Dr.
Berry probed for alleged anthrax connection by FBI, charged on four counts
of domestic violence
By JOHN ANDERSON/Daily Reporter
Friday, August 06, 2004
WELLSVILLE -- Despite having three
places he was involved in searched by the Federal Bureau of Investigation
on Thursday, Dr. Kenneth M. Berry, 46, of Wellsville, was arrested, but
on a domestic violence charge in New Jersey.
Point Pleasant Beach (N.J.) Police
charged Dr. Berry with four counts of assault and a temporary restraining
order was issued by Judge James A. Ligouri.
Agents from the FBI executed a
search warrant at two homes in Wellsville Thursday as part of an investigation
into "the origin of the anthrax-laced letters mailed in September and October
of 2001 which resulted in the deaths of five individuals and serious illnesses
to 17 others."
FBI Agents told Wellsville Mayor
Bradley Thompson today that they did not find any traces of anthrax during
the search. They are going to conduct a few other interviews before they
leave town.
FBI spokeswoman Debbie Weierman
told the Wellsville Daily Reporter today that the agency was "just there
to do searches. I am unable to comment because it's a pending investigation."
While the searches in Wellsville
were going on, sources told the Wellsville Daily Reporter that Berry was
vacationing with his family at a home owned by his parents in Chadwick
Beach in Dover Township, N.J., when the FBI showed up with a search warrant.
Dr. Berry and his family allegedly left and went to a restaurant to eat
before 9 a.m.
At 1:21 p.m., sources say Dr.
Berry got into a fight with his wife and children at the White Sands Motel
in Point Pleasant. Point Pleasant Police said one of the family members
was injured and needed to be treated at the scene.
Point Pleasant Police received
a 911 call of a domestic dispute, but Chatham Township Police Chief Elizabeth
Goeckel was at the hotel and with the help of an employee, detained Dr.
Berry until police arrived.
"I don't know why she was there,
maybe visiting," said Investigating Officer Susan Saccone today. "I interviewed
him and I can not discuss the case or his demeanor further until the actual
report is complete."
Captain Kevin O'Hara and Officer
Kyle Patton took Dr. Berry into custody, where he complained of illness
and vomited. Dr. Berry was taken to Brick Hospital in New Jersey where
he was treated and returned to police department. He was arraigned and
sent to the Ocean County Jail in lieu of $10,000 bail. He reached bail
and was released.
Attempts to reach Dr. Berry were
unsuccessful, but his father, William C. Berry, said from his home in Newtown,
Conn. that the FBI was making his son a scapegoat for a botched investigation.
"Hey, here's a guy being shafted
by the FBI," said William C. Berry, a retired financial director who now
serves as president of PREEMPT. It's just buying time because they have
nothing on anthrax. You are looking at a setup."
The father described Berry as
exhausted and upset. He said his son has been interviewed before by the
FBI because of his counterterror expertise.
"They have been on him for three
years. They have no leads," William Berry said from his farmhouse, near
Danbury, Ct.
Dr. Berry is a father of seven
who has been married twice. He now teaches emergency room skills at a hospital
affiliated with the University of Pittsburgh, his father said. Born in
Teaneck, N.J., Dr. Berry moved with his family to Switzerland at age 5.
They returned to New Jersey, living in Wayne, and then moved to Connecticut.
The FBI searched in two Wellsville
locations. One was a home owned by Dr. Berry on 211 East Pearl St. The
other was an apartment on 125 Maple Ave., which he rented before he bought
the home on East Pearl Street.
Dr. Berry founded an organization
called PREEMPT Medical Counter-Terrorism in 1997. He was the director of
the emergency room at Jones Memorial Hospital in Wellsville from December
of 1996 to October of 2001. He still lives in Wellsville with his wife
and seven children, but works in Pittsburgh and other areas.
Mayor Thompson read a statement
from the FBI that said, "The FBI and the U.S. postal inspection service
are conducting searches at multiple locations in New York and New Jersey.
These searches are related to the FBI's ongoing investigation into the
origin of the anthrax-laced letters mailed in September and October of
2001 which resulted in the deaths of five individuals and serious illness
to 17 others."
Thompson said FBI Field Agent
George W. Gast told him, "The amounts of anthrax they are looking for is
a trace amount and nothing anyone has to be concerned about."
The search ended around 10:30
p.m. Thursday.
Weierman said area residents should
not be concerned, even though two roads were closed down for hours and
police are still not allowing vehicles to drive by Dr. Berry's East Pearl
Street home.
"That was just to secure the perimeter
of the searches," said Weierman. "That is normal FBI activity when a search
is being conducted, especially when the media and general public is aware
of it and it becomes a focus of attention. It had nothing to do with health
hazards."
Agents wearing purple gloves took
several bags, boxes and children's toys from both homes.
Weierman said the FBI contacted
the Wellsville Police and the Allegany County Sheriff's Department before
starting the searches at 8:30 a.m. Thursday.
"The searches are regarding the
anthrax-laced letters from 2001 -- I can't go into background or reasoning.
We want to stress there are no health or safety concerns and we contacted
the state and local authorities and local health departments," said Weierman.
Helen Evans of the Allegany County
Department of Public Health said, "They assured us that there are no anthrax
related threats or health issues."
Weierman said there are 30 FBI
agents and 13 postal inspectors who only work on this case. In Wellsville,
over 30 came in by a Winnebago and several unmarked sport utility vehicles
and trucks from Maryland, Pennsylvania and Buffalo. The agents have conducted
5,200 interviews in connection to the anthrax letters.
Dr. Berry currently owns a Cessna
P210 plane, friends said. When he first came to Wellsville, he had a push-pull
plane, a model with an engine in the front and an engine in the back. Officials
at the airport in Wellsville say the Cessna plane has not been there in
a year.
According to his Web site, Berry
is a bioterrorism and weapons of mass destruction expert. In a 1997 USA
Today interview, Berry said: "We ought to be planning to make anthrax vaccine
widely available to the population starting in the major cities."
Berry is not originally from Wellsville,
but he was charged by New York State Police with felony forgery in 1999.
On March 17, 1999, he entered a guilty plea to a violation instead of a
misdemeanor. He was accused of signing a fake will of the late Dr. Andrew
Colletta, who died in May of 1998 at the age of 46.
At the time, Allegany County District
Attorney Terry Parker, who prosecuted the case, said, "Ideally, if he were
any other individual who had done this, I would have insisted on a misdemeanor.
However, any criminal conviction would have resulted in him losing his
medical license and never practicing again. As far as society was concerned,
that would not be appropriate ... he does a lot of good for society with
what he does."
Last week, the Wellsville Code
Enforcement Office sent a violation to Dr. Berry for having two junk cars
on his property. Village officials in Wellsville said Berry called and
said the vehicles belonged to his daughter's boyfriend and they were going
to be removed.
Former Jones Memorial Hospital
Chief Operation Officer William DiBerardino said he saw Dr. Berry last
week.
"I don't know what to think, this
is hard to believe," said DiBerardino. "I talked to him a couple weeks
ago at Music on the Lawn, we talked about flying. Most of our conversations
seemed to end up about flying because I love flying and he has been flying
for years.
"He was different. He was a decent
doctor by all accounts, so, how do you explain different?" DiBerardino
added.
Dr. Berry's next door neighbor,
Bob Kosciewicz said "I last saw him last week ... this is a shock. This
is surprising. He's a very quiet person.
"I don't picture him as a terrorist
or anything like that," said Kosciewicz. "I understand he has a plane and
he flies to where ever. He was on one of those rent-a-doctor deals, and
he flew all over the place. I punched up his resume and saw his credentials,
it was pretty impressive."
"I don't see him too often because
he works other places so often," Kosciewicz continued. "They lived next
door for about three years. The family left for vacation, and I thought
he had some work in Pittsburgh. But I don't know where he works exactly
... he was different, but I always liked him."
Dr. Berry told DiBerardino he
said he was working with the Federal Aviation Administration investigating
crashes and that he remembers Dr. Berry teaching courses to emergency rooms
on terrorists. Dr. Berry's Web site said he investigated the TWA Flight
800 crash in Long Island.
(The Newark Star-Ledger
contributed to this report)
Wellsville
was crawling with FBI
KATHRYN ROSS/Daily Reporter
Friday, August 06, 2004
Agencies from the police to the
department of health were notified early Thursday that the FBI was executing
search warrants in Wellsville concerning anthrax.
Neighbors were not that lucky.
Neighbors woke up at about 8:15
a.m. Thursday to the sight of several large, dark colored cars, vans and
trucks, parked on their street and blocking the intersection at East Pearl
Street and Wheeler Place.
"They were there when I got up
just a couple of cars and then all the others showed up," said Eugene Coburn
who lives across the street from the two-story, block-shaped, tan and cream-colored
house at the corner of the two street.
"They just sort of swooped in
shortly after we got here," said a member of a village work crew that has
been repairing a water line on the street.
Neighbors say that haven't seen
much of Berry who has lived in the house since February 2001, with his
wife and their several children ranging from an approximately 2-year-old
child to teenagers.
"He works out of state," said
one neighbor who was stopped and questioned by F.B.I. agents before she
could drive to her Pearl Street home.
"They kind of keep to themselves,"
Coburn stated.
Neighbors say they have also not
seen the family since seeing them leave on vacation late last week.
FBI personnel also searched another
residence Berry lived in before moving into the Pearl Street residence.
Standing across the street from
125 Maple Avenue where Berry lived in an apartment, Susan Decker and Don
Figenscher both said they were surprised when they found dark-suited individuals
going in and out of the house early in the morning. Decker who lives in
the area and Figenscher who lives at 126 Maple Avenue said they vaguely
remembered the doctor living there, but agreed that he hadn't lived there
in years.
Both, and others at the scene
said they observed agents carrying items out of the apartment including
a small, hand-held, vacuum cleaner.
Berry worked as the director of
Emergency Services at Jones Memorial Hospital from Dec. 1996 to Oct. 2001,
said Judy Burt, public relations specialist for the hospital who confirmed
that, "He was mainly an emergency room doctor."
She could not comment on his record
with the hospital. However she did say that the F.B.I. had not contacted
JMH concerning the doctor or his work there.
The FBI did talk to the Allegany
County Department of Health. Spokesperson Helen Evans said Thursday, "They
assured us that there are no anthrax related threats or health issues."
A spokesperson for the FBI, Josh
Campbell, in Washington reported that while they were not at liberty to
confirm names, the FBI was conducting searches at multiple locations in
New York and New Jersey in relation to letters that were sent to people
in September and October 2001 that resulted in the deaths of five people
and caused severe illness in at least 17 others.
"There's no present danger," he
said, " We confirmed that with state and local public health authorities."
Wellsville Mayor Bradley Thompson
informed the press Thursday afternoon that the F.B.I. was looking for trace
quantities of anthrax as part oof an ongoing investigation related to the
anthrax-laced letters of September and October 2001. He reported, today,
that no anthrax was found in Wellsville.
According to scientists, anthrax
is a rare bacterial disease. Its spores can survive for years, and may
be picked up from infected animals or bone meal.
Wellsville
Police speak on Berry investigation
By KATHRYN ROSS/Daily Reporter
Friday, August 06, 2004
WELLSVILLE -- Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) agents worked well into the night Thursday, with officers
from the Wellsville police department keeping watch as the agents searched
211 East Pearl Street.
Acting Wellsville Police Chief
Steven Mattison said he was informed Wednesday night the F.B.I. would be
executing a search warrant for the house at 211 East Pearl Street owned
by Dr. Kenneth Barry and an apartment at 125 Maple Avenue where he once
lived, on Thursday. No one was at either of the residences when the agents
arrived. Reports say the family is on vacation at their home on the Jersey
shore. Barry was a former director of the emergency room at Jones Memorial
Hospital (JMH).
"I didn't know how extensive it
was going to be until I went up there," Mattison said.
More than 50 agents, some from
as far away as the Bahamas, most from Washington, Maryland and Buffalo
arrived in the village Wednesday night. Others stayed in Olean before entering
the Wellsville house between 8:15 a.m. and 8:30 a.m. Local officials said
the agents were part of a special team put together by the F.B.I. to investigate
such cases.
Looking at his watch more than
12 hours after the search warrants were executed, Mayor Bradley Thompson
said, "When they contacted me they said they'd be here eight to ten hours."
Wellsville's officers were staying
away from the site of the investigation until residents started expressing
concern and the media arrived in mass by mid-afternoon.
"We put a couple of uniform officers
up there, so the residents would feel better seeing a uniform they knew."
Mattison said. He added that later in the day, to deal with media arriving
from across the area, and the civilians that started to gather on Madison
Street, more Wellsville officers were detailed to the scene, at the expense
of the village.
Three of Wellsville's regular
officers were working overtime at the scene according to Mattison who said
Thursday night that he didn't know how long they would be working.
Mayor Bradley Thompson said that
he doesn't think the cost can be billed to the F.B.I. or the federal government.
"We're the ones who decided to
put uniform police up there," he said.
Deferring contact with the press
to the mayor, the F.B.I. gave a statement to Thompson that stated the agency
was conducting the search of the residences in relation to the investigation
of the letters laced with anthrax that were mailed to politicians and the
media following the Sept. 11 terrorists attacks. Five people died and 17
people suffered serious illness as a result of contact with those letters.
While a little overwhelmed by
the number of F.B.I. agents involved in the operation, Mattison said he
was impressed with the way the F.B.I. kept them informed. "I was a little
surprised that the F.B.I. kept a little department like ours so well informed."
Wellsville
doctor's trail can be found on Web; Berry identified as bioweapons expert
By LAWRENCE HOVISH/STAFF WRITER
Friday, August 06, 2004
On the Internet, Dr. Kenneth M.
Berry comes across as one of the foremost experts on the biological threat
to America, appearing in everything from interviews with MSNBC and USA
Today to personal Web sites like the Prophecy Project and Revelation 6:4,
which pulled his quotes from other sources.
In the Dec. 17, 1997, issue of
USA Today Berry provided the lone dissenting voice against President Clinton's
decision not to be vaccinated against anthrax or vaccinate the public.
According to the newspaper, medical experts agreed with the president,
saying the threat was just too low. Berry didn't agree.
"We ought to be planning to make
anthrax vaccine widely available to the population starting in major cities,"
he told USA Today.
Berry also indicated military
officials believed a terrorist attack using biological weapons would occur
in a major U.S. city within five years.
The Wellsville doctor's list of
accomplishments is long, indicative of the expertise that led him to be
a weapons of mass destruction consultant to the United State Department
of Defense and a lecturer on bio-ethics issues. Besides being founder and
national coordinator of PREEMPT, Berry is president of the American Academy
of Emergency Physicians and a member of, and special counsel to, the chair
of the Board of Certification in Emergency Medicine, according to a Web
site devoted to PREEMPT. He also served as director of emergency services
at Jones Memorial Hospital in Wellsville until 2001.
The Web site indicated Berry is
a fellow of the American Academy of Family Practice, the American College
of Forensic Medicine and the American College of Forensic Examiners, and
has considerable experience with forensic investigations of aircraft accidents,
including the 1996 TWA Flight 800 crash off of Long Island.
Berry is a graduate of Fairfield
University in Fairfield, Conn., the American University of the Caribbean
School of Medicine in Montserrat and did his third and fourth year clinical
training predominantly at the Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Conn.
"Dr. Berry has been one of the
leaders within emergency Medical community in recognizing the potential
threat of the use of weapons of mass destruction against American cities,"
the Web site quoted former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia. "He has worked
to develop a set of plans for expanding knowledge and training of emergency
medical personnel using a ground up approach."
It was on June 14, 1997, in an
interview with MSNBC, that Dr. Kenneth Berry said he didn't want to over-sensitize
the people of the United States to possible weapons of mass destruction
attacks, particularly in terms of biological weapons.
That was during the first Planned
Response Exercise and Emergency Medical Preparedness Training conference
in Philadelphia. By the second PREEMPT conference on Medical Domestic Preparedness
Against Chemical, Biological and Nuclear Terrorism, which took place between
April 4-6, 1998, Berry developed a hypothetical scenario involving an anthrax
attack on San Francisco, Calif.
Though Berry seemed to avoid causing
too much alarm during his 1997 interview, he did cause quite a stir in
his Wellsville community Thursday as Federal Bureau of Investigation agents
executed search warrants at his home, an apartment in Wellsville and his
parents' residence in Dover Township, N.J., as part of the inquiry into
the 2001 anthrax attacks that killed five people and sickened 17 more.
"At 7:30 a.m., this date, a group
known as 'The Friends of Yousef' (a group supported by the HAMAS terrorist
organization) called in a threat to CNN's San Francisco Bureau," Berry
wrote in his scenario. "The group informed the network that they are prepared
to make multiple airborne releases of a large quantity of an 'allegedly'
new strain of anthrax."
The scenario also notes the strain
is resistant to many antibiotics and the president is in town for a conference,
before laying out all the medical services and other tools available to
deal with the threat. Berry participated in other programs at the event,
including ones on PREEMPT, a nuclear threat in Minneapolis, Minn. and a
hazardous materials team workshop. |