The man who made national headlines in 2007 for taking hostages at a Hillary Clinton campaign office will face a federal judge Friday on new charges stemming from a recent bank robbery.
Leeland Eisenberg, 55, who recently lived in Concord, was indicted in U.S. District Court last week on one count of bank robbery and one count of possession of a controlled substance, cocaine.
The felony case against Eisenberg was initially filed in Manchester’s district court and then forwarded to Hillsborough County Superior Court. But Assistant U.S. Attorney Donald Feith said Wednesday that the local case will not move forward as Eisenberg is now being prosecuted at the federal level.
Robbery of a federally insured bank is a violation of federal and state law, which is why the U.S. government took on the case.
Eisenberg is accused of robbing the Citizens Bank at 875 Elm St. in Manchester on Aug. 2. He told the teller he was armed with a handgun and threatened to shoot her, police said. The teller told police she gave Eisenberg $1,611.
But when police arrested Eisenberg more than six hours later at the Valley Street cemetery, he had on him only about $118. Police said they found in Eisenberg’s front pocket 6.5 grams of crack cocaine, which was separated into 10 plastic baggies.
The U.S. District Attorney’s Office issued a warrant for his arrest Oct. 5. That warrant was served to him at the Hillsborough County jail, where he is being held on the local charges.
Eisenberg’s history in the state’s correctional system is complex, in part because of his numerous probation and parole violations, Department of Corrections spokesman Jeff Lyons said in August. Eisenberg was last paroled in early June, at which time he took up residency in Concord.
He had most recently served two concurrent prison sentences of 3½ to seven years on charges of criminal threatening and false report to law enforcement.
Those charges stemmed from the November 2007 hostage situation at Clinton’s presidential campaign office in Rochester, where Eisenberg claimed to have a bomb and engaged in a lengthy standoff with police. What Eisenberg said was a bomb turned out to be road flares. No one was injured in the incident.
A Strafford County Superior Court judge had initially suspended those prison sentences. But the court imposed them when Eisenberg violated his five-year probation by removing his electronic monitoring ankle bracelet.
(Alyssa Dandrea can be reached at 369-3319, adandrea@cmonitor.com or on Twitter @_ADandrea.)