Police Search Home of St. Louis Lawyer, Won’t Say If It’s Related to Law Firm Mystery
Police won’t say whether a search of a lawyer’s home is related to a new pipe-bomb mystery involving a St. Louis-area law firm.
The lawyer, Mark Bates, had worked for the suburban St. Louis law firm known as Boggs, Boggs & Bates before he left in April 2008, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the St. Louis Beacon. On Friday, local police and agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives searched Bates’ home, the stories say.
The search follows an Oct. 1 explosion of two pipe bombs outside the home of two partners in the firm, Beth and Thomas Boggs. The federal warrant for the search of Bates’ home is sealed and the reason for the search is unknown, according to the Beacon.
Bates is now a partner at Rynearson, Suess, Schnurbusch & Champion, a workers compensation and employment law firm in downtown St. Louis. The Boggs firm is now known as Boggs, Avellino, Lach & Boggs.
Mysteries at the Boggs firm date back to 2006, when 57-year-old Ernest Brasier was found dead from a single gunshot wound in his third-floor office. Two other lawyers at the insurance defense firm, one who left abruptly and another still there, died unexpectedly in 2007 and 2008. Both deaths were later attributed to heart disease.
