LOS ANGELES – Authorities came upon a startling and mysterious scene when they showed up at a luxury apartment in Los Angeles in April while investigating a call about a gas odor.

The door was barricaded. A cache of loaded weapons, including an AK-47, sat next to a mosaic depicting the CIA seal. They found equipment for counterfeiting money. High-powered binoculars were trained on the U.S. Federal Reserve building next door.

What followed was a six-week hunt for a suspect who had slipped out of the fire escape moments earlier and whose evasiveness drew comparisons to fictional agent Jason Bourne, made popular by author Robert Ludlum and movies.

Police would eventually find their man, Brian Alexik, hiding out in his girlfriend’s apartment less than a mile from where he fled. But three weeks on, detectives are still trying to figure out just who he is, what plot they may have thwarted and whether he was a lone wolf or part of a larger group.

Alexik clammed up soon after he was arrested and his trail has been harder to follow because he used at least two fake names.

The 34-year-old is originally from Edison, N.J., detectives said. In 1996, he was convicted in Middlesex County on a drug-dealing charge. Five years later, he pleaded guilty to theft by deception and was sentenced to 180 days in jail.

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Investigators are scouring his computer hard drives and studying the alarming contents of his penthouse as they attempt to unravel the mystery.

One bedroom had been converted into a makeshift machine shop, with tools scattered around. It appeared Alexik had been manufacturing the parts of assault rifles that ammunition magazines are slotted into, said Detective Mark Severino from the Los Angeles Police Department’s major crimes unit.

Detectives found a loaded sawed-off shotgun and handgun, an AK-47, ammunition and other weapons parts.

The CIA mosaic, depicting the white, starred shield with an eagle’s head on a blue background, measured about 5 feet across and investigators were impressed with the quality of the tile work. They initially thought Alexik was obsessed with the spy agency.

“But there was no other evidence,” Severino said.

A pair of binoculars was found by a tripod at the back window overlooking the Federal Reserve, but police don’t know what Alexik had been watching.

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Answers might lie within the hard drives of four computers seized from the apartment.

Police said Alexik appeared to move comfortably in social circles and most of his friends were in the cosmetics and clothing industries. Investigators found designer clothes in his apartment, along with a photo of Alexik mugging next to U2 frontman Bono.

Alexik has pleaded not guilty to 10 felonies including weapons charges, narcotics offenses and forgery.

 


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