State police: Man charged with planting homemade bomb in bathroom stall at Mansfield Drive-In
A Rhode Island man has been charged with allegedly planting a homemade bomb in a bathroom stall at the Mansfield Drive-In and marketplace this summer, according to the Connecticut State Police.
Matthew J. Farley, of Harrisville, Rhode Island, was turned over to Connecticut State Police on Friday after being arrested in Rhode Island. He was wanted on a warrant connected to the bomb scare, which caused a closure and evacuation during a Sunday flea market on the drive-in grounds in June, according to state police records.
The 36-year-old was charged with trying to manufacture a bomb and conspiracy to commit first-degree breach of peace, according to state police.
On June 6 around 2 p.m., CSP Troop C received a 911 call from a woman who worked at the drive-in at 228 Stafford Road in Mansfield. She told police that “a suspicious device” was found inside a bathroom by a customer who was worried that it was a bomb, police said.
The homemade explosive device consisted of an Altoids container on top of a cardboard box with a blinking red light on top of it. It had “flammable” and “5/6” written on it and contained wires, clothes pins and batteries, police said.
Investigators from state police, the Emergency Services Unit Bomb Squad, the Fire and Explosive Investigation Unit and the FBI investigated the device and suspected it was live. They dismantled the device and began what state police described as “complex and in-depth investigative steps” that led them to Farley.
In the bathroom near the explosive device, investigators also found a shell casing, a bullet and multiple counterfeit $10 bills. The bills were designed with the image of a woman wearing a mask over her eyes and had sexual messages and the term “Scarlett Nation” scrawled on them, according to investigators in a warrant for Farley’s arrest.
Police linked the messages on the bills to a Twitter account and interviewed a person, identified only as Witness No. 6 in police records, who told them that she worked as a life coach for a man named “MJ” from Rhode Island who had been watching her, sending her unwanted gifts and long, incomprehensible letters, according to state police in the warrant.
Police showed the woman surveillance video from the flea market the morning the bomb was found, including video of a man with long dark hair who went in and out of the bathroom twice that afternoon and matched the description of “MJ.”
When the woman saw the video, she told police “that’s the [expletive] right there,” police said in the warrant. The man was identified as Farley.
The woman gave police that man’s phone number, which investigators used to track cellphone GPS data that showed a phone registered to Farley was in the area of the market the day that bomb was planted, state police said.
During the investigation, an employee of the drive-in received a suspicious letter that was addressed to the drive-in but was written for the woman who identified Farley. In it, he talks about the woman selling her crafts at the flea market and begs for his computer and other property back from her. The letter also contained two SD cards and a dollar bill, on at least one of the cards were sexual videos and photographs from an OnlyFans account, state police said.
“Yours have cut me deep enough to open my eyes to see the truth,” the letter said, according to state police.
At another, the author wrote: “I’m not threatening you, but since you said you could ruin my life, I want you to know that if I had wanted to destroy your life, I have more than enough evidence in just texts you sent me.”
Also inside the envelope was a guide to making the Altoids contained device and a bulleted list of instructions that ended with “bow down slave.”
The instructions began with the message: “Congrats. You didn’t blow up,” according to the warrant.
Police in September were granted a warrant for Farley’s arrest. He was taken into the custody of Troop C on Friday. Farley was being held in lieu of a $50,000 bond and was scheduled to be arranged in Rockville Superior Court on Tuesday, police said.
