3 ARE CHARGED IN A MURDER CASE INVOLVING ALIENS AND SEIZING COUNTY GOVERNMENT
June 23, 1996 / July 6, 1996
Source: New York Times
RIVERHEAD, N.Y.-Fearing that space aliens had crashed on Long Island and that
the authorities were covering it up, three members of a UFO group plotted to
assassinate Suffolk County officials with radioactive materials and seize
control of county government, prosecutors said yesterday.
"Yes, this all sounds way-out," District Attorney James M. Catterson said. "But
when I read the Unabomber manifesto, some of his ideas were just as bizarre.
That's why I take this and the imminent threat to the individuals concerned
here very seriously."
At a news conference yesterday after indictments in the case were unsealed,
Catterson said the defendants had also planned to burn down the county
Republican Party headquarters. He added that the leader of the plot, John J.
Ford, believed, "in his own way, that his branch of the Conservative Party,
which was no branch except in his own mind, could become the balance of power
if he could eliminate the Republican leaders and the party's nominating
petitions."
Ford is chairman of the Long Island UFO network, and the other defendants are
network members.
"When we first heard this, the idea that someone would attempt to introduce
radioactive material into someone's food and someone's living area was so
bizarre that there was a human tendency to discount it," Catterson said. "But
it didn't take very long to realize that this was some of our worst nightmares
come true."
The indictments charged Ford, 47, a retired court officer, and Joseph
Mazzuchelli, 42, a convicted burglar, with three counts each of conspiracy to
murder, trying to hire others to carry out the plot and illegal possession of
radioactive materials. A third suspect, Edward Zabo, 49, a government
electrical inspector at Northrop Grumman Corp., was charged with 21 counts
including criminal possession of a weapon, reckless endangerment, and violating
health laws by possessing radioactive materials. which he is said to have sold
to Ford.
Catterson noted that Ford recently sent a newsletter to followers claiming that
last year's forest fires in the Long Island Pine Barrens were touched off by
the crash of a large UFO. In the same newsletter, Ford accused local and
federal agents of trying to cover up the crash by starting fires away from the
crash site. He also wrote that Mazzuchelli had learned that government agents
were trying to kill him and that Suffolk Police were covering up the plot. To
expose this conspiracy against him and his UFO research, Ford hatched his plot
to seize control of the Suffolk County government, Catterson said.
Ford and his followers plotted to introduce radioactive radium into the food
eaten by John Powell, chairman of the Suffolk County Republican Committee; Fred
Towle, a Suffolk legislator, and Anthony Gazzola, a leader of the Conservative
Party in Brookhaven and chief investigator in the Brookhaven town attorney's
office, Catterson said.
Catterson said evidence showed that the three men had begun to put their plot
into action. "We caught it at the beginning." The plot was uncovered during an
investigation into illegal gun sales. Martin Thompson, chief of the district
attorney's rackets bureau, said investigators taped a conversation between Ford
and Mazzuchelli discussing their plot. He said Northrop Grumman and the Defense
Department were also investigating.
Ford, who pleaded not guilty at his arraignment, was ordered held on $500,000
bond or $350,000 cash bail. Mazzuchelli, who came to court without a lawyer,
was ordered to return on Monday with a court-appointed lawyer. Zabo was ordered
to return to court next Friday. Bail was set at $100,000.
"All this convinces me that there is a side to humanity that defies
definition," Catterson said, recalling the bombings of the World Trade Center
and the federal building in Oklahoma City and the Unabomber. "While we may
think of them as kooks and far-outs, the point is that they lead daily lives
and are able to get along, but within them they harbor thoughts which seldom,
but do surface, so we must be on guard."
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