He might be a victim of his own stupidity however as police are still unable to determine why Ricin was in his room. Michelle Malkin caught this one from the Las Vegas Review Journal:
The Las Vegas hotel suite where vials of ricin were found Thursday also contained guns and literature about anarchy with information on the deadly toxin, police said Friday.
Nevertheless, Las Vegas police continued to downplay the significance of the ricin discovery, saying they had ruled out terrorism as a motive.
“I want to assure everybody that the Las Vegas Valley is safe,” Las Vegas police Capt. Joseph Lombardo said. “We don’t currently have any terrorist threat at this time or possibility of contamination (due) to ricin.”
The Metropolitan Police Department reported one person has been injured by the biological agent. That man has been in critical condition at Spring Valley Hospital Medical Center for more than two weeks.
Police said the man is 57 years old and was staying in the suite at the Extended Stay America on Valley View Boulevard near Flamingo Road where the ricin was found.
Police have not identified the man, but a Homeland Security internal document obtained by the Review-Journal states that he is Roger Von Bergendorff.
The man placed an emergency call from the suite on Feb. 14, saying he was in respiratory distress and asking to be transported to a hospital, police said.
“He’s unable to speak with us right now,” said Deputy Chief Kathy Suey, who leads the Police Department’s Homeland Security Division.
His medical condition, however, was consistent with exposure to the poisonous substance, authorities said.
If a person exposed to ricin doesn’t die within three to five days, the victim usually recovers, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Seven other people, including three police officers and three employees at the long-term stay hotel, also were hospitalized as a precaution. No one other than Von Bergendorff had exhibited signs of ricin exposure.
Before Thursday’s discovery of the deadly poison, hotel management and Las Vegas police had visited the suite twice without detecting it.
On Feb. 22, eight days after Von Bergendorff was hospitalized, one of the man’s “relations” called hotel management to alert them to two cats and one dog that were in the suite, Lombardo said.
Management contacted the Humane Society to take care of the animals, and the cats were taken in and are in good health. A veterinarian with the society determined the dog was in ill health because of lack of food and water and the animal was destroyed, Lombardo said.
Not to sound like Marion Cottilard but that doesn’t wash. Unless the dog was in poor health already I would think it could be saved the same way you’d save a person who was dehydrated and starving. Plus the cats were in the same predicament as the dog but are in good health. This just doesn’t sound right to me.
Sounds to my admittedly suspicious mind like Von Bergendorff was using the animals to test his homemade Ricin and the police think that kind of information will undermine their attempt to frame the 57 year old anarchist anything but a terrorist.
The lone wacko theory seems less and less likely however:
On Tuesday, management at the hotel began eviction procedures and called Las Vegas police after discovering four firearms in the suite, the Homeland Security memo states.
Police then found an anarchist textbook that was “tabbed” to a section on ricin, Lombardo said.
That discovery prompted police investigators to test the room for the deadly substance. The test was negative.
On Thursday, a man who “claimed to be a relative” was in the suite and discovered several vials of ricin in a bag, along with castor beans from which the substance is derived, Suey said.
Police have not identified the man, whom they said was 53 years old. But the Homeland Security document identified him as Thomas Tholen.
Authorities said Tholen took the vials of ricin to the manager’s office. It was not clear whether Tholen knew what the vials contained.
Steve Huff sniffs disapprovingly at right wing blog coverage of the case but does put forward some useful information about Bergendorff and his “relative” Thomas Tholen:
Relatives or not, Bergendorff and Thomas Tholen have both been listed in public records at the same Riverton street address, a 3-bedroom, 1-story home in the 3000 block of West 13400 Street. Salt Lake County property records show that address is owned by Tholen.
There is no evidence at the moment that the man in the Vegas hospital is the same Roger Bergendorff who created sci-fi-oriented visual art in the 80s, but it is interesting to note that some of the Salt Lake City-related info found related to a Thomas Tholen online indicate that Tholen may be a fine arts teacher at a Salt Lake area high school.
Again Huff is of the opinion that two weirdos, Ricin and a dead dog found with healthy cats adds up to nothing more sinister than an eccentric on the loose. Perhaps if the men were Muslims he’d feel differently, but I’d remind him that Tim McVeigh wasn’t a Muslim and though there are conflicting reports as to his motives, we can all agree it was terrorism.
In our politically polarized society would it be beyond the pale to suggest terrorism seems a likely motive for manufacturing Ricin?
But even if it wasn’t technically political terrorism wouldn’t the situation still be news worthy? If Bergendorff was not an anti-government anarchist but a crazed Manson follower looking to poison someone for Charlie would Malkin, myself and everyone else Huff dismissively assigns to the “right wing” of the blogoshpere (as if it’s a niche like food blogger) be less interested?
I suppose to Huff we are unfeeling cretin with whom he must occasionally sully himself by linking to but must distance himself lest “good” people think he harbor some hidden love of liberty, low taxes or Ronald Reagan in his heart? That would explain why he seems to think only the siren call of possible terrorism would attract we vultures of the right to this horrible story.
It doesn’t have to come from Al-Qaeda to be terrorism, and it doesn’t have to be terrorism to make people on the right take notice. Ultimately the kind of contempt Steve Huff shows for the right (which is the reason I linked to him) is a microcosmic view of Americas poisonous partisan atmosphere and will likely explain what Roger von Bergendorff was doing with Ricin in his room.
