Idaho professor charged for threat

SALT LAKE CITY – An Idaho professor has been charged with falsely claiming that he had mailed a dangerous substance to a trustee overseeing his bankruptcy case in Utah, federal authorities said Thursday.

The trustee received a plastic bag of brown pellets wrapped with a message: “Termites or hantavirus from mice?” Assistant U.S. Attorney Trina Higgins said.

Hantavirus is a potentially fatal disease passed through rodent droppings. Tests showed the contents were not hazardous, Higgins said.

Thomas F. Hale, 61, pleaded not guilty in federal court Thursday, two days after he was arrested at Salt Lake City International Airport after a flight from Chicago.

He is a history professor at Idaho State University in Pocatello, Idaho, and owns a house in Salt Lake City. In October 2005, Hale filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy protection, which allowed him to propose a plan to pay his creditors.

A judge, however, rejected the plan, converted the case to Chapter 7 and appointed trustee Elizabeth Loveridge to control Hale’s finances.

A three-count indictment charges Hale with committing a hoax with the threat of a dangerous substance, giving a false statement in the bankruptcy case, and concealing his ownership of the Salt Lake City home, which he was selling for $395,000.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Paul Warner agreed to release Hale but said he must undergo mental-health treatment.

Defense attorney Larry Keller said Hale sent the package because he felt Loveridge was mismanaging his rental properties and tenants were complaining about termites.

Warner said the explanation was “interesting.”

Keller acknowledged that sending the envelope wasn’t the “appropriate thing to do … in a post-9/11 world.”

A trial was set for March 5. The hoax charge carries a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison. The others each carry a five-year maximum punishment.

Hale sent Loveridge a fax Nov. 16 telling her that he planned to send bankruptcy documents and something that needed to be checked by hazardous-materials experts, Higgins, the prosecutor, said.

Loveridge received the envelope on Nov. 20 and contacted Salt Lake City police. A bomb squad and the fire department’s hazardous-materials team took the envelope and found it contained nothing harmful, FBI spokesman O. Scott Wall said.

A technician, Ryan Mellor, said it turned out to be some kind of powder.