False 'Mail Bomb' Brings Authorities To Holyoke Center

The Office of the General Counsel in Holyoke Center was temporarily evacuated yesterday morning after a package falsely suspected of being a mail bomb was delivered to the ninth floor office.

Cambridge bomb technicians, police and firefighters joined Harvard police in responding to the latest in a series of similar false scares around the University. Kristen Morris, a staff assistant in the office, said attorneys and staff were inconvenienced for only about 20 minutes.

The package, which was considered suspicious because it had no return address, contained only a book, Morris said. No one was hurt.

On June 28, police, firefighters and the Boston bomb squad were called to the Bryant St. home of Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles after he received a package with no return address. The Science Center was evacuated for more than three hours on July 13 after an unidentified package was found seemingly abandoned near the lecture halls.

Harvard Police Lt. Lawrence J. Murphy, who is in charge of the department while Chief Paul E. Johnson undergoes medical treatment, acknowledged that this scare was not as serious as those at the Science Center or the Knowles home.

In those cases, the Boston bomb squad was called in to x-ray the packages, while Cambridge bomb technicians handled yesterday's incident alone.

Harvard police and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have warned all University affiliates to call police if they receive a package with excessive postage, oily stains or discolorations, the absence of a return address or protruding wires or tin foil.

The law enforcement campaign came in response to attacks in June on two prominent scientists with some association in the field of genetics. Charles Epstein, head of medical genetics at the University of California at San Francisco, lost several fingers when he opened a package at his home. And Yale computer scientist David Gelertner, whose brother and sister-in-law are Yale geneticists, was seriously injured by a similar bomb.