A Case of Mommie Dearest?

Sniffing out a suspect for the book-bomb crime

On a sunny afternoon last May, just two days before Mother's Day, a parcel arrived at the two-story brick home of Howard and Joan Kipp, in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn. The package was addressed to Joan, 54, a supervisor of guidance counselors in New York City's public schools. Standing in her kitchen, Mrs. Kipp tore off the brown wrapping paper and found the Quick and Delicious Gourmet Cookbook. She opened the cover. Suddenly there was a flash, and two .22-cal. bullets tore into her chest. Kipp came running into the room and discovered his bleeding wife on the floor, gasping, "A bomb! A bomb!" Three hours later, she was dead.

The bomb had been rigged up ingeniously. The cookbook was only 1 1/2 in. thick, but someone had hollowed it out and placed inside a six-volt battery wired to gunpowder and three bullets. The police were mystified, as were neighbors and coworkers. Who would want to do Mrs. Kipp any harm? Affable and popular, mother of two grown children, Joan Kipp was treasurer of the Bay Ridge Community Council and was expected to be named vice president the following month. Said her grieving son Craig, 27, to a group of reporters: "It was an irresponsible, violent act that doesn't make any sense at all."

Worse to come? Inside the boobytrapped book was scrawled on ominous note: DEAR HOWARD, YOUR DEAD/ BUT FIRST JOAN/ CRAIG NEXT/ DOREEN TOO/ NO MORE GAMES. The police immediately began guarding the entire family. Since the bomb went through the mail, a federal crime, an investigation was mounted by agents of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. Said one inspector: "It took a lot of thinking to make that bomb."

By early summer they had quizzed some 200 people. Then, finally, a break: a handwriting expert matched the printing in the book's message to that of one of the suspects. The police subpoenaed a sock belonging to the suspect and let a trained German shepherd sniff it; the dog was then set loose in a room containing the remains of the real bomb and four replicas. The animal headed straight for the genuine one, and the sock owner's scent. Last week, 91 days after Mother's Day, police arrested their suspect outside his Brooklyn apartment and charged him with mailing the deadly package--to his mom. The accused: Craig Kipp. The motive of Kipp, an unemployed marine engineer, was not known. Craig's father, for one, stoutly proclaimed his son's innocence, and raised the money to pay the $300,000 bail.

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