Poison plot alleged

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32819, 20 January 1972, Page 11

Poison plot alleged

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright)

CHICAGO, January 19.

Two persons have been arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit murder in connection with what was described by a state attorney as a plot to poison water supplies in the MidWest of the United States.

The attorney, Mr Edward Hanrahan, said the two men had formed a group which “planned poisoning water supplies and spreading deadly diseases in Illinois and elsewhere.”

Members of the group, Mr Hanrahan said, “were allegedly to be inoculated and immunised, enabling them to survive the poisonings and diseases and to form the basis of a new master race.

“Water filtration plants in the Mid-West were allegedly to be infected with typhoid and other deadly bacteria,” Mr Hanrahan said.

Hospital connection

Mr James Rochford, the deputy superintendent of the Chicago Police Department, said one of those arrested was a former hospital laboratory employee. However, a spokesman for the hospital named denied! the man ever was employed. He said the man held by the police worked as a volunteer for the hospital medical centre and was ordered off the premises earlier this month after it was learned he attempted to obtain unauthorised chemicals. Mr Rochford was commenting on a report by a radio station that the plot was to contaminate Chicago’s water supply by bombing a filtration plant with deadly chemicals. The station said that six persons had been arrested. Mr Rochford declined to confirm the radio station report that chemicals would be used to contaminate the water supply. ‘Conversation’ “I do not know of a specific plan, but I am aware of conversations among people

which are a part of this criminal case,” he said. Mr Rochford said that Steve Pera, aged 18, and Allen Schwander, aged 19, were arrested.

He said a large amount of physical evidence was confiscated. Among the basis for the arrests were conversations which discussed “certain acts that would disseminate chemicals to harm the public.”

Mr James Jardine, commissioner of Chicago’s Department of Water and Sewers, said: “There was no overt act. As far as we know there is no danger to the water supply. The people have nothing to worry about. This is all just rumour.”