N.H. Hostage Taker: I Wanted To Die

Leeland Eisenberg Said He Hoped Police Would Make Him A Martyr For U.S. Mental Health Care

(CBS/AP)  The man accused of taking hostages at a Hillary Clinton campaign office in New Hampshire said in an interview he had hoped the standoff would end in his death, a newspaper reported Wednesday.

"My intent was actually almost like a suicide by cop," Leeland Eisenberg told the New York Daily News in a jailhouse interview.

Eisenberg, 46, is accused of taking six hostages at Clinton's storefront campaign office in Rochester on Friday, showing them road flares strapped to his chest and claiming they were explosives. State police negotiators coaxed Eisenberg to surrender and no one was hurt.

In the interview with the News in Wednesday's editions, he expressed disappointment in how his surrender ended.

"I knew once the last hostage went out the door, there would be no reason for them to have restraint," Eisenberg said of police. "I could see the sharpshooter. He was all dressed in camouflage, and he had one of those laser lights on his rifle ... I didn't have my hands up or nothing. I just walked toward the door, thinking, 'This is it, he'll take me out.' So I swing the door open, and he still didn't shoot me, and I'm like, 'What do I gotta do here?"'

During the interview, he said he had been diagnosed as bipolar and that it was his mental health condition - combined with the loss of his job as a sales manager and his wife's filing for divorce - that led him to feel "apathetic and despondent."

He said he got the idea for the bomb from something he saw on television.

"I just snapped," he said. "I kept hearing these voices saying to me that I need to sacrifice myself to make a statement for mental health for everybody, to bring this issue to the forefront."

And the Clinton volunteers "kept saying that they agreed with me, and that's why they joined Hillary Clinton, and they perfectly understood what I was saying."

A judge on Monday ordered Eisenberg to be held on $500,000 cash bail and to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.

Eisenberg faces charges of kidnapping, criminal threatening and fraudulent use of a bomb-like device. He will not enter pleas until the case reaches Superior Court.

Massachusetts officials said Friday that Eisenberg was released from prison in March 2005 after completing a sentence, but state law prevented them from giving details of the conviction or charge.

Eisenberg, who is being held on $500,000 bail, acknowledged his rap sheet dating to 1978 includes two rape charges.

He said he "started to go out and womanize" after he allegedly was sexually abused by a priest in Boston "to prove that I was a man, that I wasn't a homosexual," according to the Daily News.

Eisenberg's criminal record in New Hampshire began after his release in 2005 when he was charged with failing to register as a sex offender, said Strafford County prosecutor Janice Rundles. He was convicted the following year, she said.

[extremophil]

This looks like a lot of excuses from a man who doesn''t sound mentally ill. Bipolar patients don''t typically go around raping and terrorizing people in such a premeditated manner. Go back to prison, creep.

[jetlizhan]

this dude is only 46 yrs old??? looks at least 66 with a bad dye job. i think he just wanted attention, good or bad.

[prinzowhales]

If he really wanted to die he could should have just tipped the police that his next door neighbors were running a crack house...the police would have broken into the wrong house and obliged him.

[ianlou]

Dostoyevsky said "you can judge a society by its prisons"

In America we have replaced our Mental Health Hospitals with Prisons.

Too often a police bullet is the final cure for a mental ill person in America...
"38 Special, the bullet of health"

[grammawhamma]

"He said he "started to go out and womanize"

He knew Hillary would understand and forgive him! LOL

[Krazcarl]

I know some rednecks that would take him up on his offer.