How Man Got Cyanide Puzzles Authorities

Authorities tried Tuesday to determine how a man who called himself “Dr. Chaos” obtained cyanide and stashed it in a closet of the city’s mass transit system, locking it to protect the potentially lethal chemical.

Joseph Konopka, 25, was in federal custody, charged with possession of a chemical weapon. Investigators in Wisconsin, where he is charged in a five-county rampage of vandalism, said Konopka was an anarchist who had the “propensity to commit mass destruction.”

While no one was hurt, some security experts say Konopka’s ability to stockpile deadly chemicals and get his hands on keys to subway passages makes the danger clear.

“You get some lone nut out there, whether they are passing cyanide around or botulism or any . . . harmful bacteria, as long as they are not contacting anybody, that is going to be hard to find,” said former FBI agent Dick Skilling, now a consultant for a Chicago-area security company.

Federal agents said they found almost a pound of sodium cyanide and 4 ounces of potassium cyanide in a storage room under Chicago’s downtown Loop district, a block from the federal courthouse.

Wade Freeman, a chemistry professor at the University of Illinois-Chicago, said cyanide is “fairly common” and could be ordered from dozens of chemical supply houses around the country.

Mixing the quantity of cyanide found in the subway with acid would create “a very big puff” of toxic gas, Freeman said.

“The subway would probably be safe because it’s so ventilated, but released in a confined space with a lot of people, it could be disastrous,” he said.

Sheriff’s Sgt. Teri Vogel of Door County, Wis., said Konopka was charged with vandalism in four counties and convicted of disorderly conduct in a fifth.

Konopka had been living in the Chicago subways for months since jumping bail in Wisconsin, officials said. His grandmother, Marian Konopka, 76, said that he left the community of De Pere where he grew up because he feared he would be imprisoned for 10 years.