Holes in the safest city conclusion?
According to wikipedia, in 2006, Hamilton Township, New Jersey was ranked by Morgan Quitno as the eighteenth safest "city " in the United States, out of 369 cities nationwide. Contemplate the following vehicle seen outside the Hamilton library on June 12, 2007:
Contemplate also bullet holes in certain street signs. Contemplate also the "Nazi bunker" uncovered during the investigation of the murder of Hamilton resident Marie Harrison.
***Followup
IPBiz notes that references to Hamilton's Nazi bunker are not plentiful on the internet. The following gives some background.
Of the murder itself, an article in the Trentonian in the year 2005 notes:
[Benjamin] Harrison told police he punched his 51-year-old mother, Dolores Marie Harrison, five times in the face and put her in a headlock during an altercation April 2, 2003, before strangling her with an extension cord.
After the murder, Benjamin Harrison led police on a goose chase. The Trentonian noted:
[Benjamin] Harrison eventually admitted to the murder, originally stating he dumped the body in the Delaware River by the Camden waterfront.
Dive teams were then dispatched and state and local police searched for clues to the woman’s missing body for several days.
On April 16, Harrison ended the search. He phoned Hamilton police from the Mercer County Correction Center, where he was being held on $750,000 bail, and told one officer he was "wasting his time" looking in Camden, police said at the time.
[Benjamin Harrison] confessed to burying the body by a wooded area yards from the county’s vocational school off Old Trenton Road and led police to the makeshift grave.
The body was found only a couple of miles from the suspect’s home.
At the time of uncertainty, police determined that there was a bunker, containing Nazi material, in the vicinity of Mercer County’s vocational school off Old Trenton Road and that Benjamin Harrison knew of it.
See also DOLORES MARIE HARRISON’S BODY RECOVERED and BENJAMIN HARRISON INDICTED FOR MURDER.
****Of the bunker itself-->
From the Trenton Times, 24 April 2003, page A1
Cops destroy bunker found on parkland
By KEVIN SHEA
Staff Writer
Suspected racist hideout
A group of police detectives and firefighters unleashed their own ``bunker buster'' operation yesterday morning, tearing down a military-style bunker they found recently on Mercer County Park property.
After searching the remote site for evidence, the group swung sledgehammers and pickaxes at the partially underground fortress, at times pulling away wooden beams and sandbags with their hands.
Rusling Hose Co. firefighters assisted the police with additional sets of hands and power tools.
By noon, the bunker _ believed connected to white supremacy and neo-Nazi activity and discovered during a recent murder investigation _ was an inaccessible, collapsed hole filled with dirt and debris.
Before police found it, the fortification had a working, hinged door, an exhaust vent for a potbelly stove, a table and chairs, shelving and an assortment of candles, lanterns and tools.
Before going to the bunker site, the team of Hamilton, Mercer County and state police detectives again searched behind the Mercer County Vocational-Technical School, where authorities dug up the body of 51-year-old Hamilton murder victim Dolores Marie Harrison last week, Hamilton police Capt. Kevin Pollard said.
Harrison, a mother of three and a lawyer, was strangled April 2, allegedly by her son, Benjamin Harrison, 24, in their Doreen Road, Hamilton Square home. The son confessed to the killing April 8, according to police.
Detectives investigating the Harrison murder were tipped to the bunker's location by a fisherman and found it April 12. A source close to the murder probe has since told The Times that Benjamin Harrison had been in the bunker recently.
Dolores Harrison's body was found buried less than a mile from the bunker.
Pollard said yesterday detectives are certain they know who built the bunker, a sturdy structure made of cinderblocks and sandbags and with a poured concrete floor and a center wood beam support.
``We have a very good idea who the main bunker builder is,'' Pollard said. He described the person as a local resident ``who has an immature fascination with Nazi garbage.''
Pollard declined to name the person but said it is someone ``who's being looked at.''
The team that worked at both locations yesterday employed cadaver dogs from Northeast Search and Rescue in Bucks County, Pa., and a local metal detector club to scan the ground, Pollard said.
He said nothing of ``evidentiary value'' was found yesterday at either site connected to the Harrison criminal case. He declined to say if anything specific was being sought.
Police made the decision to level the bunker for several reasons, mainly safety, Pollard said. Police did not want curiosity seekers to visit it or kids or others to seek to play in and around it.
But the team of detectives that leveled the bunker said it was apparent that people had been to the bunker since its existence was publicized last week by The Times.
Someone had scrawled ``No Nazis'' at one location and scribbled over a swastika in another, the detectives said.
Also, the bunker is on public land and should not be there, authorities said.
Mercer County Park rangers apparently had known of the bunker for as long as a year and were planning to dismantle it, Hamilton police have said. Mercer County officials have not returned telephone calls to explain when and what they knew about the bunker.
A state police detective who investigates white supremacy groups has said many members are known to be skilled outdoorsmen and often build encampments for several reasons, notably as places to flee during an apocalyptic event, to prepare for one of many armed resistances they believe will occur or to stockpile weapons.
Hamilton police have said no firearms have been found at the bunker.
The Times has seen a photograph, provided by a law enforcement source, of a man standing inside the bunker dressed as Adolf Hitler and wearing a swastika armband.
The Hamilton detectives who found the bunker were tipped off in phone calls from fishermen, one of whom mentioned the Harrison killing and reported being fired at by young males who were armed with an assault rifle.
Another caller, and other people who have contacted Hamilton police since, have said young men with knives were seen in the area of the bunker, Pollard has said.
Reports about the existence of the bunker, located on an island where Hamilton, West Windsor and Washington townships come together, set off numerous calls to Hamilton police.
A New Jersey State Police intelligence unit is investigating the bunker's white supremacy connections, the state Division of Criminal Justice's Office of Bias Crimes has an investigator probing the bunker and the Anti-Defamation League has condemned the bunker's apparent anti-Semitic ties.
News stories about the bunker have also been electronically linked to the Internet discussion board of a white supremacy Web site, where users have debated whether it's really a base for white supremacy activities. One user posted an aerial photograph of the site.
Trenton Times, April 18, 2003, page A1
Police look at possible ties to woman's murder
CAPTION:
Police are investigating whether the military-style bunker discovered near Mercer County Park has any connection to racist groups.
State authorities have joined forces with Hamilton police in an effort to unravel the mystery of who built a hidden, fortified bunker in Mercer County Park and whether the people responsible are connected to the murder of a Hamilton mother.
While state authorities will focus on determining if those responsible are part of a hate group, a source told The Times yesterday that police can place Benjamin Harrison, the 24-year-old man who allegedly confessed to killing his mother, at the bunker.
The revelation comes the day after police discovered Dolores Marie Harrison's body buried less than a half-mile from the bunker.
Hamilton police have ongoing, parallel probes into the hidden fortification they discovered Saturday as part of the Harrison murder investigation.
One probe into the bunker, a well-built structure of cinder blocks, sandbags, plywood and wooden support beams, has to do with whether a white supremacy or neo-Nazi group built it. Hamilton detectives plan on researching previous hate crimes in the area as part of it.
The other probe is whether the bunker has a connection to the murder of Dolores Harrison, the 51-year-old Hamilton Square woman allegedly killed in her home April 2.
Her body was found Wednesday night buried behind the Mercer County Vocational- Technical School.
The grave, one of four locations Benjamin Harrison apparently directed police to investigate, is about a half-mile from the bunker, which is on a remote island at the southwestern edge of Mercer County Park lands where the townships of Hamilton, West Windsor and Washington meet.
A knowledgeable source told The Times yesterday that Benjamin Harrison knew of the bunker, and authorities can place him there.
The source was not specific about when or why Harrison was there or if he was alone or with someone else.
-- -- --
At a news conference yesterday to announce Harrison's body had been found, Mercer County Prosecutor Daniel Giaquinto said of the bunker: ``Any link between the bunker and the murder at this point has not been ruled out or in, and it's part of an ongoing investigation.''
A report of the bunker's existence in yesterday's Times touched off a flurry of telephone calls and other activity at the Hamilton police department, detectives said.
A New Jersey State Police intelligence unit will be investigating the bunker and plan to visit the site soon, said Detective Capt. Kevin Pollard.
A state police detective who investigates white supremacy groups has said such groups often erect encampments in the woods to prepare for Armageddon-type wars that they believe will occur.
The state Division of Criminal Justice's Office of Bias Crimes is also very interested in the bunker, and an investigator will be working closely with the Hamilton police and Mercer County Prosecutor's Office, a Criminal Justice spokesman said.
A link between white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups and the bunker exists in a photograph, shown to The Times by a law enforcement source, that shows a man standing inside the bunker dressed as Adolph Hitler, complete with a swastika on his left arm and a Hitler-like mustache.
The photo was seized in a prior investigation, before Hamilton homicide detectives were tipped to the bunker's location Saturday.
The police tipster mentioned the Harrison murder and reported that several fishermen had been chased from the area by young men who shot at them with an assault rifle.
Yesterday, Pollard said his detectives fielded more telephone calls from fishermen and others who frequented the woods near the bunker, and one caller claimed to have a videotape of a number of males in and around the bunker.
The calls, Pollard said, have been from ``people who have been chased from the area on several occasions.''
Police have yet to see the tape, but Pollard said yesterday that detectives believe they know who built the bunker. ``We have an idea who the (bunker) builder is,'' Pollard said. He would not identify the person.
Pollard urged anyone with information about the bunker to call his department.
The Times also learned yesterday that Mercer County Park rangers apparently knew of the bunker's existence and were planning on dismantling it.
Mercer County Park Commission Executive Director Frank Ragazzo could not be reached yesterday for comment.
Detectives who found the approximately 10-foot-by-10-foot bunker, which sits partially below ground, say a lot of work went into building it, and supplies would have had to be taken there by boat.
The floor is made of poured concrete, the bottom of the walls are built of five rows of cinder blocks and are finished with stacks of sandbags that rise high enough for an adult to stand inside.
An uncoiled roll of barbed wire is on the floor, as well as tables, chairs and numerous tools, and the interior is lined with storage shelving, candle holders and a lantern.
The bunker's entrance starts in a ditch cut into the earth that leads to a wooden door on which a sticker says: ``Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.''
On the floor and other surfaces are ripped-open packets of instant food items and toiletries. An exhaust pipe in the ceiling has been broken off, but in the photo taken previously, a small stove sits in the middle of the bunker, apparently attached to the exhaust pipe.
The bunker was in far better condition in the picture, which shows a radio, soda cans on the table and a cigarette burning in an ashtray.
-- -- --
An expert in white supremacy groups from the state police said such organizations can follow vastly different ideologies. But they all have a survivalist element to them.
Bunkers, forts and other structures they are known to build in the woods are their safe havens for doomsday events they believe in or for armed resistance. Some groups have been known to stock guns, ammunition and explosives in preparation for a battle with some authority, the expert said.
The Mercer County area has been the target of several hate and bias crimes in the past few years, many of them unsolved.
The two best-known incidents are the giant swastikas cut into Washington Township farm fields in July 1998 and July 1999.
The first, at Hankins Road and South Lane, and the second, off Church Street in the Windsor section, were both about 130 yards square. The creators of the swastikas, discovered by private pilots, remain unknown.
From 1999 to 2001, when the College of New Jersey in Ewing struggled with an assortment of bias and hate crimes, five-foot, spray-painted swastikas were discovered on a sports field, and others were drawn inside dormitories.
Swastikas and threats were painted in red on doors at a New Hope, Pa., synagogue in September 2000 in an unsolved incident.
And last month, a 16-year-old Ewing boy was charged with spray-painting offensive messages on the outside of a house and a delivery van in the Glendale section of the township.
Police said the boy may have been assisted in spray-painting the swastikas and racial slurs, such as ``white power'' and ``beware of skinheads.''
Contemplate also bullet holes in certain street signs. Contemplate also the "Nazi bunker" uncovered during the investigation of the murder of Hamilton resident Marie Harrison.
***Followup
IPBiz notes that references to Hamilton's Nazi bunker are not plentiful on the internet. The following gives some background.
Of the murder itself, an article in the Trentonian in the year 2005 notes:
[Benjamin] Harrison told police he punched his 51-year-old mother, Dolores Marie Harrison, five times in the face and put her in a headlock during an altercation April 2, 2003, before strangling her with an extension cord.
After the murder, Benjamin Harrison led police on a goose chase. The Trentonian noted:
[Benjamin] Harrison eventually admitted to the murder, originally stating he dumped the body in the Delaware River by the Camden waterfront.
Dive teams were then dispatched and state and local police searched for clues to the woman’s missing body for several days.
On April 16, Harrison ended the search. He phoned Hamilton police from the Mercer County Correction Center, where he was being held on $750,000 bail, and told one officer he was "wasting his time" looking in Camden, police said at the time.
[Benjamin Harrison] confessed to burying the body by a wooded area yards from the county’s vocational school off Old Trenton Road and led police to the makeshift grave.
The body was found only a couple of miles from the suspect’s home.
At the time of uncertainty, police determined that there was a bunker, containing Nazi material, in the vicinity of Mercer County’s vocational school off Old Trenton Road and that Benjamin Harrison knew of it.
See also DOLORES MARIE HARRISON’S BODY RECOVERED and BENJAMIN HARRISON INDICTED FOR MURDER.
****Of the bunker itself-->
From the Trenton Times, 24 April 2003, page A1
Cops destroy bunker found on parkland
By KEVIN SHEA
Staff Writer
Suspected racist hideout
A group of police detectives and firefighters unleashed their own ``bunker buster'' operation yesterday morning, tearing down a military-style bunker they found recently on Mercer County Park property.
After searching the remote site for evidence, the group swung sledgehammers and pickaxes at the partially underground fortress, at times pulling away wooden beams and sandbags with their hands.
Rusling Hose Co. firefighters assisted the police with additional sets of hands and power tools.
By noon, the bunker _ believed connected to white supremacy and neo-Nazi activity and discovered during a recent murder investigation _ was an inaccessible, collapsed hole filled with dirt and debris.
Before police found it, the fortification had a working, hinged door, an exhaust vent for a potbelly stove, a table and chairs, shelving and an assortment of candles, lanterns and tools.
Before going to the bunker site, the team of Hamilton, Mercer County and state police detectives again searched behind the Mercer County Vocational-Technical School, where authorities dug up the body of 51-year-old Hamilton murder victim Dolores Marie Harrison last week, Hamilton police Capt. Kevin Pollard said.
Harrison, a mother of three and a lawyer, was strangled April 2, allegedly by her son, Benjamin Harrison, 24, in their Doreen Road, Hamilton Square home. The son confessed to the killing April 8, according to police.
Detectives investigating the Harrison murder were tipped to the bunker's location by a fisherman and found it April 12. A source close to the murder probe has since told The Times that Benjamin Harrison had been in the bunker recently.
Dolores Harrison's body was found buried less than a mile from the bunker.
Pollard said yesterday detectives are certain they know who built the bunker, a sturdy structure made of cinderblocks and sandbags and with a poured concrete floor and a center wood beam support.
``We have a very good idea who the main bunker builder is,'' Pollard said. He described the person as a local resident ``who has an immature fascination with Nazi garbage.''
Pollard declined to name the person but said it is someone ``who's being looked at.''
The team that worked at both locations yesterday employed cadaver dogs from Northeast Search and Rescue in Bucks County, Pa., and a local metal detector club to scan the ground, Pollard said.
He said nothing of ``evidentiary value'' was found yesterday at either site connected to the Harrison criminal case. He declined to say if anything specific was being sought.
Police made the decision to level the bunker for several reasons, mainly safety, Pollard said. Police did not want curiosity seekers to visit it or kids or others to seek to play in and around it.
But the team of detectives that leveled the bunker said it was apparent that people had been to the bunker since its existence was publicized last week by The Times.
Someone had scrawled ``No Nazis'' at one location and scribbled over a swastika in another, the detectives said.
Also, the bunker is on public land and should not be there, authorities said.
Mercer County Park rangers apparently had known of the bunker for as long as a year and were planning to dismantle it, Hamilton police have said. Mercer County officials have not returned telephone calls to explain when and what they knew about the bunker.
A state police detective who investigates white supremacy groups has said many members are known to be skilled outdoorsmen and often build encampments for several reasons, notably as places to flee during an apocalyptic event, to prepare for one of many armed resistances they believe will occur or to stockpile weapons.
Hamilton police have said no firearms have been found at the bunker.
The Times has seen a photograph, provided by a law enforcement source, of a man standing inside the bunker dressed as Adolf Hitler and wearing a swastika armband.
The Hamilton detectives who found the bunker were tipped off in phone calls from fishermen, one of whom mentioned the Harrison killing and reported being fired at by young males who were armed with an assault rifle.
Another caller, and other people who have contacted Hamilton police since, have said young men with knives were seen in the area of the bunker, Pollard has said.
Reports about the existence of the bunker, located on an island where Hamilton, West Windsor and Washington townships come together, set off numerous calls to Hamilton police.
A New Jersey State Police intelligence unit is investigating the bunker's white supremacy connections, the state Division of Criminal Justice's Office of Bias Crimes has an investigator probing the bunker and the Anti-Defamation League has condemned the bunker's apparent anti-Semitic ties.
News stories about the bunker have also been electronically linked to the Internet discussion board of a white supremacy Web site, where users have debated whether it's really a base for white supremacy activities. One user posted an aerial photograph of the site.
Trenton Times, April 18, 2003, page A1
Police look at possible ties to woman's murder
CAPTION:
Police are investigating whether the military-style bunker discovered near Mercer County Park has any connection to racist groups.
State authorities have joined forces with Hamilton police in an effort to unravel the mystery of who built a hidden, fortified bunker in Mercer County Park and whether the people responsible are connected to the murder of a Hamilton mother.
While state authorities will focus on determining if those responsible are part of a hate group, a source told The Times yesterday that police can place Benjamin Harrison, the 24-year-old man who allegedly confessed to killing his mother, at the bunker.
The revelation comes the day after police discovered Dolores Marie Harrison's body buried less than a half-mile from the bunker.
Hamilton police have ongoing, parallel probes into the hidden fortification they discovered Saturday as part of the Harrison murder investigation.
One probe into the bunker, a well-built structure of cinder blocks, sandbags, plywood and wooden support beams, has to do with whether a white supremacy or neo-Nazi group built it. Hamilton detectives plan on researching previous hate crimes in the area as part of it.
The other probe is whether the bunker has a connection to the murder of Dolores Harrison, the 51-year-old Hamilton Square woman allegedly killed in her home April 2.
Her body was found Wednesday night buried behind the Mercer County Vocational- Technical School.
The grave, one of four locations Benjamin Harrison apparently directed police to investigate, is about a half-mile from the bunker, which is on a remote island at the southwestern edge of Mercer County Park lands where the townships of Hamilton, West Windsor and Washington meet.
A knowledgeable source told The Times yesterday that Benjamin Harrison knew of the bunker, and authorities can place him there.
The source was not specific about when or why Harrison was there or if he was alone or with someone else.
-- -- --
At a news conference yesterday to announce Harrison's body had been found, Mercer County Prosecutor Daniel Giaquinto said of the bunker: ``Any link between the bunker and the murder at this point has not been ruled out or in, and it's part of an ongoing investigation.''
A report of the bunker's existence in yesterday's Times touched off a flurry of telephone calls and other activity at the Hamilton police department, detectives said.
A New Jersey State Police intelligence unit will be investigating the bunker and plan to visit the site soon, said Detective Capt. Kevin Pollard.
A state police detective who investigates white supremacy groups has said such groups often erect encampments in the woods to prepare for Armageddon-type wars that they believe will occur.
The state Division of Criminal Justice's Office of Bias Crimes is also very interested in the bunker, and an investigator will be working closely with the Hamilton police and Mercer County Prosecutor's Office, a Criminal Justice spokesman said.
A link between white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups and the bunker exists in a photograph, shown to The Times by a law enforcement source, that shows a man standing inside the bunker dressed as Adolph Hitler, complete with a swastika on his left arm and a Hitler-like mustache.
The photo was seized in a prior investigation, before Hamilton homicide detectives were tipped to the bunker's location Saturday.
The police tipster mentioned the Harrison murder and reported that several fishermen had been chased from the area by young men who shot at them with an assault rifle.
Yesterday, Pollard said his detectives fielded more telephone calls from fishermen and others who frequented the woods near the bunker, and one caller claimed to have a videotape of a number of males in and around the bunker.
The calls, Pollard said, have been from ``people who have been chased from the area on several occasions.''
Police have yet to see the tape, but Pollard said yesterday that detectives believe they know who built the bunker. ``We have an idea who the (bunker) builder is,'' Pollard said. He would not identify the person.
Pollard urged anyone with information about the bunker to call his department.
The Times also learned yesterday that Mercer County Park rangers apparently knew of the bunker's existence and were planning on dismantling it.
Mercer County Park Commission Executive Director Frank Ragazzo could not be reached yesterday for comment.
Detectives who found the approximately 10-foot-by-10-foot bunker, which sits partially below ground, say a lot of work went into building it, and supplies would have had to be taken there by boat.
The floor is made of poured concrete, the bottom of the walls are built of five rows of cinder blocks and are finished with stacks of sandbags that rise high enough for an adult to stand inside.
An uncoiled roll of barbed wire is on the floor, as well as tables, chairs and numerous tools, and the interior is lined with storage shelving, candle holders and a lantern.
The bunker's entrance starts in a ditch cut into the earth that leads to a wooden door on which a sticker says: ``Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.''
On the floor and other surfaces are ripped-open packets of instant food items and toiletries. An exhaust pipe in the ceiling has been broken off, but in the photo taken previously, a small stove sits in the middle of the bunker, apparently attached to the exhaust pipe.
The bunker was in far better condition in the picture, which shows a radio, soda cans on the table and a cigarette burning in an ashtray.
-- -- --
An expert in white supremacy groups from the state police said such organizations can follow vastly different ideologies. But they all have a survivalist element to them.
Bunkers, forts and other structures they are known to build in the woods are their safe havens for doomsday events they believe in or for armed resistance. Some groups have been known to stock guns, ammunition and explosives in preparation for a battle with some authority, the expert said.
The Mercer County area has been the target of several hate and bias crimes in the past few years, many of them unsolved.
The two best-known incidents are the giant swastikas cut into Washington Township farm fields in July 1998 and July 1999.
The first, at Hankins Road and South Lane, and the second, off Church Street in the Windsor section, were both about 130 yards square. The creators of the swastikas, discovered by private pilots, remain unknown.
From 1999 to 2001, when the College of New Jersey in Ewing struggled with an assortment of bias and hate crimes, five-foot, spray-painted swastikas were discovered on a sports field, and others were drawn inside dormitories.
Swastikas and threats were painted in red on doors at a New Hope, Pa., synagogue in September 2000 in an unsolved incident.
And last month, a 16-year-old Ewing boy was charged with spray-painting offensive messages on the outside of a house and a delivery van in the Glendale section of the township.
Police said the boy may have been assisted in spray-painting the swastikas and racial slurs, such as ``white power'' and ``beware of skinheads.''
posted by Lawrence B. Ebert at 4:47 PM
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