livestreamed suicide and murder, alongside both attempted and carried out terror attacks. Founder Bradley Cadenhead was sentenced to 80 years in prison in 2023 on CSAM possession charges. In 2024, American member Kyle Spitze, infamous for a video of his stepfather shooting him during an argument, was sentenced to 30 years prison on federal CSAM charges. Arrests and convictions of members have been seen across the world, including America, Australia, Europe, South America, and now New Zealand.
Keefe and 764
Ronndog Keefe’s connection to 764 seems to have started sometime in 2022 at the age of 19. During his trial, Ronndog Keefe claimed in a court submitted affidavit that he was actually blackmailed by 764 members into committing his crimes.
Keefe alleged that in November 2022 he posted an edited clip of the Christchurch massacre footage to a Discord server because it reminded him of the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare game he was playing at the time. 5 of the 20 “violent extremist content” files he was charged with possessing included Christchurch footage.
According to Keefe, a day later he was contacted by a 764 member who requested that he share a CSAM image. When he refused, the member allegedly sent a copy of his drivers license and IP address, threatening to dox him if he didn’t. He then alleges he began “reluctantly” sharing CSAM for the next two years, directed by a 764 member named “Neo”. However, he refused to provide evidence to police to validate this.
The presiding judge called these claims “simply not credible”, and that “the nature and extent of the images he was downloading and distributing clearly demonstrates an interest in both child exploitation material and violent extremist material.” When asked why he didn’t mention the extortion in his first police interview, he said he didn’t want “to look like a victim or like a pussy”.
Keefe was first flagged by the Digital Violence Extremism Team of the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) through tipoffs to the US government-run National Centre for Missing and Exploited Children. Keefe was reported 81 times between November 2022 and 2023. In August 2024, Keefe’s Hawkes Bay home was raided by DIA officials, finding a trove of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and extremist material.
Keefe refused to unlock his phone, but using digital forensics investigators were able to access 54,000 files from the device, with at least 20 being categorised as “violent extremist material” and 369 as CSAM. 2,309 CSAM files were found in a publicly shared MEGA folder belonging to Keefe, alongside bestiality material and a “video of a man having sex with a corpse in a ‘morgue setting’”. He also had at least 24 unique email addresses for Discord and Instagram accounts used to collect and share CSAM.
It was in police interviews following the raid that Keefe first admitted to his involvement with 764, and that he wanted to be seen as an “edge lord” by the group. Police also found evidence of Keefe engaging in 764-style grooming, as he was charged over his online communications with a 13-year-old American girl. He had posed as a 14-year-old boy and given her gaming tokens before soliciting nude images from her, which were later distributed online.
Following his August 2024 arrest and while awaiting trial, Keefe told an underage American girl who he’d been in long-term contact with over Discord (different from the one he’d groomed) that he was planning to carry out a mass stabbing attack on the date of his court appearance. He had often expressed to her a desire to commit mass violence to gain notoriety inspired by other extremist attacks, but his plans become definitive following his arrest in August.
He told her that he planned to target specifically Muslim men at either a mall or mosque and that he intended it to be a “suicide mission”. The American minor subsequently submitted a tip about the threat to the FBI, who then contacted New Zealand Police on 28 September 2024, who raided Keefe’s home later that day.
During this raid, police found a bayonet and machete in Keefe’s room, which he argued during his trial was for “chopping pumpkins”, and that the messages were “drunk rantings”. A manifesto-style diary was also found. It is likely that this manifesto was intended to be released alongside the planned attack, something which has been a feature of both far-right violence and 764-associated violence in recent years. In this diary, Keefe described himself as a “soldier of Christ, his country, people and religion” who had been radicalised at 19. Police also found a copy of the Quran in his wardrobe.
Following the second raid, Keefe was additionally charged with threatening to kill and cause grievous bodily harm, later pleading guilty to all 13 charges in 2025. In December 2025 Keefe was sentenced to five years and four months in prison and required to register as a child sex offender for 8 years. Almost to the day of his sentencing, the New Zealand government (alongside Canada) designated the Order of Nine Angles as a proscribed terror organisation, with 764 included as a subgroup. While he received temporary name suppression during the trial, his application for permanent name suppression was denied and he was finally named in late February this year.
Keefe’s story is typical of other 764 members and its subsequent offshoots. A young person who retreated onto the Internet during the pandemic who grew increasingly isolated and desensitised, and became absorbed (or if you believe Keefe, dragged) into a sick game where your “high score” is how many lives you’ve ruined.
The desensitisation and mediation of the horrors through a screen allowed him to become numb to it. However, when he got that knock on the door in August 2024, it all became very real very quickly. So in his mind, the only answer was a “suicide mission” where he murdered as many Muslim men as possible. It’s the logical conclusion when you become completely immersed in an ideology and world that venerates inflicting violence and causing misery above all else.
To be clear, the Order of Nine Angles and Tempel ov Blood is nothing new, even in New Zealand (something that will need to be covered in full in a later post). However, the 2010s Satanic fascist infiltration of far-right circles, and its evolution into a new post-lockdown form, has resulted in a huge surge in victimisation and violence that is only seeming to grow over time. Keefe is the first convicted in New Zealand, but it’s unlikely he’ll be the last.