Change in tactics used in bombings is complicating the investigation
Until the latest bomb detonated Sunday night, the explosions that had terrorized Austinites in recent weeks appeared to fit a pattern.
The devices all appeared to be parcel bombs, delivered to homes. And the explosions all occurred on the east side — potentially targeting members of the city’s minority community.
Then, at about 8:30 p.m. Sunday, another device exploded — this time in southwest Austin — after someone rigged it with a thin tripwire attached to a metal yard sign near a hiking trail.
The latest attacks wounded two men, both white, who were walking along a road in Travis Country, an upscale and secluded neighborhood about 8 miles southwest of downtown. The incident came just hours after a televised news conference in which Austin Police Chief Brian Manley pleaded with the bomber to contact police, and in which he said investigators were “a lot further along,” understanding the construction, design and components of the bomber’s devices.
After the bombing, the chief highlighted the change in tac-
tics.
“What we have seen now is a significant change from what appeared to be three very targeted attacks to what was last night an attack that would have hit a random victim that happened to walk by,” Manley said. “We’ve definitely seen a change in the method that the suspect or suspects is using.”
And while Manley said he didn’t know whether a certain ideology or hate was behind the attacks, one thing was clear.
“We are clearly dealing with what we expect to be a serial bomber at this point,” Manley said. “Based on the similarities between now, what is the fourth device, and again, as we look at this individual and the pattern, and what we’re looking at here, we’ll have to determine if we see a specific ideology behind this or something that will lead us along with our federal partners to make that decision.”
Former federal agents and criminal profilers said the abrupt change to the planting of a bomb that would target random strangers brought a whole new series of questions to an investigation that has rattled Texas’ capital city — as did the fact that it took place in a neighborhood far from the original blasts.
“We haven’t seen a serial bomber for a number of years,” said David Chipman, a retired special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. “And the way the bombs are being activated by people shows a certain sophistication that isn’t typical. … It just shows how the bomber is changing tactics, the person’s evolving.”
The bombings required patience and a willingness to engage in a very deliberate kind of violence, said Chipman, a former member of the ATF’s National Response Team. The former agent assisted in the investigation of the 1995 bombing in Oklahoma City of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building that killed 168 people, and of the probe of the initial bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City in 1993.
“A bomber is someone very committed to violence, because he’s thinking about what he’s doing,” Chipman said. “When you’re making the bomb, when you’re placing the bomb, potentially watching it go off — this is not a crime of passion, it’s a crime of plotting or design. … This is the same mindset as an assassin or hit man.”
Other retired federal agents said that bombs triggered by tripwires are more complex and pointed to an experienced bombmaker, potentially with military experience.
“That’s a big leap from where the bombs were before,” said Michael E. Anderson, former assistant special agent in charge of the FBI’s Houston Field Office. “To be able to attach a tripwire to an explosive package, and do it successfully, it’s someone who has experience in bomb-making.
“Someone that has made explosives, has disarmed explosives — to have, one, the knowledge, and two, the ability to put it together.”
Clinton Van Zandt, a former criminal profiler who spent decades with the FBI, said the bombings were reminiscent of the crimes of Ted Kaczynski, the “Unabomber,” who killed three people and injured 23 others with mail bombs from 1978 to 1995. FBI agents finally arrested Kaczynski in 1996 after what was then one of the most expensive investigations in the bureau’s history, and bombings faded from the public’s radar.
The devices used in the Austin bombings, and the bomber’s apparent familiarity with explosives, raised other questions for investigators, he said.
“This is somebody who’s taken their time, who’s probably built multiple devices, who has a bomb factory in their basement or their garage, or some location, and so far, they haven’t blown themselves up,” he said. “The police, the FBI, they’ve got a lot to do, a lot of investigation on the street.”
The speed with which the bomber has moved over the last three weeks also brought to mind the serial sniper attacks that took place in Washington, D.C., in 2002, he said, and questions about the true targets of the bomber.
“We’re seeing random victims: African-Americans, a Hispanic, and now we’re seeing two Caucasians as of last night,” Van Zandt explained. “Are these just random victims of opportunity? Or does the bomber or bombers have an ultimate victim that he may or may not have gone after yet? All of these things are on the table.”
In previous high-profile, serial attacks, like the Unabomber or the D.C. sniper attacks, the killers did not immediately contact authorities, he said.
“Hopefully they reach out and they tell us what point they’re trying to make, and why they’re trying to make it, ” he said.