New Haven Independent

And he did.

The story the man told led the police to the trail of two recent crimes, two other robberies in New York, and New Haven robberies dating back to 2004, not to mention a possible attempted bombing of the Kimberly Avenue bridge. One of the crimes was a firebombing aimed at “melting down” Yale’s power plant on “Allah’s” orders.

And, if the story’s true, it revealed the twisted and violent turn taken in the life of a downtrodden and mentally disturbed man who wanted to prove to the world that he’s not crazy.

The man told his story to police Friday night after they picked him up on Chapel Street on suspicion of committing a June 6 carjacking and June 7 firebombing at the Yale power plant.

He appeared in Superior Court on Elm Street Monday on robbery, larceny, and firearm charges in connection with the carjacking. His case was transferred to the courthouse at 235 Church St. and he was ordered placed on a “mental health watch.”

Meanwhile, police checked both in New Haven and New York were checking out the details of other crimes he confessed to, to see if they were true.

Here’s the man’s story, as recorded in an arrest warrant affidavit filed by Detective Wayne Bullock, with additional information provided Monday in a conversation with Assistant Chief Peter Reichard:

The story started at 4:46 p.m. on Saturday June 6. Cops received a report of a carjacking at Chapel and Church streets. They sent out a bulletin for a red Nissan Sentra with dealer plates and large bearded man (250 to 300 pounds) wearing a tan jacket and glasses “and carrying a dirty black book bag.”

Officers spoke to the carjacking victim that night. The next day, Saturday, June 7, they tracked down the license plate number from the dealer and put out a bulletin.

Meanwhile, the Sentra showed up at another crime on Saturday.

Yale cops went to the university power plant on Tower Parkway after hearing that someone had thrown a “Molotov cocktail type device” over a gate. A witness, a Yale graduate who now works at a local museum, reported seeing a man fitting the same description as the carjacker’s step out of a red Sentra with dealer plates. He reported seeing the man throw “a dark glass bottle” over the gate, then hop back in the car and drive away.

Also on Saturday, police discovered that a Sentra with the same dealer plates was connected to two robberies in New York City.

That night, detectives contacted again the woman who had been inside the Nissan when it was carjacked. She came to the police station and told them what had happened that day:

The car was parked at Church and Chapel. She was sitting in the front passenger seat. The carjacker approached her, started talking, forced his way in. He “produced a metal pipe out of a black bag and told [her] to get out of the car or he would kill her.”

The woman “tried to talk the male out of stealing the car, but the male again threatened to kill her.” The woman got out. The man drove away. She offered a description of the man similar to the one offered by the eyewitness to the Molotov cocktail incident at the Yale power plant.

The carjacking victim reported that her stepfather had picked up word “downtown” that the carjacker goes by the street name “Slim,” hangs out in the center of the city, and eats regularly at soup kitchens.

Then, last Friday, the New York cops called with a photo of the robbery suspect there. Armed with that picture, Detectives Bullock, Nicole Natale, Will Cruz and Craig Dixon scoured downtown. It took less than an hour to find the man matching the description.

They stopped him. That’s when the man said he was glad about being arrested so he could tell his story.

The cops found a “black nylon type bag” on the man, with a metal pipe inside, shotgun shells (pictured at the top of the story) and a “white powder” the suspect identified as “baby powder.”

They transported the suspect to police headquarters at 1 Union Ave. As he emerged from the wagon, the man “asked us if we liked his metal pipe,” Detective Bullock wrote, “and said that he had made it and it was a ‘loaded zip gun.’”

Fearing an explosion, the cops called in the bomb squad. which took the bag away. It tested white powder inside. The powder turned out to be corn starch, the squad discovered after testing it.

Inside the detective division on the third floor, the suspect was read his Miranda rights, signed a waiver, and continued talking.

“Slim” spoke of beginning to “rob stores and banks back in 2004 to prove to ‘the system’ that he was not insane as he said that the justice system labeled him unstable.”

He admitted stealing the Sentra. He said he told the woman in the front seat: “I hate to break this to you, but I am taking this car.” He continued with details that matched her version of events.

He proceeded to describe driving the Nissan to New York and mugging people there, including a woman in Central Park. “He said that he used [her] credit card to buy gas for the vehicle and cigarettes. [He] also said he had robbed an ABC news lady named ‘O’Keefe’ and the head had taken her oversized black purse from her,” knocking her to the ground in the process. (Police did subsequently find the Nissan in West Haven, and it contained a bag, forwarded to the New York police, with the ABC woman’s “paperwork.”)

The suspect then described returning to New Haven and throwing a “bottle containing Nitro-Methane” at the Yale power plant he “melt” it “down.” He “stole the fuel for the Molotov cocktail after ‘Allah’ told him to go to a closed hobby store in North Haven and take the bottle model airplane fuel,” he reported. (Police subsequently found a plastic container with that fuel inside the Sentra.)

The suspect described having made pipe bombs and then lighting them at the bridge on Kimberly Avenue along the West Haven-New Haven border. Detectives then drove him to the bridge. The man pointed to trees where he said he planted the bombs. The bomb squad then spent the night there, into the morning. Bomb-sniffing dogs were brought in. They found nothing.

Detectives also searched the mother’s West Haven home, where he’d said he made the bombs.

Meanwhile, the man spoke of older crimes dating back to 2004, including robbing a Church Street bank, stealing a gold Isuzu Rodeo on Wooster Street, and holding up a West Haven Rite Aid. Police are investigating those stories.

The victim of the carjacking later looked at a photo board of eight “similar looking” men. She picked out the suspect immediately, according to the affidavit.