The Unabomber /// Part 1 /// 482 | Forensic Files

foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you're doing thanks for
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pretty songs and he likes to sing along he is the captain thank you thank you thank you it's good to be seen and good
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gather round grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true crime [Music] thank you
[Music] thank you murder is a broad and fascinating crime people murder for love and for hate
some murder for money others for want of money some people murder in a cold insane rage
and some people murder with the calculating skill of a butcher some people use guns or knives or their
hands some people murder children exclusively or women and some people plant bombs and high
traffic locales and some mail them to specific targets New York City's mad bomber a case
featured here in the garage was about an angry and yes very much a Madman who terrorized New York City for
16 years in the 1940s and 1950s with explosives that he planted in public places bombs were left in phone
booths storage lockers and restrooms and public buildings including the Grand Central Terminal Pennsylvania station
Radio City Music Hall the subway and the New York Public Library for 16 years a period stretching back to 1940 the
largest most formidable police force in the nation had failed to hustle up any worthy leads by 1956 the bomber's
handiwork showed a lethal new proficiency he declared his deadly intent and letters sent to newspaper editors each
rambling raging letter was cryptically signed FP desperation drove the police to pursue a
course they never before considered in the Department's 111 year history NYPD was going to consult with James a
brussel a psychiatrist with the expertise in the workings of the Criminal Mind if physical evidence could not lead the
police to FP maybe emotional insights could since a physical description of the bomber was unattainable New York
police believe maybe Dr Brussel could use the evidence to draw a profile of the bomber's inner self an emotional
portrait that would illuminate his background and disorder Brussel told them that the
bomber was a textbook paranoid schizophrenic people suffering from this disorder he explained May believe other
people are controlling them or plotting against them they are typically reclusive anti-social and consumed with
hatred for their imagined enemies for all their derangement they're capable of acting quite normal until
inevitably some aspect of their delusions enter into their conversation the paranoia is the world's champion
Grudge holder bressel would explain we all get mad at other people and organizations sometimes but with most of
us the anger evaporates eventually the Mad bombers anger does not once he gets the idea that somebody has
wronged him or is out to hurt him the idea stays in his mind the bomber Brussel continued almost
surely operated as a lone wolf paranoids quote have confidence only in themselves
they are overwhelmingly egocentric they distrust everyone an accomplice would be a potential bungler or double
Crosser ultimately Dr Brussel was correct and his assessment of the evidence which was
simply the bomber's actions words and intent this specifically helped NYPD identify
locate and apprehend a domestic terrorist that eluded them for 16 years the mad bomber later identified as
George mateski was angry and resentful about events surrounding a workplace injury he suffered years earlier
Brussel called his approach Reverse Psychology today we call it criminal profiling
decades later in 1980 after four attacks the FBI created the unibom task force during the 80s they failed to identify
the Unabomber and then he went dormant the FED suspected the terrorists could be dead but then the attack started up
again and in 1993 things that the task force were ramping up and a new wave of Agents with differing array of expertise
were brought in to work the case it would be assigned task force agents all received a rather large memo titled
major case number 75 Dash uni bomb for well over a decade the FBI and other law enforcement agencies around the U.S
investigated the case they dubbed uni-bomb by the mid 90s the perpetrator was the
most Wanted serial killer in the United States and he was one that none of his victims
had ever laid eyes on an individual so mysterious and elusive that he was known only by the case code
name the FBI had given him Unabomber since his early bombings were directed at universities and Airlines
unlike the one big crude blast of Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh and his cohorts the Unabomber's attacks were
more like that of the Mad bombers but unfortunately more destructive and deadly these bombings were spaced apart
this perpetrator could wait and act over time he was more specifically directed he was clever
he was diabolical and his motive was wrapped in layers of Mystery this is true crime garage and this is
the case of the Unabomber [Music] on Thursday May 25th 1978 Mary Gutierrez was walking through a parking lot this
is in Chicago at the University of Illinois Chicago she's walking minding her own business when she sees a package
on the ground being the nice helpful person that she is she picks it up obviously wondering what the package is
doing just chilling there on the ground she's looking at it and she sees that the package is complete with shipping
address return address and postage in the form of several stamps but has not been technically mailed yet because the
postage has not been stamped indicating that the postage parcel has been processed so not processed not mailed so
what should she do well she takes this parcel to a mailbox to drop it in and send it along its way but the Box
doesn't fit so seeing the return address she thought I'll notify the sender so she took the package back to her home
the return address indicated that the package was sent from a professor Buckley Crist Jr at Northwestern
University in Evanston she tracked down a phone number for the professor and she calls him they make
arrangements for someone to come by and collect the package now a messenger takes the box from The
Good Samaritans home to the professor at his office at the University Professor Christ receives the package sees his
name and work address listed as the sender or the return address and the package was to be shipped to another
professor this is at the Rensselaer Polytechnic School of Engineering in Troy New York now of course Professor
Christ knows that he has not sent this package to anyone recently he does not recognize the package nor does he know
the professor on the other end in New York where the box is to be sent yeah which would spike your curiosity yes so
alarm bells are going off so Northwestern University Professor Buckley Chris Jr said that the package
seems strange he did not have any reason by the appearance of this package to believe that he was in any type of
danger but again he said the package seems strange and he suspected maybe something illegal was going on
so he calls the university public safety officer so unfortunately the officer made the determination to open the
package and the Box exploded upon opening and injured the security officer no one had any idea of where this
package came from or who was responsible for making the bomb and setting this trap
so if you haven't already figured it out this is going to be the very first attack of many but law enforcement will
not know this at this time they would not have any evidence that this is the first of many to come or even the last
of several before what they do know is someone targeted someone else and attempted VIA mail bomb
to injure and likely kill someone as well as those around them your very first objective is to identify the
Target and maybe you can trace this thing back to the sender find out who would want to harm the Target or kill
the Target and that could be the person responsible yeah but here it's a little different because you actually have two
Clues because you have a person that they're using as the sender and the victim that's exactly right Captain you
have to wonder just exactly who is the actual Target here first guess it would be
the person who was supposed to receive the package this being the professor at the Polytechnic School of Engineering in
Troy New York right but one does not go to all of the trouble of making a bomb putting
together the package and risk of getting caught not to mention risk of blowing oneself up
building and packing this bomb without a super strong desire to quote hit your target so why not just mail the damn
thing why even both with a return address unless you intend this to mislead the police or did the bomber hope that if he
dropped it somewhere someone would return to the sender and then the sender is the actual Target right or was the
bomber worried about being seen and possibly identified so they just left it out in the open at some random spot so
that some good Samaritan would find it and mail it for them or like the Good Samaritan they try to put in the mailbox
and didn't fit then one has to Wonder Could the bomber not really care who the bomb injures or kills as long as it is
someone near the University of Illinois Chicago and both addresses are simply meant to throw the cops off of the trail
so ultimately what we have here is an ineffective attack but a very confusing one at least
from an investigative standpoint one the materials used in this bomb and in this
package they're they're not unique enough to give any clues to law enforcement this is going to take us to
May 9 1979. a graduate student John Harris at Northwestern University is injured when
he opened a box that looked like a present it had been left in a room used by graduate students so this seems like
a bit of a repeat in a way doesn't it kind of an oddly placed bomb just sort of Left for someone anyone to snag it
and open it up so possibly completely random Target or is it again we have the question of are these random targets or
are they actually targeted victims because again we see Northwestern University as part of this
whole attack right remember in the first attack the package was addressed to be sent from Northwestern University here
it's actually left at Northwestern University to harm someone there yeah and starts making you wonder if it's a
disgruntled employee or maybe a disgruntled former student or current student and as you pointed out Captain
there's no real way to identify the attacker based off of the bomb and how it's constructed itself we're assuming
that the bomber putting these together was wearing gloves because there's no fingerprints left on any of the material
yeah they're not able to pull anything as far as forensic evidence off of these first two bombs and in fact because the
first one was going to be mailed you know it had the postage and all that already on it
the investigative lead on that particular attack was actually the United States Postal Service of course
they had local authorities working on both of these cases as well but they have the lead and it sounds to me that
even though they're not able to identify the attacker or the bomb maker based off of the construction of these
two bombs themselves it sounds to me like they were able to figure out that they were in fact
connected to one another they were linked and I will get into that later on the suspicions of why maybe it is the actual
construction of the bomb itself but the nickname that they were giving the bomber at the postal service was the
junkyard bomber because most of these items that were used to construct both of these two bombs were just
I mean they were crude unsophisticated bombs basically and these were items that somebody could
find at your local junkyard yeah or items that they were also suspecting somebody could actually if they were
handy at all they might have some of these items just laying around their house and some of the pieces and and
devices that were inside of these two bombs were handmade were were constructed themselves so yeah I think
there was probably something similar between the first one and the second one and where they go okay this we're
dealing with the same individual on Thursday November 15 1979 we have an attack on a large
passenger commercial airplane this is some scary [ __ ] right here American Airlines flight 444
flying from Chicago to Washington D.C this is a 727 jet with 78 people on this plane 72 passengers and six crew members
the plane left Chicago at 8 25 a.m going to DC and as they approached the capital
these 78 people they hear a muffled explosion on the airplane so we are still mid-flight up in the air
when a small bomb explodes now it looks like this explosive device thank God did not do what it may have
been intended to do right however the passenger cabin fills with smoke after this bomb detonates in the luggage
compartment the pilot brought the plane down early at Dulles International Airport
several passengers suffered smoke inhalation now this is super fascinating though to me Captain a few hours after
the attack a caller and I'm assuming here captain that it was all the same caller but a caller phoned four Chicago
News organizations one of them being the Chicago Tribune and in the Tribune it was reported that the caller claimed to
be a representative of an Iranian student group so this so-called group is claiming responsibility for this attack
and threatening additional attacks the caller states that other bombs might be placed in shopping areas and on the CTA
that's the Chicago's train line the subway system okay so this so-called Iranian student group they're
making these threats because they're upset that America is making efforts to try to deport Iranian
students which this makes a lot of sense because look it's no secret that relations between Iran and
America seldom have been good at times in they've been downright disgusting in fact all of the 70s was practically a
nightmare between the two and at times most of the world versus the Middle East were were just bad there was Black
September the 72 Olympics and just before this airplane bomb then there was the threat from this group Iran took
over the U.S embassy in Tehran and took U.S diplomats hostage and then the U.S froze Iran's assets so it's already this
is all very big news at the time so it's a big mess of what's going on between the relations between the two countries
so this threat is easily believable however you heard that that amazing guy in today's trailer leading into the case
this is about the Unabomber so we know that that's the direction we're going here right that trailer by the way was a
combo of some of my own writing mix with the writings from the book incendiary by
Michael canal and the anatomy of motive by John Douglas and Mark allshaker two books featured on our show before and
two must own books for hardcore True Crime garages now to be perfectly clear here Captain even though the explosive
device did not do what it was supposed to do this was really a very dramatic event I
mean imagine you hear an explosion the cabin fills with smoke the oxygen mask dropped down
the passengers are leaving their seats and running to the back of the plane well let me remind everybody fix your
mask before you try to help your children with their mask the crew is forced to make an emergency landing they
Evacuate the plan plane from the rear firefighters and fire trucks are there to greet the plane upon Landing they
have to cut away a small section of the plane and spray everything down with foam to put out the fire There's an
actual fire on this plane right so I mean some truly heavy heavy stuff here now it was determined that the bomb was
from a small package that was being mailed to the greater Washington area so the plane is transferring not only
passengers but mail as well on this trip everybody's seen Tom Hanks and Cast Away
it was a fairly small explosive device with a battery and an altimer which is an instrument that measures altitude so
this instrument could trigger the bomb as the plane was climbing an altitude okay so the the previous attacks are
investigated at the local level and with USPS right however an airliner bombing is a federal crime
so here we go bring in the feds and as Nick Cage would say this whole place is a crime scene well he said there's
roughly about 80 passengers or so I don't know if that's full capacity but they believe that if this bomb would
have worked correctly it would have killed every single passenger on that plane that's correct I mean we're
talking about a huge death toll and just a a security nightmare too at the end of
the day for the entire country well this really UPS the ante but I don't think right away do they know that these
University of Northwestern bombs are connected to flight 444 right that's going to take some investigating and the
short of it for this attack is that someone mailed an altitude-sensitive bomb to be on this airplane on a flight from
Chicago to Washington DC and again 78 people who got lucky that the manufacturer of this bomb was unable
to get it to be quote successful yeah and now we got the feds on the case and and have hopefully we get Julius
Pepperwood on the case [Music] foreign [Music] foreign [Music] we're back cheers mates cheers to you
Colonel cheers to you Captain happy birthday all right I'm 21. he's 21 but been drinking on the show for five years
and a half 21 and a half all right El Capitan we have another attack this one is on June 10th 1980 this is a targeted
attack on United Airlines president Percy wood who was injured when he opened a package
containing a bomb the bomb was disguised even inside of the shipping box the explosive device was encased in a
book called The Ice brothers by Sloane Wilson so the book was hollowed out with the
bomb inside you open up the book and the bomb goes off the package was addressed
and shipped to Percy wood at his home and that is in fact where he opened the box as said Percy was injured on his
hands face and thighs when the package exploded but thankfully he was not killed during this attack so we have two
bombs that are connected to universities and two bombs they're connected to Airlines this is the fourth bomb in our
series now of course we know that the FBI they're already on the job but with this new attack they are going to bring
in John Douglas who ultimately would be just one of many FBI profilers who work the unabom case I think captain at one
point in this investigation the FBI had about 150 agents actively working the case all at the same time this does not
include all of the local law enforcement agents he's working the case throughout
the years as well now the agents working this attack they're going to need to clue Douglas in on their assessment of
the situation that is as follows one the United Airlines has not received any threatening letters or phone calls and
neither has Percy wood or his family so there was no indication beforehand that this attack was going to happen
there was no request for money or any type of extortion going on with the airline or with the Wood family
themselves I mean this guy's pretty well to do two the airline has not received any
Ransom demand three there was no obvious motive in this case or now the other three
cases as well and four the agents in charge do not believe that this is the first bomb that
this attacker has mailed or placed okay Captain so no threats and no Ransom that's pretty self-explanatory stuff
right so anything you want to explore there captain or should we continue because I
really want to get into numbers three and four no apparent motive and not the first attack or question mark first
attack well it's interesting because when you don't have a ransom there's less evidence and like we said before
with these bombs in particular there's just no evidence Left Behind fingerprints or or DNA that we know of
or any markings to to even suggest that it's even the same bomber other than it seems like random items found around
somebody's house or tool shed or junkyard and these are extremely handmade bombs and what I mean by that
is even the mechanisms and devices the workings inside of the bomb itself a lot of those are handmade as well and so
this is someone who is very meticulous to be able to construct all of these items construct these bombs
and not leave any type of fingerprints or forensic evidence on the bomb itself Plus
you then have to package this baby up and ship it off and you've not left any forensic evidence on the packaging as
well now I think this is a good opportunity to take a deep dive into a little analysis of violent crime study
from the crime classification manual this will be good because it very likely ties into our case from last week as
well the timers or the Tylenol murders where we asked the question was the motive a form of public terrorism or
extortion or both or simply just a motive to kill so the classification here would be non-specific motive
killing a non-specific mode of killing pertains to a homicide that appears irrational and is committed for a reason
known only to the offender is subsequently may be defined and categorized after more extensive
investigation into the offender's background here are the defining characteristics of such a homicide first
we have the victimology the victims of a non-specific homicide are random with no
direct relationship between victim and offender victims can be male female adults or children and demonstrate a
disparity of characteristics and lifestyle here as you pointed out Captain the interesting thing with our with our bomb
attacks right is while the individuals who are opening these packages and being injured
by the result of these bombs while they might be fairly random you've already put together that in the first two we're
seeing a link to universities specifically Northwestern University and both of them and then the second the
third and fourth attack I'm sorry airlines American Airlines and United Airlines so what what I think you're
seeing here is less about the individual and maybe more about the overall organization themselves yeah there is
some some kind of connection there and it's not just like we see in other cases where they're random victims or if you
look at the timers that you just put bottles on the shelf and whoever gets them gets them so it's not it
so it's tough because we we're not seeing the direct link from this a terrorist to the victims but
there is a link there and so far there's no communication there's no one claiming responsibility
there's no one asking for money or demands and again it makes it just extremely difficult
now the frequent crime scene indicators of such a crime would be that it's usually a public place okay of
course we've seen that in three of these four attacks so this poses a high risk to the
offender there is nothing missing from the crime scene itself it is disorganized with no effort having
been made to conceal the victims so obvious thing here you send a bomb place a bomb whoever it affects or kills
that's the result you're not hiding the victims afterwards a firearm the weapon of choice is is
typical with this type of offender this is what we're talking about here Captain
is just like in the Tylenol murders totally random victims just like with a lot of these bombs
totally random victims with the exception of Percy wood but this also would talk and cover about the
like a public shooter a a school shooter or unfortunately what we've been seeing
in the news too often lately people shooting at workplaces or out in public places
the firearm as Douglas indicates would be the choice of weapon for this type of Fender is brought to the crimes now the
crime often becomes a massacre because it is the offender's goal to kill as many people as possible I think that's
what we saw with the possible successful attack on the American Airlines flight 444 yeah this
is reflected by the use of weapons that the uh that offer optimal lethality by multiple weapons and by an abundance
of ammunition now the crime scene staging is not present because it's not necessary there's no reason for the
offender to Stage the crime scene as pointed out most of the time these are totally random victims and typically
this type of crime is almost exclusively committed during daylight in public places
which we had in the first three of these four attacks because the offender wants
the highest death toll possible one the witnesses often are available to identify the offender as he is
unconcerned with being identified this is interesting because in the first two attacks
these bombs weren't really even mailed they were placed somewhere right somebody anyone could have spotted
someone placing this bomb in the parking lot where the first bomb was found or in
the um University where the second bomb was but it's pretty easy to just drop off the package as you're
walking and not be seen oh yeah yeah I would agree with that I think that the thing that would be
alarming is that it looks like a package with intent it looks like a package that
is that has a purpose and to see somebody randomly just place it on the ground in a parking lot I think would be
something that would be abnormal you'd think that the bomber would you know you have to worry about a couple things one
bending down and placing the the bomb on the ground uh the bomb going off but really you know these are a big enough
box that you would then have eyewitnesses that just saw an individual carrying a box and it might not be the
bomb but that could be a lead to the bomber basically in this type of crime the offender really has no escape plan
because they are fine with either committing suicide or being shot at the scene by police
now Douglas will go on to say that the offender usually has a disheveled appearance is withdrawn demonstrates an
isolated effect and possibly exhibits erratic Behavior and the search warrant suggestions should one get that far in
their investigation are as follows search the home of the suspect for weapons receipts and Records remember we
are hand picking these particular items in the search warrant itself if it's not
written in the warrant it's not seizable evidence so he's suggesting you want to
include weapons receipts and Records this is because you are looking four especially in this case this week
right bomb making materials and then last week's case poisoning bottles of pain reliever you're looking for
evidence obvious or a paper trail because in both cases we have someone manufacturing the death instrument the
bomb the poison bottles somewhere before the attack well and the fact that all these bombs are a little different it's
not the same exact bomb and like they're telling us I mean we we don't have pictures of each of the inner workings
of all these bombs but they're telling us these items could be found around your house they could be found in a
junkyard so you'd almost think that the individual would have to write out their
idea of how to create this bomb and so there'd be some kind of diagram or some blueprint for the bombs because they're
all different and and if they don't take it that serious they could blow themselves up right and often that's
what happens in these cases and I can't remember if we talked about the this last week or not but in poisoning cases
especially when you're trying to poison the masses like with with timers and with bomb cases especially when you're
trying to bomb the masses like we're seeing here they often either poison themselves
injure themselves or blow themselves up one could only hope to be so lucky when you have a case like this that's going
to span the course of years so of course as you pointed out the the bombs are different well why are the
bombs different because the bomb maker is learning and you're exactly right Captain you would anticipate finding not
only diagrams and notes of how one constructed the last bomb but also thoughts and ideas on how to better
construct the next bomb this is kind of a work in progress for this bomb maker yeah I agree and you pointed out the
home items found around the home or or junkyard or what have you inside of these bombs we're talking about things
like You're gonna find like pipes Springs wires a lot of wood was used in the construction of these bombs which I
don't know if that's super typical in these types of situations but you're also finding batteries a lot of these
bombs were powered with with everyday batteries Duracell Energizer stuff that you would find at most people's homes so
of course you're hoping to find physical evidence of such if you get a guy that you like as a suspect when you go to
search his home or his place of work because in the poisoning and in the bomb making
especially with the bomb making this is time consuming Activity one would need a
decent level of privacy to be constructing these bombs if not he could be turned in very fairly
quickly by anyone who is aware of what this guy is up to so what we do know is like what you're saying this guy needs
privacy he needs a workshop he needs maybe he's a mechanic and he can do it at his job
but then you go but he doesn't need a lot of money because the materials don't cost a lot but he has to be somewhat
intelligent or at least mechanically inclined because we don't hear of anybody accidentally blowing themselves
up and like you said we see uh the sophistication level of the bombs growing by by each turn now this is not
the first attack obviously and it sounds like they being law enforcement were able to link these attacks together
mostly based off of what kind of bombs they were seeing which again was mostly crude pretty unsophisticated handmade
bombs but you're going to recognize that the construction is somewhat similar and
materials are somewhat similar even though as the captain pointed out the bomb maker is getting better at
constructing these bombs but each one in the series each one of these bombs in the series they're getting a little more
advanced than the last and the bomb maker is putting FC FC on the bombs football club that's
right the Washington football club no the uh whoever was making these bombs was going
out of their way to stamp into a piece of metal inside the bomb or on the bomb itself the letters FC well there's your
sign right I mean so even if you even a layperson can look at four bombs and go well somebody stamped FC in these that
must mean something yeah yeah I even I could figure that out you got to get up pretty early in the morning yeah we
didn't even have to turn on the computer to figure that one out now the interesting thing here though is
nobody seems to know what FC stands for and of course you know that they're linked because they've not publicly
announced that hey the bomb maker is putting FC on these bombs so if there's a copycat out there it's not
in these four situations because the copycat wouldn't know to put FC on the bombs right so the FBI was holding
brainstorming sessions trying to dream up what FC could stand for did they have any guesses of what they thought it was
oh the the list was incredibly long I thought about including some of them here but I don't know I'll just be
interested some of them were really far-fetched um like obviously they thought maybe it
could be somebody's name so you know France is you know uh cockburn or something well and not only
someone's initials but then like some kind of organization some kind of group right because usually one thing that we
didn't include in that that classification and that that profile of this type of crime but when you're going
to profile this type of offender and you would have the same thing with the Tylenol murders case
even when these individuals are acting alone often they want to present the idea that
they are a group a a gang an organization they want to see an infection they want to seem bigger
larger more threatening than what they actually are on October 8 1981 a bomb wrapped in
brown paper and tied with a string is discovered in the hallway of a building at the University of Utah in Salt Lake
City the bomb is safely detonated without causing any type of injury now this is
interesting captain and I don't know the exact details here but I'm not sure if this bomb was simply
just lying on the floor tied together with a string or if the bomb was actually tied to something because the
description I found didn't State either way and what I mean by that is remember the mad bomber case he would put his
pipe bombs inside of a wool sock because the sock you could tie it to something or hang it from something because you
want the bomb up off of the ground right you know you want to hang that thing so up to like shoulder level eye level
maybe even higher because if it's lying on the ground you are practically shielding half of the bomb if that's if
that thing is off of the ground you can pretty much spray shrapnel 360 Degrees causing as much damage as
possible and often it is the shrapnel that kills rather than the actual blast so this being the fifth attack again
like we said we thought he was getting more sophisticated but we have no injuries of
this one so I mean good for the public but bad that he's continuing to continue on this bombing campaign right on the
the bomb itself while it may have been more advanced than the previous bombs it may just have been detected and somebody
was smart enough to identify it for what it was now on May 5th 1982 a bomb was sent to
the head of the computer science department at Vanderbilt University this was not opened by the department
head but by their assistant the bomb was sent to Patrick C Fisher but Fisher was
on vacation in Puerto Rico at the time and his secretary Janet Smith she ends up suffering several injuries to her
hands and face after she opened the package in his office on July 2nd of the same year 1982 a package bomb is left in
the break room of Corey Hall at the University of California Berkeley this package explodes and injures an
engineering professor I think this bomb Captain was just a small simple bomb right this one actually looks like it
was a bit of a step back as far as being you know more advanced than the others this one was a small simple bomb that
was made out of a like a little cigar box well then we have nothing so then we wonder does this guy like to smoke the
cigar well then we have nothing almost for almost three years then in May of 1985 another bomb was placed again in
Corey Hall at the University of California Berkeley this injures another engineering student and I'm guessing
that there's again items that that look familiar or the style which these bombs are made
look familiar but I'm also guessing that all these bombs were finding the tag FC
on yes the bomb maker is stamping little pieces of metal with FC and placing them
in the bombs it's the bomb maker essentially putting his signature his calling card on an indestructible piece
a piece that he knows is going to survive the blast fire crotch in or on the bomb he wants
the FBI and everyone else for that fact to know look this is me I am still here I am not dead I am not in prison and I
am not going away first we're seeing attacks on universities and then to Airlines and now we're back to attacks
on universities and two in a row at California Berkeley yes so whoever's doing this is
comfortable in that setting getting close and just placing these bombs in that area well again this is kind of a
tell here because we have we do have like we said before multiple people that they're sending to in the
University of Northwestern which is in Illinois and now we're all the way in California so does this
um terrorist does the bomber have connections to Chicago and to Berkeley right and the thing here too is
with these last two bombs they're placed or believed to have been placed in this
Quarry Hall which I I'm not familiar with the campus itself but I'm assuming that this is a
relatively open accessible building I mean I can't believe that it's a student or faculty member that is
placing these bombs there right this is going to take us to June 13 1985 and what I think we're seeing here Captain
is the start of maybe a busy year for our attacker so this is when a suspicious package was
sent to Boeing fabrication to their fabrication division in Washington this sounds to me like this one was spotted
and detected and identified for what it was a bomb because we have no death we have no injuries in this attack attempt
and the bomb is safely detonated so we have a second occasion where someone is able to identify the bomb as
an as a bomb before it triggers the mechanism to explode yeah Samsung's not that bright I mean
and maybe it's because we get so many more packages now than they got back in the day
but it's like I get boxes to my house all the time and I I just open them up I don't think twice about it yeah that's
one thing that I considered when researching this case you know I know my neighborhood and and most people's
neighborhoods the Amazon little trucks and vans are are frequent flyers in those areas and
constantly just placing boxes on doorsteps and and front porches heck we are subscribers and we advertise
things like hellofresh and butcher box and first Leaf wine club and things like that on this show all showing up in
boxes right at people's homes and every time I cut open that box from first Leaf
I go thank God it's wine and not a bomb yeah well I mean I guess the I guess the
difference is that you do see the the shipping labels and you you see who it's coming from and in a couple of these
attacks the guy didn't even bother to mail it yeah of course this was mailed here for the Boeing attack the attempt
on Boeing but in some of these attacks they're just leaving these random packages
where curiosity kills the cat thankfully no one's been killed but there's been people been injured by opening or
handling a random package that they find somewhere it's like too cheap for uh stamps on November 15 1985 a University
of Michigan psychology professor and his assistant were injured when they opened
a package containing a three ring binder that had a bomb inside now this was Professor James McConnell and research
assistant Nicholas suno they were both severely injured after suno opened the mail bomb addressed to McConnell
so again University again a package addressed to a specific Professor well again now we have to go even further
does this individual have connections uh to Northwestern to the University of Michigan to
California or Berkeley in California the bomber not only indicates that he is specifically targeting Professor
McConnell by addressing this package to the professor but also the bomber included a letter with this package
asking the professor to review a student's Master thesis so taking it an extra step further Captain addressing it
to your target but also not wanting this item to just kind of sit there randomly
this is a letter to encourage the professor to open up the binder because the bomb is disguised as a thesis in a
three-ring binder simple bomb the three ring binder is a little larger than some
of the previous packages that means it can be a little larger of a bomb a little more destructive but again a
simple action to trigger the bomb take the binder out of the package open the binder binder goes boom thankfully no
one is killed in this attack on December 12 1985 the Sacramento Bee newspaper ran
the following news article the title is Mystery blast kills Capital Merchant and the article reads A Sacramento
businessman was killed yesterday when a bomb that had been left behind his store
blew up in his face the blast shortly after noon mortally wounded Hugh Campbell scrutin age 38 owner of Ren
tech computer rentals in Century Plaza this located on Howie Avenue in Sacramento right this is a little bit of
a left turn I mean we have Airlines we have universities now we have a technology store
the device exploded just moments after scrutin left his store through the back door and headed for the parking lot
according to reports the blast blew scrutin about 10 feet the first person to arrive at the scene heard the victim
cry out oh my God help me and scrutin was pronounced dead at 12 34 pm at the University Medical Center he
reportedly took the full force of the blast in the chest there were no known witnesses to this
crime the blast shook the entire shopping center and shrapnel was scattered up to 150 yards from the point
of the explosion shrapnel penetrated this store's rear wall but no one else was hurt
no motive for the bombing has been established and there are no known suspects they said law enforcement said
that it's possible that scrutin was not the intended victim this according to the head of the sheriff's Homicide
Bureau in Sacramento investigators noted that the rear of the shopping center has a series of back
doors and identifying which door is for which store would not be easy with the doors that close they said how do you
know which door belongs to which business no suspicious activity was reported by
the merchants at the shopping center and interviews with employees did not turn up any significant leads in this case
obviously looking at these bombs afterwards that's we're going to lose some evidence with inside the bombs
because they actually exploded they actually worked but again are we seeing the signature FC in this bomb as well or
are they not telling the public at this point that this one's connected to the other ones well that's a good question
because they're not really clueing us us being the public in on everything that they seem to know about the bombs the
making of the bombs or who is making and sending and leaving these packages now on February 20th 1987 another bomb was
left in the parking lot of a Salt Lake City computer store so again Salt Lake City again a computer store or text Tech
type store the bomb this time severely injures the business owner's son but we have something very different
here Captain one of the employees at that store working at the store that day saw a man leave the package and from
that witness account we can create a composite sketch of the suspect all right so now we're we're gonna at least
make some Headway here this led to a widely distributed sketch of the suspect wearing a hooded sweatshirt an aviator
sunglasses and the suspect is sporting a mustache now do you think captain that this is probably
one of if not the most well-known suspect composite sketch of all time yeah yeah or at least In Our Lifetime
that's for sure yeah I couldn't think what of one on the top of my head that that would be
even closely comparable so they were Distributing a few different versions of this um DB Cooper
is pretty popular that's true as far as a composite sketch they were Distributing a few different
versions of this composite sketch for the public to see again it was very widely distributed at the time and would
be for years to come but one of the early ones I wanted to take it sometime here and read what is on this actual
wanted poster they were offering a fifty thousand dollar reward and stated that the suspect was wanted by the postal
inspection service for mailing or placing an explosive device and it goes on to say that on February
20th 1987 a package exploded at a computer business in Salt Lake City Utah bombs have been either received in the
mail or placed in the following states so they have somehow connected all of these according to this wanted poster at
the time bombs have either been received in the mail or placed in the following states Utah Pennsylvania Illinois
California Michigan and Washington my my gut is telling me that there's there's the signature FC on all of them again I
believe you on that 100 Captain I think this guy he wants the investigators to know that they're all connected he wants
credit for the attacks and he wants them he wants the threat of them knowing I'm not going away I'm
going to keep doing this it also goes on to say that the incident has been linked to 11 other incidents
which have occurred across the United States since 1978 injuring 21 people and killing one person the description is
given of the suspect and is as follows we're looking for a white male 25 to 30 years old 5 foot 10 inches tall to six
foot tall approximately 165 pounds slender build blonde reddish hair with a light mustache and Rudy complexion which
I was not familiar with what that means but what does that mean I always thought
people were saying Ruby complexion because I looked up Rudy complexion and it means like reddish color uh Rosy
color yeah I thought that was like Ruby and goes on to say that the suspect was wearing blue denim jeans a gray hooded
sweatshirt and Teardrop sunglasses smoked with smoked lenses not a lot to go off of there
no obviously this person thought that there was a chance that they would be seen placing this bomb in that parking
lot and even though it's behind the business they were organized enough in their attack that they chose to disguise
themselves or at the very least conceal their appearance in some manner with the
sunglasses in the hooded sweatshirt but now that we got this composite sketch they're going to be coming out and they
they're going to tell you they're all connected and all by the way this is a guy that we believe is the Unabomber
right so we have noticed the two major shifts in this case and of Investigation one the attacks have now become lethal
the bomb maker has retooled and constructed a better explosive device and two now we have something on this
guy we have a witness description so where before we simply just had the FC markings that's the bombers including
with the bombs now we at least have some idea of what this guy looks like foreign
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foreign [Music]

The Unabomber /// Part 1 /// 482

Part 1 of 2 www.TrueCrimeGarage.com

In the 1990’s the F.B.I. was hunting a serial killer they called the Unabomber. At the time he was the most wanted man in America. He some how managed to avoid detection and capture for over a decade. This week in the Garage Nic and the Captain explore and examine the case and the man who committed these terrible crimes.

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Brief Summary

The episode covers the Unabomber's attacks, criminal profiling, and the Mad Bomber's history in New York City.

Key points

The Mad Bomber's Profile. A psychiatrist helps NYPD profile the elusive bomber, leading to a breakthrough.
Airplane Bombing Incident. A bomb explodes mid-flight on American Airlines Flight 444, causing panic.
The Fourth Bomb Attack. A targeted attack on United Airlines president Percy Wood leaves him injured but alive.
The Meticulous Bomb Maker. The investigation reveals a bomb maker who is careful and sophisticated in their methods.
The Evolving Bombs. The bomb maker's techniques evolve, indicating a learning process with each attack.
The Signature of Terror. The bomb maker leaves a signature on the bombs, asserting their presence and intent.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

The Mad bomber's anger does not evaporate.

Description of the bomber's psychological state.

6:30WatchNov 8, 2022

Tension

70/ 100High tension

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