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Chief Brad Weidel of the Ramapo Police Department, which is overseeing both investigations, said that detectives were looking at possible links between the two attacks but that the man, Grafton E. Thomas, was not yet a suspect in the November one. Both attacks occurred in Monsey, New York, located about 30 miles northwest of New York City.
Within days of the chilling stabbing in November, when an Orthodox Jewish man was attacked as he walked to his synagogue, officers had interviewed Thomas, according to Weidel. But investigators, who had tied Thomas to a vehicle similar to the one they believed might have been used, did not have evidence to directly connect him to the attack.
After Thomas, of Greenwood Lake, New York, was arrested last Saturday and charged with being responsible for a bloody rampage that horrified people across the country, a detective recognized his name from the earlier investigation and decided to reexamine the possibility that he had been involved.
“We get a name, and the detectives go, ‘Wait a minute. Isn’t that the guy we interviewed from Greenwood Lake?’ ” Weidel said at a news conference at Ramapo’s town hall.
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On a conference call with reporters, Thomas’ lawyer, Michael Sussman, said that he had not investigated whether Thomas was connected to the November attack and could not comment on it.
The attack in November rattled the Jewish community in Rockland County, a suburban area northwest of New York City that is believed to have one of the largest concentrations of ultra-Orthodox Jews outside of Israel.
At around 5:30 a.m. on Nov. 20, a Hasidic Jewish man was headed to a synagogue on Howard Drive for morning prayers, when a car stopped and at least one man attacked him, officials said.
The victim in that attack survived, but the November case remained unsolved. For weeks, authorities have shied away from calling it a hate crime despite pressure from Jewish community leaders, saying they have not collected enough evidence to determine a motive.
Since then, tension and anxiety among the area’s Orthodox community has only increased after a string of anti-Semitic attacks in the region, including a mass shooting at a kosher supermarket in Jersey City, New Jersey, that killed two Hasidic Jews, among others, as well as a string of anti-Semitic crimes in Brooklyn and the stabbing in Monsey.
Police investigating the November attack had obtained surveillance video that showed the vehicle that might have been involved. The video was not high-quality, Weidel said, so detectives showed the footage to area auto-body shops, where workers said the car was a Honda Pilot.
A detective then discovered that a Honda Pilot had been in nearby Clarkstown about 2 1/2 hours before the stabbing, according to Weidel. That vehicle was registered to Thomas’ mother, Kim Kennedy, who told officers that her son had driven the car that night, Weidel said.
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Kennedy told police that Thomas “likes to go driving around at night” and that it was not unusual for him to be driving around at 3 a.m., Weidel said. Kennedy told reporters Thursday that when she spoke with the police then, she was not aware they were investigating the November attack.
The police subsequently spoke with Thomas, Weidel said. He told them that he had been in Clarkstown, about 30 miles from his home, because the car had “mechanical problems.”
When detectives examined the car, they found nothing to suggest it had been on Howard Drive or that it had been involved in the attack, Weidel said.
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Police have since obtained a federal search warrant for the Honda Pilot, Weidel said. It was in authorities’ hands as of Thursday, and they were examining it for any evidence that might connect it to the November attack.
Thomas, who is said to be 37 or 38, remains in custody in the Rockland County jail, according to Sussman.
According to a federal criminal complaint, officers found both a bloody machete and a bloody knife in Thomas’ car — a different vehicle from the Honda Pilot — when he was arrested in Harlem, about 30 miles from Monsey, with blood on his clothes, officials said.
Thomas has pleaded not guilty to five counts of state charges of attempted murder. A grand jury in Rockland County is expected to consider the charges against him Friday morning.
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Federal prosecutors have also filed five hate crime charges, accusing Thomas of obstructing the free exercise of religion in an attempt to kill. In a criminal complaint, they said that Thomas made written references to Hitler and “Nazi culture” in journals, and that he repeatedly searched online for information on local temples and on topics such as “Why did Hitler hate the Jews?”
Thomas pleaded not guilty to the federal charges. His family, friends and lawyer said he had suffered from mental illness but that he had no history of anti-Semitism.
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Four of the victims in the Hanukkah attack were released from area hospitals. The fifth, Josef Neumann, 72, remained unconscious as of Thursday afternoon, relatives said at a news conference.
“The doctors do not have high hopes for him,” said his daughter, Nicky Kohen. “If he wakes up, he may never be able to walk, talk or even process speech again.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times .