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The 10-count indictment charges 65-year-old Robert Lintner with “creating risk of widespread injury or damage by recklesslessly handling or storing” 300 pounds of gunpowder in his 1,400-square-foot home.
The amount of powder was 10 times the legal limit that can be stored residentially, as well as a public safety hazard “not only for the home itself but for adjacent homes,” Saddle Brook Police Chief Robert Kugler told CLIFFVIEW PILOT at the time.
Authorities also seized 200 firearms for storage and cataloging, as required by domestic violence laws.
They led to charges against Lintner in the indictment of illegally posssessing:
an Auto Ordnance Corp. Thompson submachine gun;a Sten 9mm machine gun;a US Carbine M1 rifle.
He also was charged with illegally possessing 65 large-capacity ammunition magazines.
Surrounding homes were temporarily evacuated after police found and removed the gunpowder when they went to look for the guns.
During the operation, 65-year-old Eileen Lintner posted $75,000 bail and was released on aggravated assault charges — with the condition that she have no contact with her husband.
She has not been able to return to the house, authorities told CLIFFVIEW PILOT this morning.
Her husband, meanwhile, has remained free on $2,500 bail.
Police first went to the house the morning of Aug. 7 on a domestic violence call and found that Robert Lintner stabbed just below his ear. They took Eileen Lintner into custody and obtained a search warrant.
Investigators found the powder and what Kugler, the police chief, called an “extensive” amount of ammunition after recovering the kitchen knife that they believe was used in the stabbing.
At that point they immediately halted their firearms search and summoned the Bergen County Police Department Bomb Squad. Adjacent homes were briefly evacuated.
Lintner, a known weapons collector, had five gun vaults in the house and and what authorities initially estimated were 100 firearms, including handguns and long rifles, Kugler said.
They found dozens more after firefighters opened the vaults using the Jaws of Life.
Cracking the 6-foot-tall, half-ton safes became necessary when Lintner refused to open the himself, Kugler said.
“It’s better than trying to carry them out,” he told CLIFFVIEW PILOT at the time.
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