Agent: Man accused of buying fish toxin sought hit

[July 08, 2008]  CHICAGO (AP) --  A man accused of buying a highly poisonous fish toxin while posing as a research doctor once solicited someone over the Internet to kill his wife in exchange for $8,000 and an AK-47 assault rifle, prosecutors said Monday.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Karner also said that Edward F. Bachner IV was named as the beneficiary of a $5 million life insurance policy on his wife.

The testimony came at a hearing in federal court in Rockford where Magistrate Judge P. Michael Mahoney ordered Bachner held without bond. Mahoney said Bachner, who is charged with one count of illegal possession of tetrodotoxin, a felony, was a danger to the community and a flight risk.

After his arrest last week at a UPS store as he took delivery of a package of puffer fish toxin, a neurotoxin 1,200 times deadlier than cyanide, Bachner said he had contemplated using it on himself, "among other things," FBI agent Mark Mahoney testified Monday.

During a search of Bachner's home in suburban Lake in the Hills, agents found hypodermic needles, empty vials of toxin and a book that contained material on how to poison people, authorities have said.

The FBI said in an affidavit that a cooperating witness received several anonymous messages in 2005 soliciting the killing of an unnamed woman in the Chicago area. One of the messages offered payment of $8,000 and an AK-47 assault rifle for the job.

"This is intended as a simple termination, not a defilement of said mark," one message said, referring to the target. The messages were sent through a server in Canada that agents said kept few customer records, but agents were able to trace the messages to an IP address at Bachner's home, the FBI said.

According to the affidavit, agents questioned Bachner about the messages in January 2006 and quoted him as saying, "I never told them I was Ed Bachner" and "I was bored. I had no intent."

Bachner was not charged, and the court papers did not say how the investigation was resolved. Prosecutors did not say whether the alleged plot was connected to the fish toxin charges.

Bachner's attorney, James Marcus, questioned whether a plot to kill Bachner's wife existed. Rebecca Bachner attended Monday's court proceedings.

"More telling on that point is the fact that his wife was never notified of the alleged assassination plot," Marcus said.

The FBI has said that prior to his arrest, Bachner received large quantities of the fish toxin through the mail from legitimate U.S. distributors by using the alias "Edmund Backer" and pretending to be a doctor doing research as part of a phony company called "EB Strategic Research."

Karner said that 25 one-milligram vials of the toxin were recovered from the trunk of Bachner's car and that 20 empty vials with toxin residue were found elsewhere in the vehicle. He said 19 of the 64 vials that authorities believe Bachner had are unaccounted for.

Puffer fish, called fugu in Japan, is consumed by thrill-seeking gourmets once the poison is removed. Eating the toxin can cause paralysis, vomiting, heart failure and death.

[Associated Press; By MIKE ROBINSON]

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