Posted on 03/12/2002 9:48:40 AM PST by kattracks
CHICAGO, Mar 12, 2002 (United Press International via COMTEX) -- A Wisconsin computer worker, who goes by the online name of "Dr. Chaos," Tuesday faced charges he stored more than a pound of powdered cyanide in an underground subway storage room in the heart of the city's downtown Loop.
Police found a vial of cyanide on Joseph Konopka when he was arrested with a 15-year-old juvenile at 2:15 a.m. Saturday morning in a steam tunnel under the Education Building at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Konopka, 25, an unemployed computer hacker accused of vandalizing power stations and radio towers in Wisconsin, was scheduled to appear at a federal hearing on Wednesday. He was being held without bond.
The Chicago-area juvenile reportedly told authorities Konopka had stored poison in the subway and had equipment to change locks and cut keys.
About a quarter pound of potentially lethal potassium cyanide and a pound of sodium cyanide compounds were found in a subway storage room. Potassium cyanide combined with hydrochloric or sulfuric acid produces lethal hydrogen cyanide gas, the same gas used to execute condemned prisoners in gas chambers.
"There is legal possession and there is illegal possession," said U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald. "It is a crime to possess something if you don't have a legal purpose to possess it."
The Chicago Transit Authority's Blue Line was shut down for three hours Saturday night as FBI and police officers wearing protective hazardous materials suits searched the mass transit tunnels. They recovered Konopka's belongings, which included a stolen laptop computer equipped with a wireless modem, flashlights, hand tools and a battery-powered drill.
"He's a geek," Police Superintendent Terry Hillard told a news conference Monday night. "Our public transportation unit has walked every inch of the rapid transit lines in the subway and have not found anything that was unusual other than what the FBI confiscated the other night."
Hillard described Konopka as more nerd than terrorist, and said he never indicated he intended to harm anyone. Konopka reportedly had been living in the subway since November and had been ticketed for trespassing.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel said Konopka, who called himself "Dr. Chaos on the Internet," was suspected of being leader of a group known as the "Realm of Chaos," which recruited members online.
He is charged with acts of vandalism in at least six Wisconsin counties, including starting a fire on a gas pipeline, blacking out 1,700 homes in Marquette County by throwing coiled barbed wire into an electrical substation and break-ins and thefts at radio and television stations.
"By all accounts, his IQ is extraordinary; he's intelligent and very capable of accomplishing some destructive things," Door County District Attorney Tim Funnell told the Journal Sentinel. "He's sort of an anarchist. He's disillusioned with society and wants to wreak havoc on government systems."
His grandmother, Marian, said Konopka dropped out of school in the eighth-grade and earned his high school diploma while in jail. He formerly worked as lead technician and systems administrator for a Green Bay technology firm.
By AL SWANSON
Copyright 2002 by United Press International.
His family, including his aunt, Audrey Konopka of De Pere, had posted $18,000 bail in Konopka’s various cases.
Yes. They're called 'Computer Security Experts'. ;)
I'd go with the former, rather than the latter. I have a feeling that they're just plain, simple folks who are absolutely befuddled by the actions of this guy, and at the same time, completely conned by him.
You really won't find a lot of sophisticates in northeast Wisconsin.
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