That wasn’t Fred Mackler hoarding drugs and explosives and terrorizing his neighbors with gut-rattling explosions in the middle of the night.
It was his cocaine.
That was the message Mackler and friends sent Tuesday to a Baltimore County Circuit Court judge, who sentenced Mackler to one year in prison for possession of drugs and illegal pyrotechnics, which he used to startle his Pikesville neighbors with deafening blasts and blinding flashes in the middle of the night for more than two years.
“I became a hermit and I isolated myself from others who I have been close with my whole life,” Mackler said, his first public statements since his arrest in 2007. “What I did was not the real me.”
The jail time given to Mackler, 60, was part of a 10-year suspended sentence that included 5 years for setting off explosives and 10 concurrent years for importing cocaine into the state. Mackler also will serve two years probation and agreed to stay at least 1 mile from his former condominium complex on the 8000 block of Brynmor Court in Pikesville.
Mackler has been in the Baltimore County Detention Center awaiting his hearing for about nine months; that time will be counted toward his sentencing. He said he suffers from depression and severe cocaine addiction.
Police began investigating complaints from Mackler’s neighbors in September 2007, eventually installing security cameras and calling in the bomb squad that pinpointed the blasts to his condominium. They seized 12 handguns, a rifle, two shotguns, an Uzi submachine gun, cocaine and marijuana and various pyrotechnics. They also found a “bird banger” — a device farmers frequently use to scare birds and rodents from crops — that was blamed for the mysterious late-night explosions.
Several of Mackler’s former neighbors attended the hearing but declined to testify in court.
“There are a lot of people in this community right now who are afraid of Fred Mackler — they are afraid of what he did and they are afraid of what he could do in the future,” said assistant state’s attorney Kristin Blumer, who requested Mackler serve 18 months in jail. “He terrorized them for a long time.”
Mackler’s friends and family also attended the hearing and described the retired lighting-business owner as a caring man who frequently donates to charity.
“He is extremely bright and he knows right from wrong,” friend Loretta Mongi said. “Since he was arrested, we have started to see Freddie come back, someone who is caring and rational. We have seen a definite change.”
