Illinois man charged over powder letters sent to four members of Congress

Matthew Unglesbee, 36, of Quincy, Illinois, was in US Marshals custody on Tuesday after being charged with mailing letters containing suspicious white granules to four members of Congress, The Guardian reported. The letters prompted a federal response at congressional offices; preliminary testing found no biological or chemical toxin.

Unglesbee faces federal charges of perpetrating a hoax and sending threatening communications through the mail. The charges concern what authorities allege he sent, rather than a finding of guilt. An eight-page criminal complaint unsealed Monday says he admitted during an FBI interview on Sunday that he mailed the four letters, according to The Guardian.

What investigators say the letters contained

The four envelopes carried Unglesbee’s name and home address in Quincy, according to the complaint. Staff who handled the mail at the congressional offices did not open the envelopes. After staff alerted authorities, FBI personnel trained to handle biochemical threats went to three offices, while hazardous-materials teams attended two, The Guardian reported.

NBC News reported that an anonymous online tip reached the FBI on October 16 after a person allegedly heard Unglesbee discuss mailing a suspicious substance to members of Congress. Agents later found a fifth, empty envelope addressed to a member of Congress at his home; it had not been mailed.

Response from a congressional office

Rep. Jan Schakowsky said she was aware of reports that a suspect had been taken into custody in connection with a suspicious letter sent to her district office, NBC News reported. She said her team would continue serving constituents in Illinois’s 9th District. The Guardian described the four politicians in the complaint as unidentified, so Schakowsky’s statement should not be taken as identifying all the recipients.

Unglesbee told investigators he acted after hearing someone in a restaurant discuss other suspicious mailings, according to The Guardian’s account of the complaint. He denied involvement in those mailings. A detention hearing was tentatively scheduled for Wednesday afternoon in federal court in Springfield.