Doctor suspected in town house explosion dies

[ck4829]

Dr. Nicholas Bartha, 66, died late Saturday, said Mary Halston, an administrator at New York Presbyterian Hospital.

Police had been unable to speak to Bartha after the explosion because of his condition, but authorities have said they were investigating whether the doctor caused the July 10 explosion rather than sell the town house as part of a divorce judgment favoring his ex-wife.

The physician, who lived and worked in the four-story landmark on Manhattan's upscale Upper East Side, was the lone occupant during the blast. It cast fireballs into the sky above the neighborhood and leveled the building.

Investigators have confirmed that someone tampered with a gas line leading into the basement, and Bartha's ex-wife said she received an e-mail from him shortly before the explosion warning she would be "transformed from gold digger to ash and rubbish digger."

http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/07/16/building.collapse.ap/index.html

[MADem]

1. That land is probably worth more WITHOUT the house on it

Tabula rasa, ripe for Trumpification....

[npincus]

2. yes- demolition is complete.

The GC just has to subcontract debris removal.

[ovidsen]

3. A man's home is his coffin

The "eccentric" Dr. Bartha bought the townhouse in 1980 for $400,000. It's now worth something around $6 million.

Looks like he let his "fortune" go to his head.

[lonestarnot]

4. Well greedy bastids usually end up that way.

[Warpy]

5. The guy was clearly NUTS

Twisted up with hate fed to him by Pox News (where else did he get that rambling nonsense about Stupid and the mean old liberals) and then twisted with more hate against his wife.

Hate kills.

There are no heroes in this tale and the true villains will never be punished. A man was fed hate and responded to it and ended up with a week of torture in a burn unit. On his way, he injured bystanders and firefighters. The villains are the merchants of hate on cable "news," the CBN, and hate radio. They will grow old and die in a comfortable bed.

My sympathy to his wife. She must have loved him once, which means he must have been lovable once.