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Return address on anthrax letter leads to N.J. town

SOUTH BRUNSWICK TOWNSHIP, New Jersey (CNN) -- The return address on the anthrax letter sent to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle is so close to being real that a New Jersey police chief believes it was sent by "somebody that knew the area."

The address reads, "4th Grade, Greendale School, Franklin Park, New Jersey, 08852."

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The town is real, the ZIP code is a real one nearby. There is no Greendale school, but Police Chief Michael Paquette said, "We thought immediately of Greenbrook School."

Greenbrook Elementary School is in a separate town, directly across the highway from Franklin Park, only one block away.

It's in the town of Kendall Park, but so is the post office for Franklin Park. It's a joint postal station on the same side of the highway as the school, just a mile down the road.

The ZIP code 08852 belongs to nearby Monmouth Junction, but Paquette said until a couple years ago, it also covered the Greenbrook School area.

"That makes it even more improbable that somebody would just pick this out of the hat," said Paquette.

When the police chief recognized much of the return address on the Daschle letter, he called the FBI, which sent agents to the school. He said parents were unnerved.

The school principal, who declined to give her name, told CNN, "It's frightening."

Greenbrook School has classes only through the fourth grade. That's the same class used in the return address.

Paquette said, "What we think is it's somebody that was familiar with the area in the past, and put things together and mailed it."

The letter was not mailed from Franklin Park or Kendall Park or any of the towns in that immediate area, because their mail goes to a postal center closer to New York -- not through the Trenton facility where the Daschle letter and other anthrax envelopes were postmarked.

But, said Paquette, "Four miles south of where the school is, and if you use one of those mailboxes, it would to go the Trenton facility."

Paquette said he doubts whoever sent the Daschle letter is still in his township, but suspects the person may have once lived, or worked, or spent some time there, in order to be so familiar with so many parts of the return address.

-- Producers James Polk and Vivian Foley contributed to this report.



 
 
 
 



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