Australian 'bomb' accused 'linked to victim'
An Australian man accused of attaching a fake bomb to a teenager’s neck as part of an extortion plot once worked for a company with ties to the victim’s family, according to federal court documents released today.
US Magistrate Judge Dave Whalin has ordered 50-year-old Paul “Doug” Peters jailed pending an extradition hearing set for October 14 in Louisville, Kentucky.
The FBI arrested him yesterday without incident at his ex-wife’s house in a well-heeled suburb near Louisville.
“The police have obtained information that Paul Douglas Peters was formerly employed by a company with which the victim’s family has links,” the 11-page arrest complaint said.
Peters, shackled at the ankles and wrists, made a brief appearance in court with his lawyer, Scott Cox. His ex-wife, Debra Peters, sat alone, weeping quietly.
Peters showed no emotion and spoke quietly to his lawyer. He glanced briefly at his ex-wife.
“I will tell you that he will contest these charges” in Australia, the attorney told reporters outside court. He said he did not know if Peters would fight extradition to Australia.
In the complaint, authorities put forward a trail of clues leading to Peters, including credit card charges and computer IP addresses.
Three days after he took a one-way flight from Sydney to Louisville on August 8, an FBI agent spotted him in the yard of his ex-wife’s house, the complaint said.
It also gives vivid details of the August 3 incident in a wealthy Sydney suburb which involved Madeleine Pulver, the 18-year-old daughter of internet executive William Pulver.
It says she was studying for exams in her bedroom when she saw the intruder walk in carrying a baseball bat and wearing a balaclava. The man told her to sit down and no one would get hurt.
The girl sat on her bed and noticed the intruder was holding a black box. He forced the box against her throat and looped a device similar to a bike chain around her neck.
The man locked the box into position and placed a lanyard and a plastic document sleeve around her neck. It contained a hand-written note with demands and the email address and a USB digital storage device.
A he left, the man allegedly said “count to 200 ... I’ll be back ... if you move I can see you I’ll be right here”, the complaint says she told authorities.
Bomb technicians, negotiators and detectives rushed to the scene. Homes were evacuated, streets closed and medical and fire crews waited nearby. Pulver spent 10 hours chained to the device before the bomb squad freed her. She was not hurt, and the device was later found to contain no explosives.
Australian authorities determined that a Gmail account linked to the incident was established on May 30, from an internet protocol address linked to a Chicago airport. Travel documents from immigration authorities showed that Peters had been at the airport that day.
The Gmail account was accessed three times on the afternoon of August 3, almost two hours after the hoax device was placed around the teenager’s neck, the complaint said.
The first access took place at 4.09pm from an IP address registered to Kincumber Library. CCTV captured a man matching the suspect’s description at the library around the same time. The next two were at 5.25pm and 5.51pm on the same day, from an IP address registered to the Avoca Video Store in New South Wales.
