The Bomber l Watch the FULL Documentary

[Music] people trust the mail system we get mail we get the packages all of those things touch every person not only is getting a package in your front door one of the most common things possible but there's also a level of excitement there we begin with breaking news in Northeast offices one person is in the hospital after another package exploded hours after the second explosion and another [Music] realize with a cereal box eerie Obama Obama sowing fear into a community your city is under attack what's gonna be on my porch what's gonna be mailed to me three minority victims who would target this person are these connected all my won-won if you see anything out of place we have packages in trucks rolling down the interstate we didn't know how big and bad this could become it's time to be vigilant you are racing the clock the trip wire your minds going a million miles an hour you're gonna stop him now special agents canvassing the scene on the ground in Austin the ATF surged their national resources over 600 FBI personnel all hands on deck for us with a bad paper bag with I told them to not let him get on the interstate Austin is the 11th largest city in the country [Music] fill ourselves as the live music capital of the world we have the South by Southwest Music Festival which is one of the larger music festivals in the country it's a dynamic city kind of the Silicon Valley of Texas [Music] most people that often feel safe about the city and about their community but that was shattered on the morning of March 2nd time 1 1 do you need pay I don't know what's going on my neighbor something exploded or something he's there's blood everywhere we need an annulus immediately contacted the officer I was on scene he said there's an explosion that occurred and if somebody was injured anthe Stefan house 39 years old goes to his front porch lifts up a package the first thoughts that you have as a city police chief is whether it was a hot water heater that exploded or someone welding too close to the tanks you know you don't think of the fact that it was an ie D Obama has he took another breath or not now ok keep going every single breath been cleared I grabbed the bomb truck and our gear and I started heading to that to that call' neighbor his bloody supervisor claimed 690 twenty-ninth transporting CPR still in progress the victims going around rah [Music] I got a call from my daughter-in-law and said that Stefan had been hurt that he had been in an accident that I needed to get to the hospital and because of the magnitude of the crime I was not allowed to see him no one knew anything no one would tell us anything that was the most horrible feeling I had ever ever experienced medics responded to a man in his 40s with traumatic injuries he later died at st. Davids Round Rock Medical Center he was dead I heard a scream I screamed and it was through the news it was through the broadcasting of the news that we heard I heard what happened to myself a bombing is extremely unusual in any city does not happen much in the United States the bomb was heard for two blocks away that's not a normal situation a life was taken the safety of the neighborhood was compromised a bad situation has already occurred we'll make sure to seem safe I see components that to a bomb Tech a train bomb Tech are indicative of explosive device unfortunately I see blood from the victim every post blast scene there's a tremendous amount of evidence left behind everybody ready by the time I arrived on the scene our federal partners were already there we already had the FBI we had the ATF they were on the scene and we were working in there is no information that we have right now to believe this is anything other than isolated incident everyone thought that this was one fatal bombing anytime you have a homicide case the first thing you do is start looking at was there some reason that anyone want to have this person killed I'm saying well how who would do this why would this happen and why my son why why him we came up with a theory on the scene the Austin Police Department's organized crime division had conducted a raid in the weeks leading up to this bombing on a house on that very same street and as a result of that raid we seized a large amount of cash and when we looked at that house and we looked at mr. houses residence they were very similar in appearance the stash house had lost quite a bit of money other people's money so we didn't know were they targeting them for retaliation so we did have a very early theory this was an intentional act but they got the wrong house the wrong victim for the next 10 days law enforcement agencies are still trying to solve this bombing on March 2nd and as they're still working on that case on March 12th another bomb goes off that Monday morning I was notified that we had another explosives on the way into work when the agents in Austin called me and said hey we have a second bombing it's consistent with the first one this package was out on your front doorsteps yes I don't believe this this is not a fanny this was a young man's beginning in the spice police have identified the 17 year old Raylan Mason as the teenager killed in the second bombing police are looking at similarities between this incident and the one on March 2nd in North Austin bombings are extremely unusual there's no way that it was a coincidence how are you this one it was in that moment that I realized that our city was under attack there is the possibility that these are related so if you find any suspicious packages do not handle them we're gearing up to start working the second bombing and we were notified of the third bombing box and it exploded now we have another victim she is 75 years old and Hispanic woman named Esperanza Herrera one woman was injured she was in critical condition at the hospital but recovering there was debris all over the street this device was near that front stoop area when they detonated because it was not inside the house was outside it just shot everything all around the neighborhood and as I recall it detonated as she stepped up onto her porch and I think that jarring motion of her stepping is what caused the actual detonation at the third scene is when I looked at the chief and said the chief we obviously have a serial bomber we need to set up a national command post here everybody ready based on evidence that we have at this scene as well as at the other two scenes this evidence makes us believe that these incidents are related we do not have a specific victimology or ideology that we have identified so assigning a motive to this at this point we're not possible to do that thank you very much here you have the police chief in a major American city telling all his residents hey watch out one of those packages that's on your doorstep could be a bomb you can imagine the fear that this set throughout the entire city everybody is on edge when that happened that was a predominantly Hispanic neighborhood historically so so we're saying three minority victims the victim number two young man is a musical prodigy you're like who would target this person the two first victims were african-american males and now they have a 75 year old Hispanic woman are these connected we've now had a series of bombs the first one being northeast the second one central East the third one South East Austin is a city that was really formed based on segregation I thirty-five the major interstate through city really was that divider line when we look at how these bombings started off with the first three events being east of i-35 that became part of the public discussion as well we were talking with the Civil Rights Division back at the Department of Justice we're looking at every idea to figure out what could this be bombings and in particular serial bombers go to the top of the list as far as fear everywhere you go in the country what happened in Oklahoma has made people feel more vulnerable the entire city of Boston is shut down right now the terrifying situation one of the reasons that no serial bombers by name is because there are so few of them Ted Kaczynski the Unabomber eighteen year long search for the Unabomber Eric Rudolph the most notorious and persistent fugitives on the FBI's ten most wanted list spent a year working on the Eric Rudolph investigation took us five years to find that individual we didn't want to repeat that that's what law enforcement was so concerned about they could be chasing this person for years even decades one of our battle crises this will not be another Eric Rudolph or Unabomber they're going to end this bombing as quickly as we could more than 700 reports of suspicious packages over the last week a lot of the city feels uneasy don't even approach it don't even try to handle it somebody is out there making explosives that have now killed two people until today Boston investigators had said there was no threat to the public historically we've gotten communication from bombers there wasn't a note we didn't know if it was a single individual or a group we really didn't know Sunday afternoon we had a press conference one of the purposes of that was to try to communicate with that bomber and try to get him to communicate with us we hope this person or persons is watching and will reach out to us before anyone else is injured or anyone else is killed out of this event we never got any direct communication from this bomber obviously he continued to places devices [Music] it's about seven and a half miles away from downtown Austin in fact from right here you can see of a downtown skyline March 18th I was on the DDI enforcement unit we were just driving casually monitoring the radios can we confirm there's an explosion or is still unknown been an explosion at the real estate sign and we responded because that's what our job is to do yeah ten-four go ahead start away getting all the troops heading your way this whole street was lined with federal agents and police cars at the fire truck quite a little neighborhood over and I walked over Connick towards this area I don't remember exactly but I know it was pretty close to here and there was a bicycle in the middle of the street and these two young men were right here on the sidewalk look at them look at the fence and realized that I was looking at shrapnel hey we have a shackle I had to start thinking like I was a soldier again in Iraq and I realized that this is a bomb and I just started walking slowly I shined my flashlight just looking and I just started doing what a soldier would do and I was like there's got to be something here you see the line hey Dooley grab a piece of tape right here a taper coat it's a trip wire stop right there we have a confirmed requires require everybody needs a hold for their ass I need nobody else to drive in this intersection approach the intersection the fourth explosion was in Southwest Austin last night two men in their 20s were hurt Austin police say a trip wire caused a device to explode as they were walking down the street this one hit very close to home to me literally was on the side of town that I live in this was indiscriminate anybody could have walked by it could have been a three-year-old girl it could have been a eighty year old grandmother this bombing seemed to almost be a signal from the bomber to law enforcement he did not seem to be specifically targeting people of color or any particular ethnicity these were two white kids in a white suburban neighborhood we went from trying to make a connection between three previous scenes - now we have a device that could target anyone the chief called a press conference about 2:00 a.m. in a parking lot to tell everyone you got to be careful of everything now it's a tough message to deliver to the community if you see anything that looks out of place you need to call us because the bomber kept changing his delivery mechanisms and he kept increasing his level of sophistication we didn't know what would be next we want everyone within a half-mile radius of this intersection of dongseong Drive and Republic of Texas back here in Travis country to stay inside your homes until we have had a chance to deem this neighborhood safe I remember telling the citizens you can't go in your backyard it's a crime scene I remember clearly the citizens saying we're scared we're not even sure if we can leave our house safely and we can't believe this is going on in Austin in the US we slept in our trucks until the next morning when the Sun came up and then we did our sweep for secondary devices to make that scene safe to clear it for evidence people to come in the device was placed on the ground and he covered it the device with the sign to conceal it somewhat immediately noticed some batteries that were consistent with the batteries that were used in other devices the tripwire ran across the sidewalk here and was probably only about three inches off the ground and it was anchored to a metal stake somewhere around this location right here this entire wall was just covered with pop marks from the shrapnel that was propelled from the device we had people of interest throughout this investigation the night of the tripwire device we knew where those people were and they were nowhere near that so unfortunately in the morning we start processing that scene we were at square one the bomber he start trying to think about what's in his head now is he mocking us is he saying look what I can do he or she is telling us hey I'm ahead of you and I've got a lot of tricks up my sleeve we were on a couple hours of sleep and we get that call in the middle the night that there's been another package at the FedEx facility breaking news a package exploding at a FedEx facility I got the call from the bomb squad commander of San Antonio and he said Mike we'd have a device go off insurance which is a suburb just north of San Antonio and the FedEx facility this is a fit blast in the state in under a month we arrived right away you're processing in your head are we gonna clear this scene there's still packages or social trucks that haven't left when the FedEx package detonated at the facility that provided critical evidence that the subject had changed his MO that elevated our concerns tremendously because now you're shipping something and before we knew they were placed this is the sum of all fears for law enforcement because now it shows that the bomber is sending his packages through the mail the nightmare scenario is they could be anywhere to be anywhere across the country god forbid give me an engine out there as well in case there's any sense my mom found out subject mailed two packages one of which was now in Austin I called the FedEx facility in Austin describe the package to the manager and he said yes we have that particular box it's on the dock for outbound delivery so at that point I told the manager that is alive and provides explosive device evacuate the building and then called the bomb squad another package found at the facility FBI requesting the facility to be evacuated what's going on boys are gathering at the front I get a call on my cell phone from the scene in San Antonio saying hey get to the FedEx sorting facility they have one of the packages there that has not detonated line down the highway to get there soon as we could they had that package isolated we immediately sent one of our robots inside and look at the package get the tracking numbers off of it and see that yes this was we saw exactly what we thought we would see from the x-ray was the same type of OEE that we assumed had detonated all the other bombs our bomber now has placed a device into the FedEx system there's going to be tracking there's going to be video of him we were able to send a team of agents to the FedEx store where he was shipped it interviewed the store clerk pulled a video showing the bomber walking in he was wearing a disguise in his rank gloves the employee sent something was wrong so he followed him to the door and noticed that the bomber had parked three businesses down instead of right from the store everything sped up very quickly at that point because FedEx employee said he went and got into a red Ford Ranger the fact that he walked brazenly into a FedEx facility to drop off those two packages that was his biggest mistake it's hard to underplay how big of a deal this was this was a blank cheque type of national incident the federal government made this a priority for the ATF surged their national resources over 600 FBI personnel on scene you are racing the clock and you're trying to prevent another tragedy and you're trying to make the madness stop when you're developing probable cause to identify a suspect it's usually a bunch of small pieces that fit together little tick marks little clues we had a truck description from FedEx but also at the tripwire scene there was a red sign that was used we found out from a local vendor that only six of those have been sold in the last 90 days [Music] through an investigation we determined this was the store that a lot of the bomb-making materials were purchased accident they provided us a list of different items that they thought might be involved such as the picture of the gloves that the subject was wearing when he dropped off packages we were then able to identify those gloves come up with a product identification number and combined with that and the sign is where we were able to generate the one receipt purchased here in Iraq we can then look into that transaction on our CCTV see the subjects or subjects who are purchasing with those items we walked into the building he asked the door greeter some questions you tell he was kind of asking where certain items were minutes later he came back with some of the items that we were looking for after watching numerous videos you know he was wearing his guys at FedEx we were pretty certain it was our subject we're able to find out when he walked out of the store followed him across the parking lot saw what kind of vehicle he went in it was a bit of a distinctive truck there's a way forward I was able to backtrack find it when the vehicle pulled in got a really good shot of it I was able to provide that information to law enforcement all of this information that's developing in real time is being fed back to the command center and among the dozens of people sitting there is an analyst from the FBI named Giordano we finally had a good description we reviewed a lot of transactional records I specifically was looking for how the bomber I went to one of my supervisors and said I I can't think of anything more simple than running some of this information from the beginning of the bomber case against vehicle registrations and see if any of these people happen to have a red truck it's that simple her job is to fit the pieces together and she basically starts making lists I was systematically going through each name and I got to about the seventh name and it was the Bombers name and I conducted a search to find out what kind of vehicle he had registered to him if he had one it was exactly the vehicle that we were looking for I located his photo and his identifiers and it matched it up with the subject description that we had from the FedEx interview it was a heart-stopping moment there was a full-court press once they know who he is to capture him because they knew the longer they waited there was a greater potential that other people could be harmed we had undercover officers watching the home that the bomber lived in as well as other residences that he was connected to but what we didn't know at that moment was whether or not he was in one of those homes what's incredible is the speed with which they went from not knowing anything about this potential bomber to knowing exactly who they think he is having an address and thinking about a raid that could neutralize him he was paranoid about what was going on and so he stayed away from the house he turns off the cell phone around once something in the morning he wanted to know more information that's when he turned the cellphone on and with different techniques we were able to locate the area where he was the FBI is the first to get into the parking lot with mark Condit and they have eyes on him I thought I'm just go through hotels and look through the hotel parking lots my first hotel that I went by on the right was the Marriott Courtyard that's where I found him I was in the command post the surveillance team reported we've got immediately people start getting called SWAT teams getting ready hey do y'all know if FBI was working this area to do we can't spook him the Bombers car was directly over this hedgerow in this corner we went around the front of the hotel turned off our lights we noticed then there's exhaust coming out of the car and it's kind of an oh crap moment it's super quiet out here if he's in that car and he's awake and he's alert then he just saw a couple cars back in here and nobody get out of the cars we were all in our body armor prepared for anything and he don't know is there anything in the vehicle did he wire the vehicle up longer i sat there you just got this feeling he's finalizing his thoughts I got an eerie feeling that that wasn't gonna end well back out once heat went mobile the units were already owned in that they were moving in behind him I backed out proceeded in behind him as well a PD SWAT had the two vehicles that were directly behind him followed him out he proceeded south on the service road turned out to go to the frontage road to buy 35 right now the red light stopped him I don't think that he would have noticed right away but what happens he he takes an access road one o'clock in the morning and then he gets red light at an access road we had quite a few people pull up behind him and if you look at the videotape you see a pretty long train at that point the guy knew the idea was that we needed to hit his van hard enough to try to disable his vehicle this was the worst-case scenario this is not the way they actually wanted to take down the bomber we were using two regular passenger vans not ideal at all one of our biggest fears is on impact it was going to explode so I told them whatever you do you've got to stop him before he gets on the interstate the biggest fear was Marc Condit disappearing is what else is he gonna blow up based on the randomness of his attacks the disregard for human life he didn't care who he hurt or killed we had to stop him that night no matter what happened we were gonna stop it we're gonna stop him now [Music] all right made contact with a Fanta made contact with so we exit our van and move up to the vehicle and he detonates an explosive device inside his vehicle initially I saw the flash and I felt shrapnel or debris or whatever hit my face and I stepped back I was one of the first up to the windshield area and could see inside I quickly recognized that that our suspect was no longer a threat at that point I can't even describe to you how bad it felt listening to the radio traffic there I remember distinctly going to a different radio channel to advise dispatch saying I have an officer that's fired shots we've had an explosion down this Lee we had called for a driver's side assault but because of the way the vehicles ended up with his vehicle in the ditch that was modified on-the-fly and we ended up approaching on the passenger side I'm really lucky that I didn't lose anybody if you watch the video the explosion the primary amount of pressure came out that driver's side door so if I'd had somebody right at that driver's side door I probably would have lost them the suspect is deceased breaking news the suspected serial bomber in Texas is now dead forensics teams are still combing through that bomb site yes there was a moment of relief in that we had at least taken who we believed to be our prime suspect but we didn't know what he had been doing whether there were more bombs still in the community somewhere the bomber is now dead but the threat lives on they don't know if he's been working with accomplices and they also don't know what's inside that house and we had discussed that night the three of us there on the scene we got to maintain this tempo for at least another three days to make sure there weren't other packages we knew that we had to hit that house the next morning when we got to the house there was probably about ten FBI SAV T's there with ATF as well actually sat down for a couple minutes and decided to gauge who had had the most sleep versus who had the least and the guys with the least sleep served more of a support role it was the only safe way to do it because we're dealing with a bomber we don't know what's in the house that entry was very methodical and careful [Music] what's clear that he was gonna ramp things up and he had the capability to build much bigger devices all that stuff was in his house along with the wig and the gloves and everything that we tied him to this investigation was in his bedroom I mean he could have placed a bomb under any of our vehicles but you don't even know the motivation it was all random he didn't know any of the people he was sending them to what they found in the house was evidence leading them to understand how mark Condit built these devices but what they found in the car was something that might answer why he did this a phone with a 25 minute manifesto that he'd recorded on it that night on that tape there is no mention of terrorism hate crime he says he's a psychopath and he likes killing people he purposefully said he has no livers and that's what continues to elude them they still don't have a real motive why did he do this I'd love to know why but we're left with what we're left with and and really the reality is there's no answer and there's no reason that could ever make any of this okay but we're in a position where we just don't know when our community was at its worst under attack from a serial murderer we saw American law enforcement step up and bring it to a quick resolution you have three big agencies working on most high-profile case in the country then Austin SWAT people running up to a bombers car you have bomb techs from the FBI the ATF Austin hundreds of analysts who go through my new pieces of information this is what law enforcement does they risk their lives to save people that don't even know to make sure that bombers don't kill any more people [Music] you [Music]

Channel: ABC News

Views: 3,497,326

Rating: 4.8989644 out of 5

Keywords: Austin, Texas, documentary, FBI, bomber, Austin bomber, search, investigation, law enforcement, suspect, victims, us, austin bomber, nightline, austin texas bomber, caught, mug shot, confession, video, surveillance, packages, mailing, mail bomb, austin bomber abc, full documentary, watch, 2018, motive, manifesto, podcast, mark conditt, how police closed in, car bomb, SWAT

Id: TJM_w43qf74

Length: 35min 3sec (2103 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 03 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/neglectedemotions]

gotta be honest i literally forgot about this guy until this very moment

[u/Radiant-Future-8]

Not frontline nightlne

[u/airrivas]

decent watch. Doesn't do enough for hassan piker though. literally, I don't think it even mentions him