Ping for news on Coma Dude! He’s awake. Please ping anyone I might have left out.
thanks for the ping!
Thanks for the PIng!
Thanks for the ping, I do hope he talks.
Lots of new info here.
http://www.lasvegasnow.com/Global/story.asp?S=8018139
A link to the PDF of the search warrants is contained in the story.
The search warrant, sworn out at 3:30 am Feb 27 has a bunch of interesting stuff:
Apparently, Bergendorff was making ricin in his room. The warrant references 5 beakers, 4 rock tumblers, and 6 hot plates. Not one, but four ricin recipe books were found.
With the info from the warrant, the screwy timeline with the police not finding the ricin when they were in the room getting the guns makes a little more sense now. The hotel called the cops about the guns on the 26th when the mgr went in to evict Bergendorff. They responded at 10 PM. They apparently didn’t have a search warrant for anything other than what they were called to the hotel for, the guns.
They probably didn’t miss the ricin at all. They probably saw it, but because ricin isn’t recognizable by itself, so they couldn’t say they found “ricin” on the 26th. They certainly did see the hot plates and beakers and “anarchist” literature—but none of that’s illegal on its own. So they had to petition for a search warrant specifically authorizing them to seize the stuff—all based on probable cause from what they could see out in the open. That took 5 hours to get done. Reasonable, considering it’s all got to be written up legally, the judge has to be contacted, etc.
The time of the search warrant affidavit is 3:30 am on the 27th. So all this stuff was going on pretty much at the same time—late night of Feb 26.
Interestingly, there is nothing in the search warrant about the cousin, Tholen, finding the ricin and bringing it to the hotel manager.