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Blood-Smeared Mail Sent to Bill de Blasio's Office, NYPD Says

By  Murray Weiss Irene Plagianos and Aidan Gardiner | May 30, 2013 12:51pm | Updated on May 30, 2013 2:56pm

 Mayoral candidate and Public Advocate Bill de Blasio's office received two threatening letters over the courst of the last week.
Bill de Blasio threatening letters
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MANHATTAN — Two letters, mailed from the Bronx and smeared with blood, were sent to mayoral hopeful Bill de Blasio's office at the city's Municipal Building at 1 Centre St., according to NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly.

The rambling letters, the first of which arrived at de Blasio's office last Friday and the second of which arrived on Thursday, were written in both English and Spanish, police said.

“There was a letter received by Bill de Blasio on Friday, a threatening letter that had blood on the letter. Then they received another letter, a similar letter from the same person, yesterday,” Kelly said Thursday at an unrelated press conference in the Rockaways.

The department's chief spokesman, Paul Browne, said that the note was "rambling."

"It was a...letter in Spanish that said, 'This is real blood.' So when the second letter came in yesterday that appeared to be from the same person, they called the police,” he said.

A spokesman for the Public Advocate did not respond to requests for comment.

Hazardous materials crews and NYPD's emergency services units spent hours at the Municipal Building's north entrance Thursday afternoon.

News about the letters comes a day after police revealed that two ESU workers suffered symptoms consistent with Ricin poisoning after opening letters containing the toxic substance addressed to Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

It is unclear if the two incidents are related. The Post reported that the bloody letters did not contain any chemicals.

Kelly said the apparent uptick in threatening letters, which comes alongside the news that President Barack Obama was also targeted with Ricin-filled letters, is nothing new.

“We’ve always had deranged people threatening public officials, threatening presidents and mayors. This is not a new phenomenon. It’s something obviously we’re concerned about," Kelly said.

"This is our business. The investigation is going forward. I believe we have everything in place to protect the mayor, and the Secret Service, who I used to work with when I was in Washington, do an outstanding job of protecting the president. So we’ll have to see what’s determined in this investigation.”