POLICE STILL WONDER, 'WHAT WAS IN THE JAR?'

It looked like a bomb, explosives experts treated it like a bomb, but Cape Girardeau police still question whether the glass jar containing a yellow liquid brought to the police department on Wednesday was a bomb.

"No one can say for sure what it was," Cpl. Rick Schmidt said.

The final answer won't be available until results return from a federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms laboratory near Washington, D.C., said Lt. Tim Hull of the Missouri State Highway Patrol.

Based on prior experience, it could take weeks or months, Hull said.

Members of the highway patrol's bomb squad used a plastic explosive to blow up the glass jar Wednesday evening as police, firefighters and ATF agents looked on.

A portion of the liquid was saved to sent to the ATF lab, Hull said.

Police skepticism is based on the circumstances surrounding the glass jar, which a man who lives outside the city limits brought to the police station at 11:30 a.m. on Wednesday.

The man brought the glass jar to police in a plastic bag, and explained that another man had left it at his house. It had been at the house for three days before the man decided to bring it to police, Lt. Carl Kinnison said.

Unstable explosive

Kinnison described the jar as an older, quart-sized Mason jar. It contained a yellowish liquid. In the liquid was a piece of metal with two wires sticking out. The wires extended through holes in the jar's lid, and were wrapped around the outside of the lid and fastened with electrical tape.

A member of the highway patrol bomb squad had described the contents of the jar as an unstable explosive, but declined to elaborate.

The glass jar was the third potential bomb discovered in Cape Girardeau since last January.

A PVC pipe discovered near the Bill Emerson Bridge construction site in January 1999 proved to be a bomb after ATF lab experts examined it, Kinnison said. However, the explosives had been under water for so long that it was no longer a threat, he said.

Last Spring, a glass jar containing black powder and a burned fuse was found in a portable toilet at Dennis Scivally Park, Kinnison said. Police requested that the bomb unit from Ft. Leonard Wood Army base respond. The bomb unit removed the jar, which was later found to contain gunpowder.

Ft. Leonard Wood's bomb unit formerly had been the first call made by police when a potential bomb was found, Kinnison said. This changed when the highway patrol began using a specially equipped trailer to dispose of possible explosives around the state.

Most of the highway patrol bomb squad's trips to Southeast Missouri involve disposal of old, hazardous dynamite found by farmers, Hull said.