A New Jersey man arrested Sunday after police found him in a wooded area with an AK-47, a handgun and dozens of rounds of ammunition indicated he held “neo-Nazi type beliefs,” a law enforcement official told TPM.
Officers noticed a car pulled off the road in the Greenwood Forest Wildlife Management Area of the Jersey Pinelands and conducted a search of the area, NJ.com reported. They found Bruce “Brus” Post III, 42, 100 yards away from the car, decked out in combat gear and heavily armed.
The weapons found at the scene included an AK-47, a Walther P38 9mm handgun, eight 30-round high-capacity magazines and one 100-round drum magazine, according to NJ.com. Post also had shovels and tarps in his possession at the time of his arrest, the newspaper reported.
Post was hit with a handful of charges including the illegal possession of ammunition, unlawful possession of an assault weapon and of a handgun, and possessing weapons as a felon. He was being held at the Ocean County Correctional Facility on $400,000 bail.
Another individual found at the scene, who has been identified only as a 38-year-old male from Trenton, was detained but not arrested, according to NJ.com.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether Post retained an attorney.
Lacey Township Police Chief David Paprota declined to comment Monday afternoon about specific statements Post made, citing an ongoing investigation, but noted that “there were indications of neo-Nazi type beliefs.”
“His past history is indicative of a neo-Nazi, white supremacist behaviors and beliefs,” Paprota told TPM, adding that “as far as the encounter he [Post] had with Lacey County police, his dress, his mustache” signaled to officers that something was off.
Post, who was shown in his mugshot sporting a mustache eerily similar to Adolf Hitler’s, appears to be known to the local community for his long rap sheet and history of making anti-Semitic comments.
He was sentenced in 1997 to five years in prison for a 1993 case involving aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, according to NJ.com. He also served two and a half years for his role in helping cover up the brutal 1995 stabbing murder of Andrew Whited, Jr. Post’s younger brother, Joseph, is currently serving a life sentence for that murder, and at the time Post made headlines for calling the judge in the case a “slut” in open court, The Trentonian reported.
His run-ins with the law continued after his release.
Post’s 19-year-old wife, Nichole Bower Post, was found dead in 2003 at the home they shared with his parents, according to The Trentonian. When police arrived at the scene, Post said he wouldn’t interact with any Jewish investigators.
“He was real distraught, and he started ranting on with the Nazi stuff,” a detective told the newspaper at the time. “He was talking to his ‘fuhrer.’ Stuff like ‘Mien Fuhrer, you did not prepare me for this.’”
Authorities attributed Nichole Bower Post’s death to clogged arteries, according to The Trentonian. The year before she died, she testified in court that she voluntarily let Post beat her with a rubber hose so badly that he faced assault charges.
