Man’s cache springs bomb squad to action

Two blocks are evacuated and up to 50 neighbors displaced as police search for explosives in a deceased man's home.

By KATHRYN WEXLER and SARAH SCHWEITZER

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 11, 1999

After receiving a tip from a nephew, the Tampa police bomb squad found a box of unspecified ammunition, a live grenade and an underground bunker they feared might be booby-trapped at Eugene Jerome Dupuis' home at 5107 N Tampa St. As a precaution, they blew open the bunker. [Times photo: Ken Helle]

TAMPA -- Upon hearing that relatives were rummaging through the home of his late uncle, George Wilson III immediately got on the phone with Tampa police.

"He told me he had enough explosives to blow up half a city block, and I didn't have any reason to doubt him," Wilson said of 68-year-old Eugene Jerome Dupuis.

The tip led police Monday to evacuate two city blocks near the house at 5107 N Tampa St.

Eugene Dupuis was paranoid about anyone he was not related to, a nephew says.

By late Monday, the bomb squad had found a box of unspecified ammunition, a live grenade and an underground bunker they feared might be booby-trapped. As a precaution, they intentionally blew up the side wall of the bunker, looked inside and found nothing dangerous.

Police said more than 50 homes were evacuated but that only a handful of people showed up at a Red Cross shelter at Seminole Heights Baptist Church.

"The bunker was the big area of concern," said Tampa police Officer Randall Lopez. "But it wasn't anything like what they expected it to be."

Police expected people to be able to return to their homes this afternoon.

"He was very paranoid about anybody not in the family," the 49-year-old Wilson said from his home in Hastings, Minn.

Dupuis, an evangelical minister, named all six of his children Eugene Jerome Dupuis Jr. They were referred to by numbers -- One through Six -- which were listed on their birth certificates.

Dupuis had served time in prison for molesting one of his three daughters and was on probation at the time of his death Saturday from lung cancer, family members said.

He would rather die than go back to prison, he had told Wilson.

It wasn't until after his death that officials learned the extent of his idiosyncrasies and his inclination toward destruction.

Wilson said he told police about a safe-deposit box at Village Bank on Hillsborough Avenue that Dupuis said he had stocked with a toxic substance strong enough to kill 200 people.

Officials said Monday they removed pills and vials from the box, but the substances proved harmless.

Family members said they didn't report him because they didn't know whether to take him seriously.

"He said so many crazy things, I didn't know for sure if they were real," said Laurie Hughes, 39, who said she was married until 1993 to Dupuis' son, One, who was a distant cousin of Hughes. "He wanted to name his grandchildren numbers, too -- just in stupidity."

When Wilson went to Tampa on vacation last May, he found his uncle in dire shape from lung cancer. Wilson stayed around to help, but said Dupuis, an Outlaw motorcyclist who warned friends of the evils of government and police, became too difficult to deal with.

Wilson returned to Minnesota.

"He was getting real stubborn and ornery," said Wilson, a retired teacher on disability.

Wilson said that after a fire at the home about 10 years ago, Dupuis rebuilt the inside like a bunker, with many small rooms.

"There weren't any square rooms. They were all at different, funny angles," Wilson said.

Dupuis slept on a slab of plywood covered by a piece of carpet, Wilson said.

"He said if he got his casket paid beforehand, he'd have it brought to the house and he'd sleep on it because it was more comfortable than what he was sleeping on," Wilson said.

Dupuis told Wilson and other family members he'd dug a pit beneath the garage where he'd buried family photographs beneath explosives.

"It was almost like a power thing against the family," said Hughes, a medical underwriter in Eagan, Minn.

One of Dupuis' daughters, Five, who lives in Tennessee, said her siblings were en route to Tampa for her father's funeral.

She said her father had stockpiled things that could be used for explosives "for 20-some years," but they weren't wired to explode. She also said family members had become estranged over the years.

"There weren't too many people close to him," she said.

Kenneth Morlock, who lives down the block from Dupuis, said the man's suspicions went beyond government entities.

"If it didn't come out of a can, he didn't eat it," said Morlock, 46.

Others, however, said Dupuis seemed perfectly normal.

The Waffle House on Florida Avenue was a favorite destination for Dupuis, who sometimes stopped three times a day. Waitresses there found him amusing.

"He knew how to socialize," Wilson said. "He was a real character."

-- Times researcher Kitty Bennett contributed to this report.