‘Pious’ man arrested with flammable liquids and lighters inside New York cathedral
- Suspect claimed he was taking a short cut through the house of worship after his car ran out of petrol on Madison Avenue
- After arrest, man was sent for a psychiatric evaluation, interrupting his plans to fly to Rome
A pious ex-parish music director went from dutiful Catholic to criminal suspect on Thursday.
Marc Lamparello, 37, of Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey, was charged with attempted arson, trespassing and reckless endangerment less than 24 hours after he was grabbed outside St Patrick’s Cathedral with containers of petrol and lighter fuel and two butane lighters.
The defendant was later taken to Bellevue Hospital for a psychiatric exam, interrupting his plans to board a Thursday night flight to Rome, sources told The New York Daily News. But his strange fall from grace actually started two days earlier on the other side of the Hudson River.
On Monday night, Lamparello was arrested on a charge of defiant trespass inside the Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Newark, New Jersey, where he attended evening mass then refused to leave unless police put him in handcuffs.
“I’m not leaving!” Lamparello was said to have screamed as he threw himself on the cathedral floor. “God wants me here! I know all the sins the priests have committed!”
Police do not believe Lamparello was preparing a lone wolf terror attack when he walked into the Manhattan cathedral on Wednesday evening with the flammable liquids and the means to set the building on fire, said New York Police Department Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence & Counterterrorism John Miller.
“It does not appear that way,” he said, although investigators had yet to uncover a motive for the man’s unsettling actions.
The suspect is a City University of mew York student seeking a PhD in philosophy. He has lectured at Lehman College’s philosophy department and held teaching positions at Brooklyn College and Seton Hall University – the latter a Catholic college in South Orange, New Jersey.
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Lamparello, who lived with his elderly parents in Hasbrouck Heights, was staying alone at a hotel before his Wednesday night arrest on the pavement outside St Patrick’s, police said.
“They are good people,” said family friend Salvatore Altamore, 86, a retired Army veteran. “A good religious family. I really can’t believe this.”
Lamparello’s stunned father, in a chat with The Daily News, described his son as a “brilliant” college professor who sounded fine in a phone call just hours before his arrest.
“Extremely out of character,” said the distraught dad Leonard, 79, about his son’s behaviour. “He’s a brilliant professor. His writings – other professors can’t even understand his writings ... Something happened, we don’t know.”
Marc Lamparello is a 2004 graduate of Boston College, and New Jersey friends said Lamparello came from a churchgoing family. He served for a time as the musical director and pianist at St Joseph’s parish in East Rutherford, New Jersey.
“He was a normal guy,” said the current pastor at St Joseph’s. “The parents are very active here. It’s shocking, yeah. It’s shocking.”
Lamparello claimed he was cutting through the cathedral with the petrol because his car had run out of petrol on Madison Avenue behind the rear of the church. When authorities located the vehicle, his story turned out to be bogus, police said.
He was arrested walking south on Fifth Avenue towards 50th Street while carrying the cans holding 15 litres (four gallons) of gas, along with a plastic bag with two bottles of lighter fluid and the two lighters.
