Bias Crime Or Arson?

A bomb that arson experts said could have demolished a Springs house had it detonated was found inside the house by its prospective buyer on Saturday morning.

East Hampton Town police and the Suffolk County arson squad are investigating the incident.

Stephen Engel of Staten Island arrived with his wife at 6 Harbor Boulevard at about 10:55 a.m. The first thing they noticed, the couple told police, were swastikas painted on the outside of the house, which is at the corner of Harbor Boulevard and Three Mile Harbor Road.

Inside, Mr. Engel found a coffee can full of gasoline, with two wires inside. The wires were hooked to a timer, set for 3 a.m., and plugged into a wall outlet.

Gas jets on the kitchen stove were turned up and gas fumes were seeping through the residence.

Scrawled Swastikas

Outside, on a fence enclosing a swimming pool, Mr. Engel was greeted with more spray-painted graffiti: "Jew Pay Up" and other swastikas.

"There was a potential for a major explosion," said Det. Lieut. Edward V. Ecker Jr. of the town police force. "Thank God the Engels don't smoke." He added that neither the buyers nor the seller are Jewish.

Had a spark ignited the gas, he said, the explosion would have rocked the whole neighborhood.

Police are treating the incident as a potential bias crime but are focusing more on attempted arson, Detective Ecker said. The arson squad has taken the evidence to its crime lab for analysis.

Police Interviews

The house's owner was identified as Timothy Theuret. Although the house reportedly is in foreclosure, the Engels were said to be buying it directly from the owner. Town Police Capt. Todd Sarris said the question of foreclosure proceedings was "certainly part of the investigation."

"We are interviewing the owner, the potential buyers, former residents, and neighbors," Detective Ecker said. The house had been rented to someone the police declined to name until November 1995. Detective Ecker said the tenant had been interviewed UpIsland this week.

The neighborhood has had one prior incident of anti-Semitism, Detective Ecker said. Two years ago, swastikas were found painted on the foundation of a house on the same block.

However, the youths responsible were caught, and arson squad detectives said the drawings then and the ones that appeared on Mr. Theuret's house were dissimilar.

Anti-Semitic Incidents

"This may have been a set-up to get us off the track," Detective Ecker said of the graffiti.

Though there have been isolated anti-Semitic incidents in the town and East Hampton Village in recent years, Detective Ecker stressed that attempted arson was more likely in this case.

Just last month some 40 town residents and students gathered at Guild Hall for a screening and panel discussion of the film "Not in Our Town," a nationally recognized documentary about a town's reaction to bias crimes.

On Dec. 11, the letters KKK were spray-painted on the outside of a house owned by an African American family in North Sea.

On Tuesday, Town Parks Department employees found what they feared was another bomb, this one at Terry King Park on Abraham's Path in Amagansett. Police were summoned.

A wooden box, 12 by 6 by 5 inches, was deemed suspicious after employees saw two copper wires coming out of the otherwise sealed container.

The county bomb squad was called, and agents sprayed the box with water before opening it.

Inside they found two batteries and an on-off switch. A light bulb was encased in the top of the box.

"There were no explosives inside. It could be a kid's science project," Detective Ecker said.

He added that Tuesday's canister had no similarity with the device seized at the Harbor Boulevard house, and said the bomb squad had all but ruled out a connection.

That the objects were found within days of each other was "just a coincidence," the detective said.