Officer’s effort yields results in e-mail threat

Officer’s effort yields
results in e-mail threat
Marlboro patrolman
went to the Internet
and found right phrase
BY LARRY RAMER
Staff Writer

MARLBORO — An Internet search on Google appears to have allowed authorities to identify the alleged author of the bomb threat that was sent via e-mail to the Marlboro K-8 school district on May 19.

Marlboro Police Department Patrolman Scott Bingham said he entered a term from the threatening e-mail into the Google search engine on May 24. Bingham, who investigates computer-related crimes for the department, said he decided to conduct a search for the words "ammonia nitrate bomb." The phrase, which was contained in the e-mail threat, actually was erroneously written and should have read "ammonium nitrate bomb," the patrolman said.

As it turned out, Bingham probably picked the magic words.

"I found a newspaper article from Washington state that re­ported the FBI had made an arrest of somebody who used the same verbiage" as the threatening e-mail that was sent to the Marlboro school district, Bingham reported.

Bingham then called the re­porter who wrote the article, which was published in the Herald News in Washington. The reporter provided him with the name of the FBI agent who was investigating the case and Bingham contacted that agent.

"I called the FBI to verify that (the suspect named in the article) was our guy, and then I sent the link (of the article) to the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office, which made more calls to make more verifications. We’re pretty sure it’s our guy," said Bingham, noting that the investiga­tion was still continuing as of May 26.

"Our guy" is allegedly 18-year-old Darrington, Wash., resident Elroy Lamont. According to the ar­ticle in the Herald News, Lamont was arrested and charged with three counts of making false threats to use explosives in connec­tion with sending e-mail bomb threats to several schools in Washington. He allegedly sent those messages during the same week that the Marlboro school dis­trict received the threatening e-mail.

Monmouth County Prosecutor John Kaye said he believes Lamont is the person responsible for send­ing the threatening e-mail to the Marlboro school district. The mes­sage proclaimed that a school was going to blow up, but did not men­tion a specific school or the Marlboro district. No suspicious ob­jects were found in any of the schools and no incidents took place. The threat purported to be from a representative of the Earth Liberation Front, an organization which has in the past claimed re­sponsibility for acts of violence targeting projects or commercial activities that its agent perceive as harmful to the environment.

Lamont has not been charged with a crime in New Jersey and may not be if he receives punish­ment in Washington state, Kaye said.

"He is facing serious charges in Washington and we are going to wait and see what happens there," Kaye said. "We are looking at charges that could bring him five to 10 years in New Jersey. If he’s not punished out there, he will be (punished) here."

Before Bingham’s discovery on Google, authorities investigating the bomb threat sent to Marlboro had not found any leads pointing to Washington state, Bingham said.