Brandon Russell and Sarah Clendaniel met in prison. She was doing time for holding up convenience stores with a machete, while he was serving four years for having bomb-making equipment. They're now accused of planning attacks on electrical substations.
They are being called the neo-Nazi Bonnie and Clyde.
Brandon Russell and Sarah Clendaniel are accused of planning attacks on electrical substations near Baltimore.
The FBI says that the pair believed that by plunging the city into darkness, they would spark chaos, which would then bring about a race war.
Russell and Clendaniel met during stints in prison. She was doing time for holding up convenience stores with a machete, while he was serving four years for having bomb-making equipment.
They are both members of the neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Division, whose members idolize the likes of Adolf Hitler and Charles Manson.
"They want to collapse social, political and economic systems through the use of violence because they think that after the collapse of society, there will be a kind of phoenix-like rebirth, a rise from the ashes into a restored white civilization," Cynthia Miller, who is an expert of extremist groups, tells Inside Edition.
Such an act would also threaten the lives of the most vulnerable members of society.
"What that would do to hospitals, to people with vulnerable medical equipment. What they want is to harm people but also to cause chaos," says Miller.
The FBI says the plot against the Baltimore grid does not appear to be connected to an earlier shooting at substations in North Carolina.
Just last month, the Department of Homeland Security did issue a warning that domestic extremists had been developing plans to target the nation's electricity infrastructure.
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