Crime & Safety

Police Arrest Man at Airport for Threatening Pitt Professors

Mark Lee Krangle, 65, of Hudson, NY, was charged with harassment and making terroristic threats. He says person behind bomb threats is 'someone I have known.'

A New York man was arrested at Pittsburgh International Airport on Wednesday for allegedly threatening University of Pittsburgh professors via email.

According to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Mark Lee Krangle, 65, of Hudson, NY, was charged with harassment and making terroristic threats.

According to the newspaper, Krangle sent emails to four current and retired Pitt professors, giving them PDF copies of his book Revolution or Extinction. He stated he was coming to Pittsburgh to get his story covered and that the bomb threats were an attempt to support his cause.

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The book's description is as follows:

True story about New York Mafia child grown up and inserted into the Jimmy Carter presidential campaign while teaching at the University of Pittsburgh. After decades of trying to get the story of Carter's rigged election and scripted presidency out, a 1999 email to ABC television centering on prior knowledge of the 9/11 attack landed the author in federal detention for three years.

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Krangle made similar comments on his personal and public Facebook page. Publicly, he has been discussing the Pitt bomb threats on his page since April 3.

The university has received about 60 bomb threats since mid-February.

"I believe the person behind the attacks wants to get a spotlight on the huge issues I have been working on for decades," Krangle said in an April 7 Facebook post. "...I know why the attacks have been lodged against Pittsburgh and I am pretty sure the person behind the attacks is someone I have known."

Krangle says in several posts he is not behind the attacks, and says the posts "represent my beliefs and you can count them as theories.

"...I believe the threats are being made for the purpose of getting my story out about a corrupt Pittsburgh and say so in the earnest hope that getting the story out will stop the threats once and for all. I am not materially, conceptually or operationally involved in any aspect of the threats."

According to the page, Krangle attended Pitt for grad school in the '70s.

Several people now are posting angry messages on the page. Campus police assisted Allegheny County Police in executing the arrest. 

Krangle has not been charged for sending the bomb threats to the Pitt campus. Wednesday afternoon, David J. Hickton, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania, that law enforcement officials have made "significant progress in the investigation into the bomb threats made against University of Pittsburgh facilities" and that officials are focusing on potential suspects.

A $50,000 reward has been offered by the university. Anyone who has a tip can email police@pitt.edu or call 412-624-2121.


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