The college philosophy teacher accused of entering St. Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan with gasoline cans, lighter fluid and butane lighters had also booked a hotel just 20 minutes from the Vatican, a New York prosecutor said Wednesday.
Police previously said that Marc Lamparello had booked a flight to Rome for the next day.
Assistant District Attorney David Stuart said during a brief court hearing that Lamparello was "planning to burn down St. Patrick's Cathedral" when he was arrested last week.
The prosecutor made no further remarks about the Rome plans but referred to Lamparello as a flight risk. He said Lamparello had spent "considerable time planning and surveilling" St. Patrick's before his arrest.
Lamparello of Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey, made his initial court appearance from a hospital. The judge ordered him to undergo a psychiatric evaluation.
The New York incident happened just days after flames ravaged the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, a blaze police blamed on an electrical short circuit.
Stuart noted during the brief hearing that Lamparello faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted of attempted arson and reckless endangerment.
He indicated that prosecutors will seek to have Lamparello held on $500,000 bond pending trial.
Lamparello has worked part time at New York City's Lehman College and as an adjunct professor at Seton Hall University in New Jersey.
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. intelligence officials have determined that Russian President Vladimir Putin likely didn’t order the death of imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny in February, according to an official familiar with the determination.
While U.S. officials believe Putin was ultimately responsible for the death of Navalny, who endured brutal conditions during his confinement, the intelligence community has found “no smoking gun” that Putin was aware of the timing of Navalny's death — which came soon before the Russian president's reelection — or directly ordered it, according to the official.
The official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive matter.
Soon after Navalny’s death, U.S. President Joe Biden said Putin was ultimately responsible but did not accuse the Russian president of directly ordering it.
At the time, Biden said the U.S. did not know exactly what had happened to Navalny but that “there is no doubt” that his death “was the consequence of something that Putin and his thugs did.”
Navalny, 47, Russia’s best-known opposition politician and Putin’s most persistent foe, died Feb. 16 in a remote penal colony above the Arctic Circle while serving a 19-year sentence on extremism charges that he rejected as politically motivated.
He had been behind bars since January 2021 after returning to Russia from Germany, where he had been recovering from nerve-agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin.
Russian officials have said only that Navalny died of natural causes and have vehemently denied involvement both in the poisoning and in his death.
In March, a month after Navalny’s death, Putin won a landslide reelection for a fifth term, an outcome that was never in doubt.
The Wall Street Journal first reported about the U.S. intelligence determination.
FILE - Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny gestures while speaking during his interview to the Associated Press in Moscow, Russia on Dec. 18, 2017. U.S. intelligence officials have determined that Russian President Vladimir Putin likely didn't order the death of Navalny, the imprisoned opposition leader, in February of 2024. An official says the U.S. intelligence community has found "no smoking gun" that Putin was aware of the timing of Navalny's death or directly ordered it. (AP Photo/Alexander Zemlianichenko, File)
