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Police: N.H. burglary suspect says he mailed anthrax to Daschle

FREMONT, New Hampshire (CNN) -- An 18-year-old who told police he sent a letter containing anthrax to Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, among others, remained in jail Saturday after arraignment on burglary charges.

Fremont police said they found letters containing white powder in the home where Elijah P. Wallace was arrested Friday night. Preliminary tests were negative for anthrax, authorities said, but more tests were planned.

Wallace was arraigned Saturday morning in Exeter District Court and was being held on $50,000 bond at the Rockingham County Jail, Fremont Police Chief Neal Janvrin said.

In a statement Friday, Janvrin said that Wallace, who is from Brentwood, was found in the residence hiding in a bedroom closet, armed with a pistol and two knives. Wallace was charged with burglary.

When he was arrested, the statement said that Wallace told police "nothing we could do to him would equal what the Feds would do to him after last week."

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The suspect said he sent letters with anthrax to Daschle, the New Hampshire Department of Motor Vehicles in Concord and to two New Hampshire businesses -- one in Kingston and the other in Danville.

In their search of the residence, police found several letters, one of them spilling a white powder, authorities said.

Janvrin said that the letters found there were stamped and ready to go and that they were addressed with the names of businesses but not any politicians.

Crews in hazmat suits were seen carrying items from the house in orange plastic bags. Preliminary tests on the white powder by the Division of Public Health Laboratories in Concord were negative for anthrax, but Janvrin said more tests would be conducted.

"All threats of this nature are treated as credible until they are proven otherwise," Janvrin said.

Police have several unopened letters in their possession that they plan to open next week to test for anthrax.

Janvrin said his officers and the FBI will handle those letters.

"I'm not going to open these letters," Janvrin said. "They will be opened by people in biohazard suits in a lab. I'm no fool."

In nearby Kingston, Police Chief Donald Briggs said that during Wallace's arrest, he also confessed to having used another home -- a vacant residence in Kingston -- to mix his "anthrax."

Briggs said a search of that home turned up a paper bag with a capacity of two pounds filled three-fourths with a white substance. Crews removed the sack and turned it over to the FBI for testing. FBI spokeswoman Gail Marcinkiewicz said Saturday that preliminary tests were negative for anthrax.

"We did find envelopes there as well, but they were not addressed," Briggs said.

Janvrin said more charges -- local and federal -- are expected to be filed against Wallace.