A man has been arrested in the U.S. for allegedly strapping a fake bomb to the neck of an Australian heiress. INSIDE EDITION reports.
A beautiful heiress spent 10 terrifying hours believing a bomb was chained to her neck. It was an unimaginable nightmare for 18-year-old Madeleine Pulver. But now the search for the mysterious masked man who terrorized her is over, according to police.
Maddy is the daughter of one of Australia's richest men. She was alone in her family's luxurious Sydney home, studying for finals, when a man charged in and told her he was chaining a bomb to her neck. He fled, then Maddy called for help.
It brought back memories of the pizza bomber here in the United States in 2003, when a pizza delivery man was killed by a bomb attached to his neck.
But after 10 hours, police determined that the device wrapped around Maddy's neck was fake. So who would subject a teenager to such hell? Police say, it was international businessman Paul Douglas Peters, and he was arrested right here in the U.S., outside Louisville, Kentucky.
So how did authorities identify Peters as the collar bomber? Police say he left a typed list of demands at Maddy's home. The note included an e-mail account that was later accessed on various public computers. Police checked out surveillance video at those areas and were able to identify Peters.
INSIDE EDITION's Paul Boyd spoke to Louisville reporter Adam Walser.
"When he felt like the parents in Australia were not going to comply with his demands he needed to get out of the area to try to get away from the scene. So, at that point, he bought a plane ticket from Sydney, Australia that terminated in Louisville, Kentucky to come and visit his ex-wife," said Walser.
"Just how outrageous were the acts of this man?" asked Boyd.
"The description in the complaint says that he actually walked into this little girl's bedroom carrying a baseball bat with a ski mask over his face, strapped this bomb to her, told her not to call the police, not to call her parents," said Walser.
In the note, Peters also referred to a crime novel, Tai Pan, by James Clavell, which is about fierce rivals. Now investigators are speculating that he considers Maddy's dad, the CEO of an information technology company, a rival. The relieved father spoke out on behalf of his family.
"We are hopeful that this development makes the beginning of the end of this traumatic ordeal for our family," said Mr. Pulver.
The suspect's mother says her son is innocent and this is a case of mistaken identity.
