ONLY ON CVP: Two brothers accused of sexually assaulting a Bergenfield girl over three years beginning when they were juveniles and she was 8 years old will be tried as adults.

Jason Negron, now of Dumont, and his brother, Jonathan Negron of the Bronx, were teenagers from March 1998 through October 2001, when prosecutors said the assaults occurred in an acquaintance’s house.

Jason Negron, Jonathan Negron (STORY / PHOTOS: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter)

Defense attorney Adamo Ferreira countered that his client, Jason Negron, didn’t have the opportunity to commit such crimes because he lived with his mother and attended school in the Bronx.

Both sides were still reviewing evidence and statements from either side before discussing a possible plea bargain.

Each man is charged with three first-degree charges of aggravated sexual assault for both penile and digital penetration, as well as oral sex on the girl.

They’re also charged with two second-degree counts of aggravated sexual assault for having her perform oral sex on them and masturbating in her presence, as well as impairing or debauching the morals of a minor.

Each remains free on $100,000 bail.

Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Demetra Maurice, defense attorney attorney Adamo Ferreira, Jason Negron, Jonathan Negron, defense Ian Silvera /(STORY / PHOTOS: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter)

PUBLIC SAFETY: Police departments throughout Bergen County aim to top Wyckoff’s record haul from last April in this weekend’s National Prescription Drug Take Back Day.

The nationwide event gives citizens the opportunity to address pill abuse and theft by ridding their homes of potentially dangerous expired, unused, and unwanted prescription drugs – with no questions asked.

(BELOW: A list Bergen police departments collecting the pills.)

“The medication can either be disposed of in its original container or can be removed from its container and placed in the disposal box,” Fair Lawn Police Sgt. Brian Metzler said. “Liquid products should be disposed of in its original container with the cap tightly sealed, to prevent leakage.

“Syringes and other sharp instruments will not be accepted.”

“This program is anonymous and made to protect anonymity,” Lyndhurst Capt. John Valente said. “No questions or requests for identification will be made.”

In fact, Valente said, you should “remove the prescription label if it contains any personal identifying information.”

The federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and more than 4,200 national, tribal, and community law enforcement partners have collected more than 1,700 tons of expired, unwanted prescription medications over the past 3½ years.

Of the 3,046 pounds of drugs collected countywide last year, Wyckoff Police Chief Benjamin Fox reported that 181 people brought 417 pounds to borough headquarters — nearly 14% of Bergen’s entire haul.

“This controlled destruction of the drugs keeps them from improperly being destroyed when dumped in toilets, sinks or the trash; and having the medications then enter the water stream,” Fox noted. “Additionally, getting rid of unused drugs prevents children from improperly accessing and potentially abusing prescription drugs that might be in the home.”

The program has helped prevent addiction, overdose deaths and the diversion of drugs to street dealers, federal authorities emphasize. An estimated 6.1 million Americans abused prescription drugs in 2011, and 20,000 a year die from prescription drug overdoses, they say.

An estimated 75% of people abusing prescription pain relievers “got them through friends or relatives the most recent time they used them, a statistic that includes raiding the family medicine cabinet,” the government said in a news release.

Pharmaceutical drug abuse has become such an epidemic in middle-class America that enough painkillers were prescribed last year to medicate every American adult around the clock for a month, the national Centers for Disease Control says.

Vicodin, Percocet, Klonopin and other medications are becoming drugs of choice for abusers nationwide.

More than 70 percent of people aged 12 and older who abuse prescription pain relievers obtained them from friends or relatives, compared with five percent who obtained them from drug dealers or online, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Police officers will be on hand to assist with disposal, but they won’t count, inventory, log or handle any medications.

IF YOU DON’T SEE YOUR TOWN IN THE LIST BELOW, CLICK: USDEA.gov

East Rutherford police said neighbors and residents helped them crack a mini-burglary spree and arrest three men, two of them from Carlstadt, after one was caught in the act.

Jewelry and electronics were taken in the break-ins, which began March 28 and ended April 3, Police Chief Larry Minda said.

Last Friday, detectives arrested 18-year-old Daniel Vera (above, left) and a 16-year-old boy during a burglary on Atkins Terrace, Minda said.

That, in turn, led them to Adrian Rodriguez (right, below), 40, also of Carlstadt, and 24-year-old Victor Caraballo (right, above) of Jersey City – who were being held on $750,000 bail each.

Rodriguez, who remained held in the Bergen County Jail, is charged with four counts of burglary, four of theft, two of conspiracy and two of using a juvenile to commit a crime.

Caraballo, who was in the Hudson County Jail, is charged with two counts each of burglary, theft and employing a juvenile in a crime.

Vera was being held on $25,000 bail in the Bergen County Jail, charged with conspiracy to commit burglary, conspiracy to commit theft and employing a juvenile in a crime.

The teen was issued juvenile delinquency complaints for burglary, conspiracy and possession of burgalr tools.

The East Rutherford Detective Bureau, under the direction of Lt. Jeff Yannacone, conducted the investigation, said Minda, who thanked the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office and the Carlstadt and Jersey City police departments.

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: Teaneck police said they seized a handgun, a muzzle-loading gun, ammo, a speed loader, drugs and counterfeit money during a raid of a 20-year-old accused drug dealer’s house.

Detectives who “received complaints of suspected drug sales” investigated and obtained a warrant for the Friday search.

They arrested Clarence Javon Childress after finding a .380 caliber handgun, a muzzle loading .45 caliber handgun, ammunition, a speed loader for a handgun, pot, crack cocaine, Oxycodone, digital scales, countefeit currency and $833 in cash believed to be the proceeds from drug sales, Acting Police Chief Robert A. Carney said this afternoon.

Childress was being held on $150,000 bail in the Bergen County Jail, charged with drug, weapons and drug paraphernalia offenses, as well as money laundering.
IMAGES: Courtesy TEANECK PD

SHOUT OUT: A fundraiser is being held tonight at the Dairy Queen in Wyckoff to help raise money to pay medical bills for more than a dozen pitbulls who were rescued from a Paterson dog-fighting ring.

The dogs, many of which are puppies, were rescued last Friday from what police are calling one of the largest dog fighting rings ever discovered in the area.

Dairy Queen will donate $3 from every blizzard purchased to A Pathway to Hope and Second Chance Pet Adoption League. Donations are also being accepted online. READ MORE ….

PHOTO: Courtesy MIDLAND PARK PRESS

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: A Hackensack man who told reporters that he and his young daughter escaped a garage collapse with their lives four years ago is charged with sexually assaulting a 5-year-old girl.

Damian Kazazian, 41, remained held on $250,000 bail in the Bergen County Jail, charged with aggravated sexual assault and child endangerment.

Her mother originally brought the girl to the Valley Hospital in Ridgewood, where “a staff member learned of the situation and notified the Special Victims Unit,” Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli said.

The child was later brought to the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office in Paramus, where she confirmed in greater detail” to a detective from the Special Victims Unit what she originally told her mother, the prosecutor said.

Unit detectives and Hackensack police then arrested Kazazian, who records show runs a private investment business from his home at 300 Prospect Avenue, an 18-story high rise around the block from Hackensack University Medical Center .

The building’s three-story parking deck collapsed in July 2010, forcing residents out for several months. No injuries were reported.

Among those residents who talked to reporters was Kazazian, who is single and lives on the second floor.

“I tell you, displaced, your whole world is upside down,” he told NBCNewYork.

MUGSHOT: Courtesy BERGEN COUNTY PROSECUTOR’S OFFICE

​YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: South Hackensack police targeting heroin dealing along the Route 46 corridor said they picked off a man known as “Baby Harlem” selling smack last night at a local hotel.

An informant pointed them to a motel off the highway where Capt. Robert Kaiser said they saw 20-year-old Zajiir A. Barrett of Paterson arrive in a livery cab “and deliver the product to a customer.”

The officers moved in, grabbed Barrett and found him carrying 200 bags of heroin, the captain said.

​Barrett was being held on $150,000 bail in the Bergen County Jail, charged with heroin possession and possession of the drug with the intent to distribute it.

MUGSHOT: Courtesy SOUTH HACKENSACK PD

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: A Bloods gang member being chased by a Hasbrouck Heights police detective today pulled a loaded handgun from his waistband but was tackled before he could do anything with it, authorities said this afternoon.

Detective John Behr was investigating a report of a suspicious-looking man walking up and down Terrace Avenue around 11:30 a.m. when he stopped Marcos Payne, 21, of Lodi, who police said was pointing his fingers — pistol-styled — at passing cars.

As Behr identified himself, Payne took off, Detective Sgt. Michael Colaneri told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.

Payne then pulled a .22-caliber revolver loaded with hollow-point bullets from his waistband just as Baer reached him, the sergeant said.

A pedestrian, seeing what was happening, asked Baer what he could do, so the detective told him to go to his police car and radio headquarters for backup.

Officers Carlstadt, East Rutherford, Hackensack, Lodi, Wood-Ridge and the Bergen County and the Port Authority police departments.

Barrett was being processed on a variety of charges at headquarters — aggravated assault on a police officer, illegal possession of a handgun, resisting arrest, possession of hollow-point bullets and disorderly conduct — and taken to the Bergen County Jail.

He remained held on $100,000 bail.

Behr, while saying that he’s “blessed to have the best friends and family,” redirected the spotlight:

“Please remember the only important thing right now,” he said, “the recovery of BCPD Dan Breslin and the Paramus officer who are in need of our thoughts and prayers.”

The incident came as Paramus police were announcing that the borough officer shot during an undercover buy in Garfield on Tuesday was released from the hospital, and the morning after a candlelight vigil was held for Breslin in Hackensack.

IMAGES: Courtesy HASBROUCK HEIGHTS PD

Calling him part of the recent heroin epidemic, a judge in Hackensack yesterday sentenced a Mahwah man to three years in prison for contributing to the death of another addict.

“I have seen so many heroin deaths — it’s disproportionate to the size of our county,” Presiding Superior Court Judge Liliana DeAvila-Silebi told 22-year-old Uldis Mende. “You contributed to that, to more deaths from heroin — and that’s the most important factor in your sentence.”

Mende (above, left), a Latvian national who lives in Mahwah, was indicted by a Bergen County grand jury last year after being arrested as part of a large-scale, multi-jurisdictional operation intended to reduce the number of skyrocketing heroin overdose deaths in North Jersey.

Mende told a detective on tape that Apfelbaum contacted him by phone that fateful night, saying he wanted to “get something.” He identified a series of text messages to Costello — most made in truncated English to avoid using the terms “heroin” or “drugs” — in which the two eventually planned to go to Paterson.

After copping the drugs, he said, the two drove to the Palisades Center Mall in West Nyack and then the Garden State Plaza in Paramus before returning to Mende’s home in Mahwah.

Apfelbaum shot up at least twice and used somewhere between “two bags” and “10 decks” of heroin that night, Mende said in the recordedinterview. He said Apfelbaum promised to text him when he got home.

When he didn’t hear back, Mende said, he texted him but didn’t get an answer. He later admitted that he didn’t try to alert Apfelbaum’s family or authorities that his friend was missing and under the influence.

Three weeks after Harris Apfelbaum was found dead in Park Ridge, a Mahwah patrol officer stopped Mende for a traffic violation and found him carrying 70 decks of heroin intended for sale, records show.

Under Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli’s new anti-heroin initiative, detectives from the prosecutor’s office followed up.

A grand jury indictment secured by Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Danielle Grootenboer accused Mende of “causing the death” of Apfelbaum, “who died as a result of ingesting the drug.”

Mende, who was on probation for a disorderly persons offense that was downgraded from a more serious, drug-related charge,
got the reduced term in return for pleading guilty to second-degree manslaughter.

He must serve a shade over 2½ and half years before he’ll be eligible for supervised parole. However, DeAvila-Silebi (above, right) said he’ll likely be deported once his term is up.

“We’ll leave that to the federal authorities,” she said.

FILE PHOTOS: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter

SHOUT OUT: More than 3,000 runners are expected for this morning’s 28th Annual Lincoln Tunnel Challenge 5K under the Hudson to benefit more than 24,000 children and adults with intellectual disabilities in the Special Olympics New Jersey program.

Presented by AmeriHealth New Jersey, the event begins and ends at the south tube in Weekhawken, with two starts: 8 a.m. for runners with times under 30 minutes, and 8:45 for all other runners and walkers.

This year’s 2014 Lincoln Tunnel Run already has raised more than $182,154 from 2,500 or pre- registered participants and their online pledges.

“Overall support for this event increases with each year, from the incredible commitment from Port Authority police and our presenting sponsor, AmeriHealth New Jersey, to runners reaching out to family and friends to pledge their support for our athletes,” said Marc Edenzon, president and CEO of Special Olympics New Jersey.

“While we have thousands of runners going through the tunnel, there have been well over 20,000 individuals who have reached out to support our athletes through this event,” Edenzon said.

In addition to individual participants, there are 185 teams — the largest of which is AmeriHealth, with 80 members. Runners from fifteen states, including as far as California, are expected.

“We commend Special Olympics New Jersey for its unwavering dedication to enabling children and adults with intellectual disabilities across our state to participate in year-round sports training and athletic competitions.”said Judith L. Roman, president and CEO of AmeriHealth New Jersey.

The event is a fundraising vehicle of the Law Enforcement Torch Run for Special Olympics New Jersey. Additional support has been provided by NJ TRANSIT, WCBS News Radio 880, WFAN Sports Radio, WCBS-FM 101.1, 92.3 NOW, Taylor Management Company, M & M Sanitation, Digital Realty Trust, La Yogurt, Mendon Truck Leasing & Rental, Genpro, Modell’s, Inserra Supermarkets/Shoprite Hoboken and Mary Kay.

INFO: www.sonj.org

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: A Hackensack special police officer was uninjured in a rain-slicked crash last night, authorities said.

The officer was on River Street near Passaic Street around 11 p.m. when he “swerved to avoid another vehicle that came into his lane,” Police Director Michael Mordaga told CLIFFVIEW PILOT this morning.

The police car then slammed into a utility pole, he said.

The car was towed from the scene.

TRIBUTE: A memorial service is scheduled tomorrow for Capt. James Tallia, a retired Allendale police captain who became an instructor for generations of law enforcement officers.

Tallia continued to work at the Bergen County Police Academy Range until a week before going into the hospital for the final time. He was 85 years old when he died last week.

Born in Paterson, “Jimmy” Tallia was graduated from Ramsey High School and moved to Allendale in 1958.

He devoted 57 years to law enforcement and service to the community — and to his wife, Isabel, who survives him.

Also surviving are sons Jim and Bob; daughters-in-law Kelley and Joann; and grandchildren Dalton, Michael, Connor, Alicia, Carli, Meaghan, Garrett, and Colby.

Private services were scheduled today and tomorrow.

The public service is at 11 a.m. tomorrow at the Bergen County Law & Public Safety Institute, 281 Campgaw Road in Mahwah, where Tallia was a range master.

Because of construction, everyone is asked to access the academy from the south in the Franklin Lakes, Pulis Avenue area.

A 33-year-old Englewood woman was being held on $200,000 bail in the Bergen County Jail, charged with “engaging in inappropriate sexual activity” with a 5-year-old boy, Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli.

Molinelli didn’t elaborate on what actions prompted the arrest of Roxanne Hewitt at her home Wednesday by detectives from his Special Victims Unit and Englewood police on two counts of aggravated sexual assault and one of child endangerment.

The boy was taken to Hackensack University Medical Center, the prosecutor said. Interviewed by detectives, he “described to them in detail the sexual acts [that] Hewitt had engaged him in the day before,” Molinelli said.

MUGSHOT: Courtesy BERGEN COUNTY PROSECUTOR’S OFFICE

ONLY ON CVP: A judge in Hackensack added three years to the sentence of an Englewood convict with ties to the infamous James Bond Gang, boosting Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli’s pledge to put career burglars in prison for longer stretches than before.

As a result, 26-year-old Marc Rainey isn’t looking at his first shot at parole for nearly seven years — and could remain behind bars until 2026.

Rainey began a 10-year sentence in October after a jury convicted him and six co-defendants in the theft of a 600-pound safe from Connecticut.

Last month, he pleaded guilty to a Wyckoff burglary as jury selection was about to begin. Presiding Superior Court Judge Liliana DeAvila-Silebi, in turn, added a firm three years from that conviction to the four that Rainey must serve before he’s eligible for parole in the Connecticut safe theft.

Wyckoff police said they caught Rainey in May 2012 after a neighbor called to report a suspicious vehicle on Ravine Avenue. They said they found the house broken into, every room ransacked and a pillowcase full of jewelry left behind.

Although footprints indicated that Rainey had an accomplice, he never gave anyone up. He did exhaust his legal options before finally pleading guilty last month.

Rainey’s incarceration further smashes a loosely knit crew of burglars organized by Akeem Boone, the last known leader of what once was the Bond gang of burglars, investigators say.

A multi-jurisdictional task force that stretched from Morris County to Connecticut was looking for Boone when they raided a William Street garage near the King Gardens apartment complex and arrested him, Rainey and several others in connection with the safe heist.

Boone, who’s been serving time in state prison since last August, won’t be eligible for parole until 2021.

Given the chance to speak, Rainey said nothing during his sentencing on Friday.

“Perhaps it should be ‘See you soon,’ ” Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Nicholas Ostuni said, “because that seems to be his MO.

“The state is not moved by his decision to plead guilty,” Ostuni told the judge. “I’m more persuaded by his horrendous criminal record, averaging one a year since his 18th birthday.

“I’m convinced as soon as he gets out, he’ll get back together with his friends and enter other houses to steal.”

The sentence handed down Friday guarantees the longest stretch by far of Rainey’s life, DeAvila-Silebi said.

“You’re probably going to max out on it,” the judge told him, meaning that 13 total years isn’t beyond possibility.

STORY / PHOTOS: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter

SHOUT OUT: The Palisades Interstate Parkway Police Department swearing-in ceremony for its new chief, lieutenant and nine officers was moved to the Fort Lee High School gymnasium this Tuesday to accommodate an expected overflow crowd.

It’s scheduled to begin at 6:30 p.m. 

Sworn in will be:

Police Chief Police Michael J. Coppola

Lt. Roman Galloza

Officer Jody Becker
Officer Michael Byrnes
Officer Dana Eustace
Officer Joseph Fullam
Officer Michael Griffin
Officer Jeffrey Lamboy
Officer Robert Littlejohn, Jr
Officer Brian Meyer
Officer Adam Temporale

Guests include:

Superior Court Judge Patrick J. Roma
Municipal Court Judge Marc A. Raso

EXCLUSIVE: “She deceived us into thinking she was an honest, loving person,” Alpine philanthropist Lenora Klein said of a woman sentenced to five years in prison for swindling her, her husband and others out of more than $715,000 in a Ponzi scheme.

The victims included John and Lenora Kleins’ two boys, who are now teenagers but were grade-schoolers when Dunya Predovan was their part-time caretaker from 2004-2012.

Predovan took “all the money they had saved from every birthday and holiday,” Klein wrote in a letter read during Friday’s sentencing. “They now refuse to put money in the banks.”

Dunya Predovan in court Friday
(STORY / PHOTOS: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter)

Her sons were so shocked when she told them what had happened, she wrote, that her youngest “cried and begged me to give her a second chance.”

Klein’s letter, along with testimony from other victims — and Predovan’s own statement — angered Superior Court Judge Edward A. Jerejian.

“You’re a dishonest person,” the judge told the 59-year-old Predovan, of Manahawkin, before a Bergen County Sheriff’s officer handcuffed and led her off to jail (photo top).

“You don’t understand the depth of your own dishonesty, and I don’t think you have any remorse whatsoever,” Jerejian said, as she surrendered the keys to her Mercedes to her lawyer.

The Kleins (photo top) had no idea that Predovan used their lavish home to con investors by pretending it was hers while as a housekeeper, cook and caregiver for their sons.

“Not only did she steal from our checking account,” Lenora Klein wrote to the judge. “She charged thousands on our credit cards and stole our personal jewelry, furs, clothes, antiques, china, and even a mattress, sending the money to Croatia.”

Predovan also told business owners in town that John Klein was leaving his wife for her, Klein wrote in asking Jerejian to give her the maximum five-year sentence.

The sentencing originally was postponed last year so that Predovan could begin to repay the victims — and, in doing so, secure herself a shorter prison term.

But that didn’t happen.

“You could have spared yourself some time, or even all of it,” Jerejian told her Friday. “But [over] more than two years, you paid not one cent of restitution.”

Given the opportunity to speak, Predovan told the judge that she worked “long hours, nights, weekends” and was abused by the Klein kids, who she said punched and kicked her as she drove them to school and pelted her with oranges and eggs after tying her to a chair.

She insisted she was falsely accused of stealing jewelry, forced to participate in a counterfeit designer handbag operation and made to prepare meals for local police.

This only angered Jerejian more.

“Now that it’s time to go to prison, you blame it on everyone else,” he told her. “Frankly, it’s impossible for me to accept the things you said here. You stole from a lot of people.”

Victims said they were promised a high rate of return but, instead, ended up losing everything they gave Predovan. Two testified during the sentencing, while a fourth, like Klein, wrote a letter to the judge.

That woman, a Manahawkin neighbor, said Predovan and her husband always had new luxury vehicles, including a motorcycle they had shipped to their home in Croatia, while she was being prosecuted in Bergen County.

One day, she said, Predovan shared a $400 bottle of wine while scamming her out of $10,000.

When her husband died of cancer, the neighbor said, she asked Predovan to return the money so that she could pay for his repast and funeral. Predovan claimed that the penalties were too great and that she was in Croatia and unable to make the transfer, the woman said, adding that she hung up and couldn’t be reached again.

Alpine police originally arrested Predovan on theft and forgery charges on May 10, 2012.

The case was turned over to detectives from the Bergen County Prosecutor’s Office, who unraveled what they said became a much larger scheme involving victims in Closter and Glen Rock, as well. Victims included Englewood restaurant owner Carlo Bartolomeo and Bergenfield photographer/writer Elizabeth R. Burchard, they said.

Predovan had told the investors that she worked for financier George Sorros in the 1980s. So detectives checked with Sorros, a Hungarian-American octogenarian business magnate, investor and philanthropist known as “The Man Who Broke the Bank of England” because of his $1 billion in investment profits during the United Kingdom’s 1992 “Black Wednesday” currency crisis.

But Sorros, who has donated more than $8 billion to human rights, public health, and education causes, said he’d never heard of her.

A man who tutored the boys worked at the Klein home to make extra money while he and his wife were both in college and expecting their first child compared Predovan to the serpent in the Garden of Eden.

“There is true evil in this world,” he testified in court on Friday. “It doesn’t have to crawl through the back door because she comes through the front door, dressed as a beautiful woman.

“But a snake is just a snake.”

STORY / PHOTOS: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: A suspicious device that forced a brief lockdown at Ridgefield Park High School this morning was a previously used “stink bomb,” a source with direct knowledge of the incident told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.

Only 7th- and 8th-graders were in the building for statewide Assessment and Evaluation testing when an officer found what at first glance looked like a grenade in the school parking lot just after 8 a.m.

Students in the 9th through 12th grades hadn’t arrived yet.

FILE PHOTO: Boyd A. Loving

ONLY ON CVP: An Elmwood Park man charged with stalking his ex-wife, breaking into her house and secretly videotaping her having sex with another man is expected to plead guilty today to lesser offenses — but it’s far from a sure thing.
Lorenz Hen, 45, cut a similar deal with prosecutors last month for what were four indictments at the time. He then pulled out of the plea deal at his sentencing.

Last Monday, he was scheduled to go before a judge in Hackensack to get a trial date on a whopping seven indictments in all, but his lawyer said that Hen left the courthouse for a supervised visit with his children.

The next day, the Israeli native was completing the paperwork on his plea deal when his interpreter had to leave for court appearances in Brooklyn.

The case began in September 2012, when authorities charged Hen with attempting to assault his ex-wife and neglecting their 2-year-old child. Although she’d obtained a restraining order against him, prosecutors said Hen violated it by phoning the woman, approaching her in public and breaking into her house.

Less than a week later, they charged him with stalking for another violation. A judge set bail at $10,000.

Then things got ugly, prosecutors said.

After breaking into his ex-wife’s house, they said, Hen hid and then videotaped her and another man having sex. He then showed the video to the woman’s religious leader and threatened to distribute it to friends, business associates and others, authorities said.

Seven charges in all were filed, after which Hen posted $2,500 bail and was released.

More indictments followed — two of them last week for stalking allegations in August and November of last year and in February. Bail was $25,000, which Hen again posted.

Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Jessica Gomperts told CLIFFVIEW PILOT that Hen has been charged with accosting his ex-wife so many times in public that she wonders whether he was using a tracking device.

Defense attorney James Addis said his client is through with stalking, prepared to take responsibility for his actions, and ready to move on.

Assistant Bergen County Prosecutor Jessica Gomperts, attorney James Addis, Lorenz Hen
(STORY / PHOTOS: Mary K. Miraglia, CLIFFVIEW PILOT Courthouse Reporter)

Police chased a Fort Lee man from the Vince Lombardi rest stop through several towns overnight before cornering him in an Englewood apartment.

They finally found Edward Lawrence Jones — who turned 46 today — hiding in a Rock Creek Terrace apartment around 12:30 a.m., a law enforcement source told CLIFFVIEW PILOT this morning.

NJSP Trooper Jeff Flynn confirmed that troopers began chasing Jones at the New Jersey Turnpike rest stop in Ridgfield around 10 o’clock last night after he called 911 several times to report that he was being followed by dozens of cars.

After ignoring the troopers who approached him, Jones drove off in his Toyota Sienna as they tried to remove him from the vehicle, Flynn said. They chased him to Hackensack, where the trooper said a concern for safety prompted them to back off.

Local police joined in — among them, Englewood, Fort Lee, Leonia and Palisades Park departments — as Jones doubled back east.

He then abandoned the car and ran, Flynn said.

The Bergen County Police Department’s K-9 Unit was summoned and helped lead to the capture just after 12:30 a.m.

Jones was being held on $250,000 bail, charged with eluding police, attempting to elude police and obstruction.

He also received several traffic summonses.

MUGSHOT: Courtesy BERGEN COUNTY SHERIFF (IMAGE: GoogleMaps)

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: Authorities said they couldn’t say for sure that a man and woman who died shortly after being pulled from the Hudson River early this afternoon jumped into the water from the George Washington Bridge.

The couple were plucked from the river by New York City police and fire responders about 1,000 yards south of the bridge around 12:10 p.m.

A half-hour earlier, workers working midspan on the bridge reported seeing the couple float by, said Joseph Pentangelo of the Port Authority Police Deparatment.

CPR was administered after the bodies were brought to the 125th Street pier and both were rushed to St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital, Pentangelo told CLIFFVIEW PILOT.

The man and woman — described as white, between 35-45 years old — were both pronounced dead soon after, he said.

Pentangelo said police couldn’t yet say with 100% certainty that both jumped from the GWB together.

“They had no ID. No car was found on the bridge. No note was left,” he said, adding that authorities were continuing to investigate.

RELATED: GWB a ‘suicide magnet’?

Despite the force of the impact, 20 or so people have been said to have survived the GWB’s 212-foot drop.

A 28-year-old a former Naval Academy water-polo player was the last one, in 2009. Several years ago, a woman was plucked from the water alive but suffering from serious lifelong injuries. The same for a man who lived to tell about his leap in 1968.

Then there was a Bergen County who in the 1940s bet a friend that he could survive. He swam to shore, collected his money — then died of his injuries a few days later.