Postal inspectors investigating fiery car crash at California post office as an intentional act
Richard Tillman, 44, of San Jose was arrested after the car rammed into the office located in a strip mall around 3 a.m. Sunday, causing the building to go up in flames, San Jose police said. No injuries were reported.
About 50 firefighters took about an hour and a half to knock down the flames at the Almaden Valley Station Post Office south of downtown. Photos posted online by the fire department showed a charred vehicle inside the heavily damaged one-story building.
Tillman was booked on suspicion of arson. He was held in lieu of $60,000 bail and was scheduled to appear in court on Wednesday, according to online custody records. A phone number could not be located for Tillman. Messages were sent to the Santa Clara County District Attorney asking if Tillman has an attorney.
Postal inspectors are investigating the incident as a 'potentially intentional act,' said U.S. Postal Inspector Michael Martel. There was no information about a possible motive.
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According to journalist Julie Brown, whose investigation into Epstein for the Miami Herald in 2018 was credited with the FBI re-opening the sexual abuse case against him: everything. 'I think [the DOJ] are trying to get her to say Trump wasn't involved. I think that's the aim of this,' Brown says. 'They're not aiming to expose anybody else who was involved. They're just aiming to clear up any misconceptions around Trump … So far there's been no evidence he was involved with Epstein's crimes at all, but nevertheless, the idea that he shut the investigation down so solidly without even saying, 'we're going to look at this a little bit more' I think makes a lot of people wonder…' Brown, whose 2021 book Perversion of Justice: The Jeffrey Epstein Story has recently seen a surge in demand, selling out both in shops and online, says it's unfortunate the way the Trump administration has handled the Epstein Files. 'For a long time, they promised transparency with this case … And I think there was some hope on the part of both the public and the survivors that they would get some answers. Here was a man who abused hundreds of young girls and women over two decades. And he essentially got away with it. 'We don't know why they're not releasing it. It's a little bit disturbing to be announcing all over television that you're going to release these files and then all of a sudden on the Friday after the Fourth of July holiday, when nobody's really paying attention to the news, to issue this statement that basically says there's nothing to see here and we're not going to open the files.' Brown says there are likely a lot of other people involved in Epstein's crimes that haven't been brought to justice; so many, she says, who have avoided prosecution. Epstein was trafficking underage girls for sex over the course of two decades. Because of that, his co-conspirators could number as many as 100, Brown believes. 'He had so many different people work for him at different times – people who helped arrange his 'schedule' in quote marks, lawyers who helped arrange the visas for models that he would bring from overseas, pilots. He had a huge staff of people. The list goes on and on.' As Barry Levine says, we know from the attorney general in the Virgin Islands who investigated Epstein's operation there that 'Epstein was using international fixers to bring women in from all different countries, like Russia and elsewhere.' When Palm Beach police conducted a search of Epstein's home there in 2005, they confiscated hundreds of notepads, the contents of some of which have been made public in civil lawsuits. 'On those, you'll see messages from powerful men who called him,' Brown says. 'They'll have their name, and then it'll say 'I'm at this hotel'. Now, that's not enough to say they were doing anything with underage girls. 'But I know from talking to some of the attorneys representing these survivors that there were powerful people who would come to Palm Beach and basically call to tell Epstein 'I'm here'. And the unspoken or unwritten message was: you can send somebody to me.' Brown believes that it's unlikely Maxwell will ever reveal what is in those files. At her trial, her main line of defence was that it didn't happen – 'that these girls were all making it up to get money out of a very wealthy man.' The truth is, Brown said, Maxwell knows exactly what's in the Epstein files. 'She knows everything. … And she used her motherly way, her nurturing way, to lure these women into this orbit.'
