Boston Police commander Robert
Ciccolo knew something was going terribly wrong with his son Alexander
at least a decade before 23-year-old was arrested by the FBI this month on charges connected to an ISIS-inspired plan to “emulate the Boston Marathon bombers” and “set off a bomb at a college campus” -- allegations linked to charges to which he pleaded not guilty today...
In the spring
of 2005, at age 13, Alexander Ciccolo was suspended and nearly expelled
from a public school in Wareham after he was accused of striking another
student and a teacher with drumsticks, according to probate records
pertaining to his parents' divorce. Months later he was arrested by
Wareham Police after he told a classmate “he was going to kill him,” and
lunged at the student with a butterfly knife.
By then,
Ciccolo had missed so many days of school the Wareham School Department
filed what is known in Massachusetts as a CHINS – or Child In Need of
Services – complaint to the Department of Social Services which opened
an investigation into his mother, who had full custody.Son of Boston Police Captain Arrested as Possible TerroristBoston Cop’s Son, an Accused Terrorist: ISIS Is a Good ThingDo
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The entire time his father, who was rising in the
ranks of the Boston Police Department, desperately petitioned the court
to let Alexander live with him, his new wife, and his stepchildren in
Needham, an upscale Boston suburb, rather than with his ex-wife, Shelley
Reardon, who refused, he claimed in court records, to have Alexander
evaluated by mental health professionals.
“He [Robert] seeks this
change because the child’s mother…who presently has primary physical
custody of the child has in the past verbally agreed to allow the child
to be evaluated but without exception has subsequently refused to allow
such evaluations to proceed,” Ciccolo’s lawyer wrote in an emergency
motion that petitioned a court to give him full custody of Alexander.
“At present mother... has threatened legal action against father if
initiates” psychological treatment.
The contentious
divorce between Robert Ciccolo and Reardon, who split after 10 years of
marriage when Alexander was five, are a glimpse into their only son’s
long history of behavioral problems and mental illness that culminated
with him coming “under the sway of ISIS,” as a young adult, prosecutors
said at his first court appearance on July 14. He changed his name to
Abu Ali al Amriki 18 months ago and opened a Facebook account where he
posted a picture of a dead American soldier along with “Thank you
Islamic State! Now we don’t have to deal with these kafir [non
believer] back in America.”
Assistant United States Attorney Kevin
O’Regan told a judge this month that Alexander Ciccolo adopted “in his
young life an extremist form of Islam in which it called for acts of
terror against people who didn’t believe as he did in this extremist
form of Islam and, as a result of that, he developed a hatred for
America.”
Ciccolo was arraigned today federal charges on assault
and battery with a deadly weapon and felon in possession of a firearm
charges connected to his July 4 arrest by the Joint Terrorism Task
Force, one of nearly a dozen potential plots that FBI Director James
Comey said were thwarted around Independence Day festivities and the
Muslim Ramadan holiday.
The slightly-built defendant was escorted
into court today wearing a tan prison jumpsuit, his hands cuffed to a
chain around his waist and his ankles shackled. He wore black framed
eyeglasses and a long beard on his chin. He smiled at his mother and
stepfather, who sat behind the defendant’s table.
Ciccolo told the court he pleads not guilty to the charges contained in the indictment.
Also
at the hearing, a federal judge ordered the government to hand over
discovery to his attorney, which is not expected to be voluminous,
prosecutors said. “It’s a pretty straightforward case,” O’Regan said
today. Prosecutors have said Ciccolo planned to build a pressure cooker
bomb filled with “nails and with ball bearings and broken glass” similar
to the two that detonated at the finish line of the Boston Marathon in
April 2013, killing three people – including an 8-year-old boy -- and
injuring 260 others.
Ironically, Ciccolo’s father
was working in Kenmore Square commanding officers providing security for
the Red Sox crowd when the first blast was detonated just over a mile
away and saw the plumes of smoke rise from the marathon finish line,
according to an alumni publication run by Curry College.
And like
the marathon bombers, Alexander Ciccolo allegedly did not plan to pull
off a single attack. Investigators said he was building 10 firebombs
using Styrofoam soaked in motor oil because the concoction “would stick
to the victims’ skin and make it harder to put out.” He also allegedly
made plans to bomb a university cafeteria and bragged to a cooperating
witness that he would execute students live on the Internet in
ISIS-inspired barbarism.
“He dedicated himself to killing as many
innocent people in the United States as he could,” O’Regan said at
Ciccolo’s detention hearing, which came more a week after he purchased
two powerful rifles and two handguns from a FBI cooperating witness on
the Fourth of July. He slung the duffle bags full of guns over his
shoulder and was arrested as he walked into his Adams apartment in the
Berkshires.
That arrest spawned the execution of a search warrant,
which led to the discovery of the firebombs, authorities said. The FBI
cooperating witness wore a wire for the FBI, federal officials told ABC
News, and many of his plans were captured in audio recordings.
Still, officials said, Ciccolo was unlikely to be able to pull off any attack.
He
had been under constant surveillance since September 11, 2014 when,
several law enforcement officials said, he sent “alarming text messages”
to his father, who had become a police captain in the Operations
Division of the Boston Police. In one text message he told his father
that America is “Satan.” Others stated that his Islamic faith “is under
attack” and that he was “not afraid to die for the cause!”
The
police captain contacted the FBI saying that his son had become
“obsessed with Islam” 18 months earlier. Capt. Ciccolo has cooperated
with investigators assigned to the Joint Terrorism Task Force since,
senior BPD commanders told ABC News.
Reardon’s home in Ware, a
rural part of the Berkshires, was also searched by the FBI after
Alexander was arrested, her son’s attorney confirmed today.
The
department has quietly lauded Ciccolo’s painful decision to turn in his
own son and BPD spokesman Lt. Mike McCarthy told ABC News, “We continue
to support Captain Ciccolo during this difficult time.”
That
difficult time, according to court records, was an extensive one when it
came to Alexander. Court records detail bitterness between his parents
that went as far as to ask the family court to issue rulings over their
son’s toys. When Alexander was 6, the court issued a restraining order
to dictate the times each parent could pick him up at school “as to
avoid a mother/father confrontation over custody.”
In 1998 the
court granted Alexander’s mother custody and he spent a large swath of
his childhood in Wareham, part of Cape Cod. That is until his childhood
behavioral problems escalated into alleged violent attacks and arrests,
the court record states.
In May 2006, after the knife incident,
the court granted Robert Ciccolo emergency custody of Alexander and the
teen moved to Needham with his father and stepmother Dale. A month
later, on his 14th birthday, Alexander was hospitalized after “an
outburst of violent property damage,” that led to a 911 call. During
that hospitalization, a doctor suggested that Alexander visit his
mother, who had limited contact with after moving in with his father
seven months earlier.
According to court records,
his father claimed that visit was a turning point for Alexander’s mental
health. The elder Ciccolo filed an affidavit to limit his ex-wife’s
role in Alexander’s life, pointing out that his mother returned BB guns
that had been taken away from their son because of the weapons charges.
“She
also bought him a new one with a laser pointer, telescopic sights and a
flashlight attachment,” according to a court statement the Boston
police commander gave to the court.
Reardon responded by saying
her ex-husband “ruled with an iron fist” and his tactics led their son
to threaten to run away. As far as the BB guns, she told the court, many
of the boys in their town used them, writing in her own affidavit,
“perhaps my former husband has lived near the city too long and has
forgotten what many boys do for fun.”
She also accused her
ex-husband of using his role as a police officer to manipulate the
courts saying she was not notified about the emergency court hearing
held on May 31, 2006 where she lost custody of her son. After she lost
custody, she accused Alexander’s father of threatening to not allow her
to see him if he “did not have good behavior.”
“This is hardly good parenting and would seem more draconian than needed in the circumstances,” Reardon’s attorney wrote.
Capt.
Ciccolo was not in court today and his son’s attorney David J. Hoose
refused comment when asked if Alexander had spoken with his father.
Ciccolo did not attend the July 14th detention hearing for son but has
been in contact with Hoose, the attorney said.
At that detention
hearing prosecutors played a nine-minute video was played where the
younger Ciccolo defended his beliefs to two FBI agents, telling them
ISIS “will only kill people who fight them.”
His mother attended
the detention that hearing and today’s arraignment. Today she smiled and
nodded at her son who turned to her as he was led out of the courtroom
and said, “I love you mom. Thank you for supporting me.”
Hoose
said that his client "has always been very close to his mother," and
remains so today. He declined to comment on his client's mental health
and whether that would play a role in his defense.
Prosecutors
argued earlier this month that Ciccolo was unrepentant and should be
held without bail. A federal judge agreed and Ciccolo was held again
today without arguing for bail.
"So we have a defendant who came
under the sway of ISIS, adopted a hatred for America, adopted the most
vile beliefs, began to act on them, was arrested and continued,” O’Regan
said at the detention hearing. “It wasn’t as if he said ‘oh, they got
me, gee, maybe I made a mistake.' It was 'No, I’m here and this is what I
believe.'"
After that interview Ciccolo was taken to a holding
facility where a female nurse medically evaluated him. Prosecutors said
that during the exam, Ciccolo picked up a pen and slammed it into the
nurse’s head so hard “the pen actually broke in half.”
After
his son’s arrest Cap. Ciccolo’s issued a release on behalf of his
family saying, “While we were saddened and disappointed to learn of our
son’s intentions, we are grateful that authorities were able to prevent
any loss of life or harm to others.”