Texas couple that allegedly brought arsenal to Tewksbury will stay in jail for a while

A Texas couple that’s been locked up for a week after the husband told police he kept a weapons cache in their Tewksbury hotel room for a secret government mission will remain behind bars at least until April 26, prosecutors said.

The suspects, Francho Bradley, 59, and Adrianne Jennings, 40, both of Frisco, Tex., will return to court on that date for a probable cause hearing, according to Middlesex District Attorney Marian T. Ryan’s office.

On Friday, the couple appeared in Lowell District Court for a dangerousness hearing, and Judge Stacey Fortes ordered that they continue to be held without bail, Ryan’s office said in a statement.

The two were arraigned Monday in the same courthouse on a slew of weapons charges in connection with the small arsenal, including a grenade launcher, that they allegedly stored in their room at the Residence Inn in Tewksbury. Not guilty pleas were entered on their behalf.

Their lawyers couldn’t immediately be reached for comment Friday.

Bradley allegedly told police last weekend that he needed the weapons for a classified mission, but Ryan’s office said Friday that investigators believe he was working for a Cambridge company. Authorities declined to name the company.

“At this point investigators have not uncovered a specific plot or wider conspiracy; however this remains an ongoing and active investigation,” Ryan’s office said in a joint release with Tewksbury police Chief Timothy Sheehan.

The couple got on the radar of law enforcement Saturday afternoon when Bradley called Tewksbury police to report that he believed his hotel room had been burglarized because a video surveillance device he attached to the door had cut out, authorities have said previously.

Bradley expressed concern because an unsecured gun was in the room.

A police report quoted him as telling the dispatcher that he didn’t want the gun to fall into “the wrong hands.”

Police went to the room and discovered several long guns wrapped in a flight suit, prosecutors said. Investigators then got a search warrant for the room and the couple’s vehicle.

They seized quite a haul.

The police report said the items recovered included an AK-47, an AR-15 with a grenade launcher and silencer, a .22-caliber rifle with a silencer, two .308-caliber rifles and three loaded large capacity magazines, a 9-millimeter gun with two large capacity magazines, a .45-caliber gun with two additional speed loaders, a shotgun, numerous rounds of ammunition, and multiple smoke grenades.

Police said Bradley refused to disclose the agency he was purportedly working for.

“He stated that he couldn’t tell us and that if we found out what he was doing, we would have to be writing reports for a long time, due to the fact it is classified,” the report said. “Francho came off very odd, it appeared he was trying to hide something and he was not forthcoming at all.”

Bradley also claimed to have previously served as a Los Angeles police officer and a military “bomb tech,” according to the report.

In addition to the firearms, the couple had several tactical military-style vests with “ ‘flash bangs’ and military-style smoke machines, tactical helmets, and military-style equipment to include satellite phones and radios,” the report said.

Bradley later told police he was a contractor for a company he owns called Ensyme Engineering but wouldn’t detail what the outfit does, the report said.

Jennings also spoke to investigators and said she and her husband “always bring the guns with us in case he gets deployed,” but she, too, would not elaborate, the report said.

During a separate interview with FBI agents, Bradley made a number of bizarre assertions, including that he served on the LAPD “sometime” during the 1984 Olympics and knew there were details of the O.J. Simpson case that were “supposed to be kept from the public,” police said.

Bradley also told investigators that he had “prominent roles” with Barack Obama’s presidential election campaign and the German government, working as a plainclothes officer in that country’s DST-K44 Unit, the document said.

Bradley at one point displayed a badge that said “Department of Defense, United States of America” and claimed to work for a “secret government agency,” police said.

Authorities said Friday that the badge appeared to be phony.

Bradley also claimed he “saved a one-star general who was kidnapped a few years ago,” the report said. “Francho also stated that his first wife who was 60 years old died of old age, so he married someone who is 20 years younger than him to ‘solve that problem.’ ”

But that story was contradicted by a Virginia man who spoke to investigators and said he’s currently married to Bradley’s ex-wife, according to court records. The Virginia man said Bradley’s former wife was traveling in Morocco and unavailable to speak to police, and that Bradley had been telling stories about his government work “for years,” the report said.

The man said, “No one knows if it is true or not,” the document said.