Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, December 23, 1994 TAG: 9412240050
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHICAGO TRIBUNE
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
The suspect, Edward Leary, a 49-year-old unemployed computer operator from Scotch Plains, N.J., was charged with 45 counts of attempted murder and 45 counts of assault Thursday.
Police arrested Leary in his hospital bed at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center, where he is being treated for third-degree burns covering 40 percent of his body, a hospital spokeswoman said.
Fifteen other people injured in the blast remained in the hospital Thursday. Two were in critical condition - a 60-year-old man with deep burns over 65 percent of his body and a 40-year-old woman with burns over 35 percent of her body.
Leary, a man neighbors said always has had a volatile temper, recently had been fired from his job and had split up with his wife. One neighbor said Leary had lost so much weight in the past several months that he looked ``cadaverous.''
The owner of an expensive suburban home as well as three luxury apartments in Brooklyn, Leary had been trying unsuccessfully for some time to raise money by selling two unoccupied apartments. He rented out the third unit.
Police Commissioner William Bratton said investigators had found ``significant evidence'' in a search of Leary's home implicating him in a ``scheme to extort money'' through a bombing campaign.
``It appears that the subway system, the Transit Authority, may have been the intended recipient, if you will, of the effort,'' Bratton said.
Investigators found a memo outlining a plot to first panic New York subway riders with a series of bombings and then blackmail the city with demands for payments to stop the explosions, according to several local television stations.
A firebomb that seriously burned three teenagers when it ignited at a Harlem subway stop Dec. 15 bore some similarities to the device used Wednesday: both used glass containers, a flammable liquid and a crude igniter. Police are reviewing the incident.
To his neighbors at a Brooklyn co-op apartment building, where Leary lived until he moved to New Jersey about a year ago, he always had seemed ``a little on edge,'' said Marcella Chanin. She described him as ``excitable ... often, he would overreact in discussions.''
In January of this year, Leary was fired ``for poor performance'' from his job as a senior systems architect at Merrill Lynch & Co.'s computer data center in downtown New York, said a company official.
by CNB