A retired policeman realized that the mail sent to De Niro was a bomb after reading The Post

The retired police detective from New York who found the hand-made bombshell for actor Robert De Niro says he has to thank the Post for his discovery.

Retired Glenn Cunningham woke up Thursday at 3 am and checked his cell phone. Like every day, he was browsing his emails, then reading the New York Post app, where he found an article containing the picture of a parcel identical to the one that was on his desk a few days ago.

"The hair on my neck got up," he said Friday in an exclusive interview.

"I had no way of knowing what [the other packages] looked like … until I saw the post office. "

Cunningham, who has spent 20 years in this position, is currently vice president of security at the Tribeca Film Center, which includes controlling De Niro's mail.

Just on Tuesday, he was examining De Niro's last package and spotting a package that was later determined to be "the same" as the explosive devices sent by mail to the most democratic few days earlier, as reported by The Post.

He took the package – a manila envelope addressed to De Niro – mail around 15:30. Tuesday in his office at 375 Greenwich Street, seventh floor, and examined it.

"It looked like a tube – a pill, a candle," he recalls, pointing out that he was wearing several tampons. "The label has been glued."

De Niro receives several packages – at least "two full bins" – every day, said Cunningham.

He "took a mental note" of the package, he said. He did not open it – as he would not normally – but he put it aside, in a trash can behind his desk, so he could visit him when he returned to work.

Cunningham was out of the office on Wednesday for knee surgery. He planned to return to work next week, until the shock of Thursday morning.

"The instincts have taken over," he says. He called the anti-bomb squad, then the first constituency, which has jurisdiction over the area.

"The building was empty, with the exception of one of my security guards," to whom he immediately asked to "freeze" the building, he said.

Cunningham, who served in the police department from 1985 to 2005, watched the video surveillance recordings of the building on his mobile phone while the investigators were settling down.

The package for De Niro was one of at least thirteen sent to politicians and Democratic activists across the country.

On Friday, federal security forces arrested 56-year-old Cesar Sayoc of Plantation, Florida, after discovering a possible DNA connection from samples of two trapped guns and evidence gathered, said FBI director Chris Wray at a news conference.

De Niro broke his silence on Friday morning saying in a statement: "I thank God for not hurting anyone, and I thank the brave and resourceful security and law enforcement officers for protecting us. . "

"There is something more powerful than bombs and it's your vote," he added. "People must vote!"

Additional story by Tina Moore