In hunt for Texas bomber, investigators seek clues in life-or-death puzzle
AUSTIN, Texas - The serial bomber who is terrorizing Texas’ capital has not officially communicated with investigators. Yet, in some subtle ways, the bomber is doing just that with each explosive-rigged package that is found.
Law enforcement officials investigating one of the most brazen and deadly serial explosion cases in America in decades are struggling to read his bombs for any clues they can find. Five homemade explosive devices planted in packages and near sidewalks have detonated in Austin and near San Antonio this month, killing two people, wounding five.
On Tuesday morning, a sixth bomb, this one unexploded, forced the shutdown of a FedEx facility near Austin’s airport. Hours later, authorities said that an “incendiary device” went off at a strip mall south of downtown, injuring a man in his 30s, but that it did not appear to be related to the earlier package bombings.
Officials have launched a sweeping manhunt, both forensic and physical, for the bomber, whose identity and motive remain unknown.
“It’s such a random sending of these bombs,” said Nelson W. Wolff, the top elected official in Bexar County, which includes San Antonio. “You’ve got somebody out there, or possibly more than one person, that’s obviously got a system going, and that doesn’t mean it couldn’t be changed from one town to the other.”
The explosions - the fifth was at a FedEx center near San Antonio early Tuesday morning - do not destroy evidence of the bombs’ origins so much as blast it into many bits and pieces. DNA and other more technical fingerprints can remain. Switches, relays and homemade circuit boards often survive. If the explosive was contained in a pipe, then the inside walls of that pipe, even in tiny fragments, will be smudged with residue from the explosive it held, experts say.
While investigators have been tight-lipped about the details of the case, bomb experts and federal agents described an intense detective drama unfolding throughout Central Texas.
The FBI confirmed Tuesday night that the two latest packages located at FedEx facilities near San Antonio and Austin airport were connected to the earlier explosions. With six devices now tied to the case and no arrests yet, panicky residents have flooded 911 with more than 1,200 suspicious-package calls since March 12. Still, with every new bomb discovered, the evidence grows and, investigators hope, the space between the hunter and the hunted narrows ever so slightly.
Specialists from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who are working the case have honed their skills, and their eyes, for years. The ATF has long run a five-day “post-blast investigator” course for law enforcement around the country. Typically, once the classroom portion of the course has ended, the agency will blow up a car on a demolition range using a real car bomb, and the students will comb the range afterward for parts and pieces of the device that exploded.
At the scene of the first package explosion in Austin, a red brick house on Haverford Drive in northeast Austin where the first victim, Anthony Stephan House, 39, was killed, a large chunk of the white-painted wall next to the plywood-covered front door has been removed, probably by investigators who want to recover minuscule bomb fragments from it.
“The Unabomber put ‘FC,’ which stood for Freedom Club, on his bombs, so the investigators will be looking for any signatures that could give them some investigatory leads,” said Clinton R. Van Zandt, a former profiler with the FBI who worked on the case. The bomber, Theodore Kaczynski, was a mathematics professor turned recluse whose crudely fashioned bombs killed three people and injured 24 others over a 17-year period beginning in 1978.
One new potential block of evidence emerged Tuesday from the Austin bomber’s use of FedEx.
The package that exploded shortly after midnight Tuesday at the FedEx center in Schertz, outside San Antonio, was shipped from the Austin area and was bound for Austin as well. Another suspicious package discovered Tuesday also was shipped via FedEx, and it, too, contained explosive material, a law enforcement official said.
Both packages were mailed from a FedEx store in Sunset Valley, a small city within Austin, and a statement from FedEx suggested that they were sent by the same person.
The second package was turned over intact to law enforcement, marking the first time investigators will get their hands on one of the serial bomber’s unexploded devices. They may also be able to get video images of the person who shipped it.
“We have provided law enforcement responsible for this investigation extensive evidence related to these packages, and the individual that shipped them, collected from our advanced technology security systems,” FedEx said in a statement.
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