Update February 10, 2010 11:27am
Strafford County Attorney Thomas Velardi reports that Leeland Eisenberg was taken into custody this morning by the County Department of Corrections and has been returned to the Strafford County House of Corrections. Velardi has not gotten a full briefing but says preliminary reports indicate Eisenberg was picked up at his home. He was taken into custody without incident.
Update: Feb. 9, 2:40 pm
Leeland Eisenberg, the man who was convicted on seven counts of kidnapping and also of criminal threatening after a November 2007 hostage taking at then presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s Rochester, New Hampshire campaign office, is a fugitive according to Strafford County Attorney Thomas Velardi. Velardi says that after a 9:30am hearing yesterday, Eisenberg was released around lunchtime or 1:00pm yesterday and he’s already cut off his electronic monitoring bracelet. Once the bracelet was removed this morning, Velardi asked the court for an arrest warrant and it was immediately granted. They’ve set extradition limits for the continental US and a BOLO (be on the lookout) has been put out for all local law enforcement. Velardi urges the public to call any leads into local law enforcement and notes that Eisenberg has been violent in the past. At this moment, authorities have no direct leads one way or another as to Eisenberg’s whereabouts past about 11:00am when there was a possible lead that he was in the immediate Dover, NH area. Because Eisenberg is on probation this is a Department of Corrections case, but local law enforcement can and will assist in apprehension if tips are called in.
Velardi says that Eisenberg does have a history of escape when incarcerated in Massachusetts in 1980- that Eisenberg did a “walk away” type of escape. Because of this, Velardi’s position has always been that Eisenberg should be at the State Prison, not the House of Corrections where he had been incarcerated. Velardi also notes that Eisenberg has violated his probation in the past. Violations include failing to charge his GPS so it went dead, failing to take scheduled breath tests, and missing his medications on a few occasions.
In November 2007 Leeland Eisenberg took several hostages in Clinton’s local campaign office and threatened to blow the building up with a bomb strapped to his body. The bomb turned out to be fake.
–Photo Courtesy of AP