As most of you are aware there have been some bombings recently in Austin, Texas. These now total 4 separate bombing incidents and have claimed the lives of at least two people. The most recent bombing took place Sunday evening and injured two people. What makes this string of bombings so interesting is that the first three took place on the east side of the major interstate highway that runs north and south through the town, I-35.
The latest one took place west of I-35 in the southwest part of town and the bomber has “upped their game” with how they are going about their business. The first three bombs were all package bombs that were left on residential porches sometime during the night time hours, when then occupants of the residences came out and discovered the “packages” in the morning they instinctively picked the packages up to examine them. The movement of the package caused the bombs to detonate and explode in the people’s hands.
The alphabet soup agencies of the government have determined these bombs all were constructed by the same person, all the bombs contained a motion sensor device and had a switch that would allow the bomb to be transported without fear of exploding but once it was placed in the location the bomb was “armed” by setting the switch to allow the motion detector to work, then when the bomb was moved it would detonate.
This latest bomb didn’t use a motion detector to activate the detonation, it used trip wires that were placed across a path that is used by bicycle enthusiasts who ride their mountain bikes on this particular trail, the two bikers who ended up tripping the wire were actually walking their bikes at the time they tripped the wire and detonated the bomb.
Needless to say, every top of the hour news cast on the radio has a story regarding the bombings so it is hard not to hear about what is going on in Austin. There had been speculation that these bombings were somehow related to the South X Southwest Event that was going on in Austin that attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors to it each year from around the world. The first bombing to place well before the start of SXSW and the latest bombing was the evening after the event ended, so I am guessing that there is no relationship to the two events. There for sure were a lot of major media companies in the Austin area during SXSW and so these bombings made national news and even some global coverage according to the local radio stations.
Another major event kicked off on Monday in Austin, this would be the Dell Match Play PGA Golf Event. So there is a lot of national and global media still in the area to cover the golf event, 64 of the top golfers in the world will compete this week at the event. Will more bombings occur this week because of the media? My guess is it won’t make any difference what media is in Austin or not in Austin, the bomber has his own time line of progression is my guess.
This latest bomb placement was in an area named “Travis Country”, which is mainly white residents and a pretty affluent area, the three previous bombing were in lower income racially mixed areas. The officials are hoping that surveillance cameras on some houses may lead to a break in the case and they are asking any homeowners who have cameras to turn over their videos to the authorities so they can examine them.
I have my own thoughts on who this bomber is, not by name but by type. I see this bomber as a home grown terrorist it won’t be some Jihadist, and it will be a former US service person that has an ax to grind with the “system”. The person more than likely worked with explosives while in the service, he will be recently discharge from the military and not getting the treatment he needs for PTSD. The bomber has it in his mind to commit enough of these bombings that when he eventually decides to allow himself to be caught, the authorities will have no choice but to deal with him for life. With PTSD he can easily be classified as “crazy or insane” by some doctor, just wait and see. So the death penalty will be out, if he even were to stand trial.
He is also from the area and he has a good recollection of the “I-35 Rock Thrower” that terrorized Austin not that many years ago. Briefly, the rock thrower was first thought to be dropping large rocks from bridge overpasses into the windshields of cars. No one was killed in these incidents, but one incident did leave the driver of a car in a vegetative state for the rest of his life. The rock thrower case went on for a couple years before it was eventually solved. The police for at least a good year were concentrating their focus on the bridges, they were convinced that the person was dropping the rocks, and then running off the bridges and into the surrounding areas. All these incidents were happening in the middle of the night, mainly between 2 and 4 AM, the police figured it was some drunk getting his kicks by dropping rocks while walking home from the bar.
It turned out that the person doing the rocks was actually throwing them from a moving car, head the opposite direction on the freeway as the targeted vehicle. The guy was left handed and could throw the rock into the oncoming vehicle windshield even though it was a divided road; it only had a concrete divider about 3 feet high. This guy was well known around city hall, he was always there at the city council meetings expressing his displeasure with something the city was doing or not doing. He just also happened to be the person who called 911 on several occurrences to report the rock throwing to the police. You would have thought that the police investigators would look at such things as when the call came in and from what number, but it took well over two years for them to piece that together.
I believe that the police already have video of the bomber suspect at their disposal, just likely haven’t even thought to look at it. That video would be from local news coverage of the bombings; news crews have been to each location and have interviewed several people in these neighborhoods where the bombings have taken place. Just like most arsonists like to see the fires they create, this guy is probably the same in that he wants to see the carnage of what his bombs produce. He could just watch it on the news but he may not get the sensation that seeing it in person would give him.
I predict that there will be five more bombing incidents in the Austin area over the next eight weeks. The bombs will more than likely start being placed in higher pedestrian traffic areas, and eventually will be remotely detonated using cell phone technology. This guy for sure wants to be caught, he just wants to make sure that he makes the authorities play the game of cat and mouse before he allows himself to be caught.
So that is my “Big Bang Theory” for the Austin situation, I bring this up because I have to be in Austin for the next three days on business and while I am not worried about being there, I damn sure will be paying attention to the things around me. So Austin PD, FBI, Texas Rangers and any other agency investigating this case, go take a look at the news videos and see if there isn’t a person showing up in the background footage at all these locations or most of them.
You can analyze bomb debris until the cows come home and know everything there is to know about the construction, detonation, explosive materials, the nuts, bolts, scrap metal shards and such but if you seriously want to catch this guy before he is ready to be caught you need to be looking at the videos, in my opinion. From past Austin incidents it seems that some of the most damning evidence goes unnoticed for long periods of time.
