Mystery Deepens on Explosive Find In Brooklyn

Where is Michael Clatts, a Columbia professor and a medical anthropologist, who shared an apartment with Ivaylo Ivanov?

Ivanov came to the attention of cops when he claimed that someone shot him in his hand. He later admitted to shooting himself, and when cops went to his apartment on Remsen Avenue, they found an arsenal of weapons and pipe bombs.

Since then, Ivanov, whose attorney says he's Jewish, has confessed to being behind a string of anti-Semitic bias crimes - spray painting swastikas around Brooklyn. Police are looking at the possibility that Ivanov might have planned using the pipe bombs against synagogues, even as he was claiming he was going to use the bombs for fishing.

The revelation was the latest twist in a bizarre story that features a man who, police said, shot his own finger; a sizable weapons collection, including pipe bombs and a sawed-off shotgun, found in an apartment in one of Brooklyn’s most exclusive neighborhoods; and a prominent H.I.V./AIDS researcher and medical anthropologist, who owns the apartment.

The hate crimes had unsettled local residents, many of whom awoke on the morning of Sept. 25 to find swastikas and other slurs scratched, scrawled and spray-painted on cars, playgrounds, synagogues and building facades. Crude fliers reading “Kill All Jews” were strewn about.

At one point, 20 detectives were assigned to investigate the case, and though they zeroed in on a suspect almost from the start, there was not enough evidence to charge him.

According to a police official, Mr. Ivanov said his acts of vandalism were a result of “bad judgment” and “rage.”

In addition to the charges of weapons possession, Mr. Ivanov was arraigned on four charges of criminal mischief and five charges of aggravated assault. Two counts of each charge are considered hate crimes.

Adrian Lesher, a lawyer appointed to represent Mr. Ivanov, said at the arraignment that his client “basically led police to the apartment in a situation that was almost calculated.” The judge, John Wilson, set bail at $150,000 cash or a $300,000 bond, and ordered Mr. Ivanov to surrender his passport.

His lawyer further claimed that the anti-Semitic scrawls were done in Ivanov's bad judgment.

Clatt's father has no idea where his son is, but the New York Sun reports that he's currently speaking at a seminar in Vietnam.

Mr. Clatts teaches at the University of Puerto Rico and is currently conducting a study on HIV in Vietnam for the National Development and Research Institutes, a Chelsea-based nonprofit organization.

He is also listed as an associate professor at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, although a spokeswoman, Randee Sacks Levine, said he does not teach at the school and is not on the payroll.

Police have said Mr. Clatts has been out of town for an extended period that he is not being considered a suspect.

Just because he isn't a suspect doesn't mean that the police wouldn't like to talk with him over his roommate's habits, whereabouts, etc.