Posted on 12/01/2007 3:10:39 PM PST by yankeedame
By STEPHANIE GASKELL in SOMERSWORTH, N.H.,
and LARRY McSHANE in NEW YORK
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
Saturday, December 1st 2007, 3:19 PM
'He's capable of anything,' said Leeland Eisenberg's former neighbor, Kathleen Carlsen. 'I don't want anything to do with that man.'
The trailer where Eisenberg lived for a time with his now estranged wife. She filed for divorce three days before the hostage incident.
The note that Eisenberg's family taped to the door.
The neatly dressed man who took hostages in Hillary Clinton's New Hampshire campaign office was known as a hard-drinking madman with a violent temper and a lurid past around the trailer park that he called home.
"He walks around talking to himself," said 18-year-old Robert Gilman, whose grandmother lived alongside the light blue trailer where Leeland Eisenberg once resided with his estranged wife.
"He's always talking about God, like he's having a conversation with Him," said Gilman who referred to Eisenberg as a "psycho."
Eisenberg, 46, taped a phony bomb to his waist before walking into Clinton's office in Rochester, N.H., on Friday.
He kept police at bay for more than five hours while holding a half-dozen campaign volunteers hostage.
He had been on the radar of local law enforcement for two years before the bizarre incident, and his past emerged as a tortured jumble of mental illness, sexual deviance, substance abuse, a failed suicide try, and allegations of molestation by a Roman Catholic priest.
The suspect claimed in a 2002 story in The Lowell Sun that the premature death of his mother, coupled with an abusive father, turned him into a drinker and drug-user. He eventually wound up homeless, living in an abandoned car in a New Hampshire junkyard.
Eisenberg - then going by the name Ralph Woodward Jr. - was serving a 12-to-20 year jail term in 2002 for forcing a woman at knifepoint to perform oral sex on him. The Sun interviewed him after he filed a lawsuit against the Archdiocese of Boston.
Court records in Massachusetts showed he was one of 541 victims who received settlements from the archdiocese in 2003, although the priest he accused had denounced Eisenberg as "a really scary individual."
Eisenberg remained behind bars Saturday at the Stafford County jail. He was being held without bail, awaiting arraignment on kidnapping and other felony charges.
His relatives barricaded themselves inside the family trailer, with his stepson extending a raised middle finger to reporters.
"Please respect our privacy," read a note left outside the trailer. "We will not be available for comment at this time."
Eisenberg's stepson, after sitting with police interviewers for an hour, told an employee at a local hotel that the suspect was on a three-day bender before walking into the Clinton offices, where the hostages included a woman with her infant.
"He told me his stepfather said, 'I need help' the night before," Chelsea Coull, 19, an employee of the Governor's Inn, said yesterday. "He said, 'I don't know what to do with my life.'"
New Hampshire neighbors portrayed Eisenberg, who faces up to 42 years in prison, in a similar light.
"It did not shock me when I heard it was him," said Gilman's grandmother Kathleen Carlsen.
"He drinks every day, morning and night," said Carlsen, 70, who repeatedly referred to Eisenberg as a "nut bar."
She said he introduced himself around the trailer park as "Lee Warren," and was constantly fighting with his wife, Lisa, who had filed for divorce just three days before the hostage taking.
"He's capable of anything," Carlsen said. "I don't want anything to do with that man."
Small step for a man,giant step for mankind. Amzing, though not unexpected. Sensationalism, media storm about a minor meaningless event. Who cares about this nobody and his nobody neighbours? We do? Ooops, sorry!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.