The Binge Crimes: Deadly Fortune - 19 Days | 6. The Bomber

Episode Date: May 6, 2024

Investigators follow new evidence that leads them to the identity of the Austin serial bomber and they make a plan to apprehend him. A roommate of the Austin serial bomber opens up in detail about what it was like living in a home where bombs were being built right under his nose. From Campside Media, Pegalo Pictures and Sony Music Entertainment, this is Season 6 of Witnessed: 19 Days Unlock all episodes of Witnessed: 19 Days, ad-free, right now by subscribing to The Binge. Plus, get binge access to brand new stories dropping on the first of every month — that’s all episodes, all at once, all ad-free. Just click ‘Subscribe’ on the top of the Witnessed: 19 Days show page on Apple Podcasts or visit GetTheBinge.com to get access wherever you get your podcasts. Find out more about The Binge and other podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts and follow us @sonypodcasts and @campside_media Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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their story. In four weeks, a typical Noom user can expect to lose one to two pounds per week. Individual results may vary. This podcast contains descriptions of violence and harsh language. Listener discretion is advised. Campsite Media. The Bench. Piccolo Pictures. I was really trying to make something of myself. I didn't really have what everybody else had. You tend to think that other people's lives are better than yours, and everybody goes

through their struggles. And you tend to think that your struggle is the only struggle that's really there. This is Colin Thomas. He was born in Ridgewood, New Jersey, and had kind of a tough go at things. His father died when he was 13, and after that, his mother and stepfather moved the family a lot. New Jersey, New York, Texas, back to the Northeast. Constant change.

For a teenager still mourning his father, it took a toll. There are moments when I had thoughts of suicide. Because it was hard. You know, I didn't get the best grades in high school. I did a little bit of college, but as we come to find out nowadays, college really isn't for everybody. He was in his early 20s, and like so many at that age,

Colin didn't really know what he wanted to do with his life. I don't want to say I was completely aimless, but I didn't really have like a coherent strategy. I didn't have that. The strategy was bad. I really wanted to strike on my own path, be the entrepreneur. I wanted the life that everybody wanted because I didn't have it. And I didn't have a car at the time either. I was sleeping on the couch too with my folks at the time as well. And I was working this little part-time job, but it cost me more money to get to that job. It was just rough.

It was annoying. I mean, I honestly, those are the worst days I feel like of my life. Colin says he had a falling out with his mother and his stepfather, and then another with the friends he was staying with. With virtually no money to his name, he decided he needed a drastic change. So he moved to Austin, a city he'd spent time in during his many moves as a teenager.

That was 2017, and in the burgeoning tech hub of Austin, Colin saw an opportunity. I did a lot of Instagram influencer marketing. Big-name influencers didn't understand internet marketing at the time. I didn't have anything else going for me, so I had to sit down and study every single day. I made myself marketable to the right people. Colin was basically a middleman between influencers

and anyone who wanted the help of influencers. He had some success with it, enough income at least, that he could stop couch surfing and get a room of his own somewhere. Some friends helped him find a room for rent in a house in Pflugerville, a bedroom town just north of Austin. It was just like a typical neighborhood that's quiet, kind of near a dead-end street. A perfect recipe for this, honestly.

When he went to see the house, Colin met the owners, a father and his 23-year-old son. They'd fixed the place up so the son could live there with roommates and collect rent, building a financial nest egg. The son would be sleeping in the room across the hall. He seemed decent enough. His name? Mark Anthony Condit. The man who, in a few months, would plant bombs all over Austin and become the most wanted psychopath in America. From Sony Music Entertainment, Campside Media, and Pegalo Pictures,

this is Witnessed, 19 Days. I'm your host, Sean Flynn. Part 6, The Bomber. Colin Thomas' first impression of Mark Anthony Condit was unremarkable. Caucasian, glasses, not overweight, but big-boned, pale skin, short hair, maybe 5'10". Pretty normal. I mean, normal as you think would be normal, honestly. See, I'm open-minded to meeting different people.

I have that extroverted personality. I can talk to people. I'm very sociable with people. So you meet all kinds of people through the years. You kind of judge people less, give people the benefit of the doubt. So he was pretty normal. He didn't really seem anything out of the ordinary. He had a love for a lot of geek culture, anime, I guess. He loved anime. You know, I loved anime too. So we had a mutual interest. He was kind of quiet. I met people who were more quiet

than he was. Mark wasn't the type of guy, you couldn't have a conversation with. You talked to him about stuff, about stuff you're interested in. We had food in the pantry. I shared that. He was like, hey, do you want this? I have popcorn. I'm not going to eat it. You can have it. I was like, oh, yeah, cool. All right. He also had a very firm handshake. So his new roommate and landlord seems like a normal guy. And yet, right from the beginning, there were some odd things that Colin remembers.

The first night, we were both sleeping in the same house. I was in my room, and he was laughing a lot and then, you know, cursing. And I'm thinking, oh, jeez, man, let me fucking sleep. I'm like, I want to sleep. I thought he was just tinkering with something. I don't know what he was doing. This was like October.

I had to just roll with the punches, you know. I'm like, okay, fine, I'll just get used to it, whatever. None of my business. I'm not going to ask any questions because, you know, this is not my house. I'll be renting it out. That's the thing about roommates. There's always bumps, little frictions, and you have to figure out how to get along. A few weeks later, a third roommate moved in.

Colin doesn't want to use his real name just for privacy, so he calls him Alan. They settled in, three 20-something guys. They're casual, cordial, just getting to know each other. It was a one-story house. So you walk in, you immediately see the TV in the back of the couch, and then right next to the couch,

you see the kitchen, and then there's a little hallway, and then the first room, it would be my other roommate. We just call him Alan. And then Mark's room in the left side, and then the left of that is the bathroom. And then across the hall, it would be my room. So we were diagonal to each other. No ground rules.

We all just introduced each other, you know, got to know each other, and that was really it. If they had an extra room, I needed to put a state. As long as everybody cleans up after themselves, pay their rent on time, then everybody gets along okay. Everybody minds their own business. I mean, that's basically what it was. Other than the fact that we played video games together.

Virtual reality, we played Xbox. Just a bunch of nerds in the house. I mean, we all had different schedules, so we'd go to work, and then, hey, if one of us is in the living room, why don't we all play some video games? You know, we had nothing going on. Eat some food, play some video games. That's basically it.

For Colin, a roomy house in a quiet neighborhood with respectful roommates was a welcome upgrade from surfing couches and wonder if he'd end up on the streets. Mark Condit, the youngest of the three, was their landlord, sure, but Colin remembers little acts of kindness from him. Things you don't expect from the guy who's collecting your rent. He'd go out of his way to help you out. He'd be the type of guy, if he needed something, he'd say, OK, yeah, you need your computer fixed? Because he knew how to work with computers, so if the internet wasn't working,

because we were changing the internet up, he'd go out of his way to help me, because my computer wasn't hooking up to it, it was an older computer, so he'd go out of his way to help me out. I'd say, OK, cool, thanks, Mark, appreciate it. That's the type of person you would never suspect of anything. And still, for all that, the truth is, Colin didn't really know him. I was so focused on my own life that I'm paying rent, I'm not going to go ask him about his

personal life. It's a business transaction, first and foremost. And I had no care what he was doing in his own life. I always ask people, well, do you know what your neighbors are doing next door? No. We assume that based on our own frame of reference because we know we get up in the morning, we eat breakfast, we go to work,

eat lunch, come home, eat dinner, watch TV. Same, simple, 9 to 5, every day. So when something like this out of the ordinary happens in the way that it did, because we're so close to each other and our rooms are so close, always keep in mind that you never really know what people are really doing. And yet Colin wanted to know at least a little more about his roommate.

The first time I saw his room was a glimpse of it. I didn't really see the whole thing the first time. I asked him, seeing his room, I was like, hey, I want to see the whole house. And he was very protective of it, as if he's hiding something. In my assumption, he was just trying to hide his mess. Most people were like, oh no, you can't see inside my room.

Maybe he's trying to hide something, whatever he's embarrassed about. And I asked him again a second time, can I see inside your room? And he said, no. He closed his door really quickly. He had a locking key on his door, so he would always lock it every morning when he left. And I said, okay, fair enough. Maybe you don't trust people. A little quirky, maybe, but it didn't raise any red flags.

In fact, at the time, Colin didn't think a lock on the door had any real significance. Average weekday, Mark would get up for work early. At the time, Alan was looking for work, and I was working as well. So typical day, Mark comes home around like 6. He goes directly to his room. He comes out around like 10 o'clock at night, and he would kind of like sit and make his sandwiches for the next day. And we'd chat and everything else.

Rather quiet. It's not like he couldn't have a conversation with him. Mark was a conversationalist. He could talk to you. He had a rationale to him. But he had like a very cold demeanor. You wouldn't even know he was in the house sometimes. Because it was really quiet.

I walk in the house and I'm like, whoa, crap. What are you doing here? He picked up on that and he started joking around with me. Sometimes I would sit down and he'd be hanging out by the window and jumps in. He'd shock me and joke around, ha ha, I scared you. I was a little scared he was so quiet. I'm not sure how that sounds now after the fact, but that's what it would be like. There were other things too. Moments that might not have stood out then, but now after everything.

I think he had anger issues. There was one time we were playing virtual reality one night and he got angry and he threw one of the controllers. He broke something. Mark seemed to have a very arrogant personality. He was smart and he knew it, but he also kind of gloated about it. Me and Alan were playing a video game and Mark would walk in and he's like, you guys are still playing that? He kind of acted like he could beat the game, which was a lot harder than he would think. So that's his personality.

He never talked about any friends he had. There was no friends that he told us about. I think we were the only friends he had at the time. At least friends in the context of hanging out and playing video games, that type of friendship, whatever you want to call it. I had friends over. They didn't think much about him, you know, they knew each other. But the thing about Mark, he was always kept to himself and I think he had a very

juvenile personality. He didn't have the same level as other people, but you couldn't really tell that unless there's like little quirks that you would have here and there. It was generally very intelligent when it came to computers and cleaning up after himself. He was rather always quiet around other people. Still, to Colin, despite these minor details, these blips in a seemingly unremarkable personality,

Mark Condon appeared to be just another acceptably self-absorbed 20-something trying to figure out how to be an adult. But then, just after New Year's in 2018, something in Mark seemed to shift. I think it was after he left his job. He wasn't sleeping in his own bed. He was actually sleeping on the couch.

Me and Alan asked him, hey, are you okay? I asked him, hey, are you feeling okay? He looked like he was kind of depressed. So we did ask him, we both did, hey, if you need to talk to anybody, let us know. Like, are you okay? He said he's fine.

A few weeks later, on March 2nd, Mark Anthony Condit set a bomb on Anthony Steffenhaus' doorstep. I love when the sponsors of our programs are selling products I already use. And that's why I'm very happy to say that Quince is a sponsor of the show. Finding the perfect gift can be really overwhelming, especially at this time of year. I like to give people things that they actually want. And so this year, check out Quince. It's a perfect spot for timeless gifts made from premium materials.

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celebrities, and our close friends. And give all our honest and unfiltered thoughts always. Listen to Lipstick on the Rim now on Apple or wherever you get your podcasts. When the first bomb exploded, it was, for most people, a curiosity. A news headline out of the ordinary. Colin and Alan, like most people in Austin, weren't frightened by it because they assumed, just like the police had assumed, that it was a one-off, just a weird, tragic thing that happened to someone else. But ten days later...

Breaking news in East Austin. One person is dead and another injured after a package exploded at a home this morning. About 6.45 this morning, residents out here heard an explosion here on Old Fort Hill Drive. The second explosion today in the city of Austin. We see a large police presence out there. To get you updated on this, Austin-Travis County EMS. After the second bombing happened, that's when things got a little crazy and real. It's like, okay, this is getting freaky.

Alan was scared. He was freaking out. And I was trying to tell Alan, dude, stop thinking about it so much. Stop, like, you're worried about it. Stop reading the news. He had notifications on his phone. He's like, dude, this is crazy. Alan was always on Reddit. Alan's always on the ball with that stuff. So he's like, dude, this is freaking me out. And I was telling him to relax and stop reading the news because reading the news,

you're going to make yourself more freaked out. Admittedly, I was a little nervous myself. The whole city was on edge and no one really knew where it was. We were all on edge. Colin and Alan hadn't seen much of Mark. He still seemed depressed, either hiding in his room or out with a friend. They didn't know who, and they didn't pry. But the night of the 12th, after the second and third bombs exploded, he just kind of appeared. Ambulance there is well.

I remember that day vividly. Very quickly. I come home between 10.30 and 11, and I see Mark sitting on the couch with Alan, watching TV. And what was really weird, Mark was out of his room. He's primarily in his room around, like, late night, unless he's going out to make himself a sandwich in the kitchen.

But he was just kind of sitting there casually, like, laughing and talking. And I'm like, hey! And I always loved it when we all hung out, the three of us, because it was fun. It was like, hey, there I always loved it when we all hung out, three of us, because it was fun. It was like, hey, there's something to do. All three of us, we could play this funny video game

we're playing, just the three, you know, multi-player, it's fun to play, something to do. Alan told me that Mark brought up the incident of that day as if he was just another person reading the news. So here you have this guy who set off an explosive, which killed an innocent civilian. Pretending to not know about it like everybody else. It's like he's trying to blend in

as if he didn't do it this entire time. So our conversation was very captivating, almost freaky. Mark had a smile on his face. He had a very casual demeanor. He's like, ha, ha, ha. He was in a conversation with Alan about how crazy this whole thing was. We were all just like, who do you think it could be? Obviously nobody knew.

Well, obviously nobody except him. but we were thinking, who could it be? And I said, yeah, I don't know who it is. And Mark, his exact words, I don't know, how do you know it's not you who's doing it? And I'm like, well, it's not me. I'm not the guy doing this. Why would you accuse somebody of that in general? Why would you accuse anybody of that?

That's a huge accusation. And that's weird, right? Because hindsight always reveals everything else after the fact. And then Alan was freaking out. I was like, dude, this is crazy. I'm scared. And here's where it gets even crazier. So I told Alan, as well as Mark being there, I said, you know what?

You can't let the bad guys win. You know, who's ever doing this? They're just doing this because they hate themselves and they hate the world and they want to cause pain. And so I'm just going to live my life the way it is. You can't be afraid of these people. Mark's reaction went from smiling to looking at the floor as I was talking to both of them. Alan was looking up at me but Mark was just kind of cold looking at the ground. And as I was talking it was very present. You could kind of tell the air was very it was very engaged in what I was saying.

So he gets up and he's like, what's your schedule like? And I said, well, I'm free such and such these days. He's like, oh, OK. I went to his room. He never talked about it again. I basically told the Austin bomber that I'm not afraid of him. We have yet another set of bombings in Texas. There's now a fifth bomb, and that went off outside of San Antonio, but it was also directed towards Austin.

The media knew things before I did. I didn't know he had a wig and gloves. I mean, like, what the? It's almost like he had a different personality. After the fifth bomb went off, and while Jeff Joseph from Austin's bomb squad was disarming the sixth bomb at a FedEx sorting facility, it didn't take long to identify who was sending them. There was a quick succession of clues, like stepping stones.

FedEx surveillance footage of a man in a disguise, a red pickup truck, a Home Depot receipt, some more footage, and then a suspect. We didn't really see him throughout the day because we didn't know where he was. Alan was trying to find work. I was just trying to, like, focus on my own thing. I was so engrossed in my own world that I didn't care what he was doing. On the other hand, there were more than 600

federal and local investigators who cared very much. Everything, all of their resources, were focused on one thing. Get Mark Anthony Condon. Here's Jim Zapien at the TAC Intel team. We got the truck. I mean, we are really good at locating people. Once you get a video of something like that truck, in an hour, an hour and a half, we had it identified.

Corralling violent criminals is always risky. But this one, especially so. They were going after a bomber. FBI Special Agent Chris Combs knew he had to be strategic and careful. The biggest concern, obviously, is you got a guy who's building bombs. How many more has he built? Is his house booby-trapped? This isn't a simple arrest.

This is not, we're just going to go out and grab him. We're not just going to go to his house. So there are a lot of discussions about safety of law enforcement and the public. One is we got to get this guy as fast as possible because we don't know how many additional devices he's built. Is he building one right now? And then two is really the safety aspect of how do you grab a guy that you know is a bomb maker? Jim Zapien and others from his TAC intel unit were the tip of the spear. I was the first team on the house, on his house on Fluger. The plan was to just keep an eye on the house.

The plan was never to take the house down. We were told only make contact if we see Condit come out with a box. Obviously that contact would have been extreme contact. It would have went rough for him. The TAC intel team watched and waited outside the house in Pflugerville for hours, well into the next day. But that red truck didn't move. There was no sign of Condit either.

Meanwhile, Jeff Joseph and others on the bomb squad were still chasing suspicious packages around the city. And then, another explosion. Here's Jeff Joseph. During that time, I was still taking calls all over the place. So the tension in the city is still at an insane level. And then a detonation happens at a goodwill, a place of business. So now we've been residents, residents, residents,

residents, public place, public business, open for business, and detonation happens. I mean, that's what was going through my mind while I was driving there. I arrived. We did a search. There's like a literal blood trail through the Goodwill building back to where the detonation occurred. The victim had gone to the hospital looking around for anything that was similar. Well, we weren't finding anything that was similar. So I'm looking at where the seat of the detonation is, and I find some artillery simulators. Big firecrackers, for lack of a better term. They're intended to simulate artillery.

About that same time, the bomb technician that was at the hospital called me. He's like, hey, this is not the guy. He says that he picked that up and he was just messing around with it, and he didn't know why it detonated, which is impossible. Come to find out later, he had had a battery on it and he was trying to see what happened with it and he found out. He had pretty severe injuries on his hand, but we're like, oh, knucklehead, good. So this is like a regular call that we're used to taking care of. Yet that explosion at the Goodwill, that regular call as Jeff Joseph put it, diverted attention and resources from the search for Condit. Just enough for mistakes to be made.

We were getting traded out with teams that were not familiar with the area. There was an occasion where we got pulled off and another team picked up surveillance. From what I understand, a car left the area that might have been associated with the house. Either way, the car got lost. They pulled over somebody else and it turned into kind of a shit show. So we're like, oh my God, now you got EMS personnel knocking on the door of a bomb factory. Immediately, there's a safety concern.

The other concern is they just blew the whole case. He's mobile. He's out there. Maybe he's in the wind. He could have been tipped off, potentially. Maybe he's gone. And then we get have been tipped off, potentially. Maybe he's gone. And then we get a call like, hey, we got him. He's at this hotel parking lot.

That's next time on Witnessed 19 Days. Unlock all episodes of Witnessed 19 days ad-free right now by subscribing to the Binge Podcast channel. Not only will you immediately unlock all episodes of this show, but you'll get binge access to an entire network of other great true crime and investigative podcasts all ad-free. Plus, on the first of every month, subscribers get a binge drop of a brand new series

that's all episodes, all at once. Unlock your listening now by clicking subscribe at the top of the Witness show page on Apple Podcasts or visit getthebinge.com to get access wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you. Adam Hoff, Ashley Ann Krigbaum, and Matthew Scher of Campside Media. Hosted and co-produced by me, Sean Flynn. Co-produced by Brian Haas. And co-produced by David Leffler. Written by Alvin Cowan and Eli Khoras.

Edited and assembled by Christy William Schaefer. Original series theme by Kevin Ignatius of Das Tapes. Interviews recorded by Nicholas Sinakis, Eli Khoras, and Alvin Cowan. Sound mix by Craig Plackey. Thank you. which helps young up-and-coming musicians in Austin, you can do so by visiting austinsoundwaves.org. Please rate and leave us a review if you like what you've heard, and thanks again for listening.