The Collar Bomb Was a Hoax

Madeline Pulver is free after the collar bomb was ruled to be a bust.

This morning we told you about the Australian teenager, Madeline Pulver, whose studies were interrupted when a man broke into her house and attached a collar bomb to her neck. The man left a ransom note for her father, one of the wealthiest businessmen in Sydney. Pulver was reunited with her parents after authorities spent 10 hours removing the bomb from around her neck. According to the New South Wales sate police assistant commissioner, Mark Murdoch, the whole thing was, "a very, very elaborate hoax," The Guardian reports. The complicated device around her neck was just some well organized wires. The device was described as "very elaborate, very sophisticated" by police. Murdoch spoke the Sydney Morning Herald and said, "It was affixed to her by a chain or something similar, which eventually took us a fair while to remove ... and that added to the trauma that Madeleine experienced and prolonged." Police are searching for the identity of the man who broke into the home. "There were some instructions left by the offender at the scene and those instructions will provide us with further lines of inquiry," Murdoch told ABC radio. It hasn't been revealed what was on the ransom note, but, considering her dad's status in Sydney, it was likely requesting a large amount of money.