Austin serial bomber proves fast, elusive
Pattern suggests skill, sophistication
While serial bombers are rare, the rapid-fire pace of explosions in Austin this month has authorities scrambling to chase a suspect who is organized, sophisticated — and acting faster than in previous high-profile cases.
Danny Defenbaugh, a former FBI bomb technician who helped supervise more than 150 bombing investigations, including the 1995 Oklahoma City attack, said such serial campaigns are unusual and can take years to solve.
“In my experience, you are looking beyond a person who simply searched the Internet for how to build these things,” Defenbaugh said.
Investigators said the four bombings that have killed two people and injured four in Austin since March 2 appear linked.
Defenbaugh said the devices involved in the explosions — and the
“You are looking beyond a person who simply searched the Internet for how to build these things.” Danny Defenbaugh Former FBI bomb technician
range of apparent sophistication — probably has investigators trying to narrow a field of possible suspects who have some formal engineering experience in the military, law enforcement or from other sources.
“That fact that someone could build these devices, including the one with the tripwire mechanism, and not blow himself up, that means something,” Defenbaugh said.
Weldon Kennedy, a former FBI deputy director, called the bombings
“highly unusual’’ and a challenge for the federal and local authorities who have descended on central Texas.
Yet Kennedy said investigators may benefit from the recovery of one unexploded device that could provide a multitude of clues — from its engineering to its components.
Kennedy said authorities also are likely to learn something from where the devices were planted.
“The fact that these explosives appeared to target individuals or were sent through the mail and did not target a crowd of people makes me think that this is an individual and not a group with a particular political leaning or cause,” Kennedy said.
About 500 law enforcement officers are working on the case. Austin police are working with San Antonio and Houston police, the Texas Department of Public Safety, the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
Austin Police Chief Brian Manley said evidence collected from all of the bombings is being sent to the ATF lab in Virginia, where the devices will be reconstructed to determine any links in materials and methodologies. “We are clearly dealing with what we expect to be a serial bomber,” he said.
Kirstjen Nielsen, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, told reporters Tuesday that her department is working with the FBI to support the investigation.
The explosion early Tuesday occurred at a FedEx facility near San Antonio, about 60 miles southwest of the capital, while the package sent from Austin to an address in Austin was moving on a conveyor belt. A second bomb was found at the facility that hadn’t exploded, investigators said.
A bombing Sunday injured two men. The trigger was a tripwire along a road that investigators said was more sophisticated than the first three attacks. The others were each package bombs left on doorsteps.
Investigators say tracing a serial bomber to a person working for a specific cause is rare. Examples include Ted Kaczynski, known as the Unabomber, who mailed explosives in a campaign against modern technology from 1978 to 1995; Eric Rudolph, who bombed the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta; and George Metesky, nicknamed the “mad bomber” while terrorizing New York from 1940 to 1956.