Muskogee man guilty in bio-hazard mailing

MUSKOGEE, Okla. (AP) _ A Muskogee man faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine after being found guilty of mailing a threatening communication. <br/><br/>The two letters he sent to a business

Saturday, July 9th 2005, 11:05 am

By: News On 6

MUSKOGEE, Okla. (AP) _ A Muskogee man faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine after being found guilty of mailing a threatening communication.

The two letters he sent to a business were found to contain a granular substance.

William -M- Chapple was convicted after a two-day trial in US District Court for the Eastern District of Oklahoma.

Charges against Chapple came from an investigation last fall by the US Postal Inspection Service in Tulsa.

Investigators say envelopes mailed by Chapple at post offices in Kansas and Colorado arrived in Muskogee on separate days in October 2004.

The envelopes contained a substance that the Muskogee Post Office and the Muskogee Police Department treated as a biohazard.

The Oklahoma Department of Health later determined the envelopes did not contain hazardous material.