The Binge Crimes: Night Shift - 19 Days | 4. Theories

Episode Date: April 22, 2024

As terrified Eastside residents meet with leaders of the Austin community, the 600 plus local and federal authorities working around the clock on the case now grapple with a lack of leads. After a series of bomb threats shut down a concert at SXSW, the crisis grows even more intense when a tripwire bomb detonates on Austin’s southwest side, crippling two college students and putting a whole section of the city on total lockdown. 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

Hey, Witness listeners. This is Josh Dean, your host of the season Fade to Black, and I'm here to tell you about a new mystery mobile game to give you something to do when you've finished the latest season of Witnessed. Everyone loves a good family mystery, especially one with as many twists and turns as June's journey. Step into the role of June Parker and engage your observation skills to quickly uncover key pieces of information that lead to chapters of mystery, danger, and romance as you immerse yourself into

the world of June's Journey. With hundreds of mind-teasing puzzles, the next clue is always within reach. June's Journey is a hidden object mystery game with a captivating detective story and a diverse cast of characters. Each new scene takes you further through a thrilling mystery that sets the main protagonist, June Parker, on a quest to solve the murder of her sister and uncover her family's many secrets along the way. Discover your inner detective when you download June's Journey for free today on iOS or Android.

This podcast contains descriptions of violence and harsh language. Listener discretion is advised. Campsite Media. The Bench. Pick a race issue. Black lives matter! Black lives matter! Black lives matter! Black lives matter! We felt like the Eastside was not safe. At that time, we didn't know who this person was.

We didn't know the motive. But it felt that way from the people I talked to. It felt that way from the community. That's Chaz Moore. He's the executive director of the Austin Justice Coalition, a community organization focused on, as the coalition puts it, improving the quality of life for people who are black, brown, and poor. By the middle of March 2018, three bombs had

exploded in Austin. The victims, all of them, were black or brown. Given that pattern, it appeared that the bomber was targeting a specific racial demographic. So Chaz did what he does best. He organized and advocated. We had a meeting at Greater Mount Zion Baptist Church. I called up Pastor Clark and I was like, we need to do this so people can come out and ask questions. On March 15th, three days after the second and third bombings, more than 400 people gathered for a town hall meeting at the Greater Mount Zion Baptist Church.

The church is about a mile from where Draylon Mason was killed by the second bomb. The mayor was there, as was Police Chief Brian Manley and other law enforcement officials. And they answered questions and addressed concerns as best they could. We're here tonight to talk about the need for us to protect ourselves and get to know one another. Tasmor speaks to a crowd of more than 400 people on the historically Black and Hispanic east side of Austin. Josh Oihus from the Austin Bomb Squad was there too, near the back. I was super nervous the whole time because it was just everybody who was anybody was coming to this meeting.

There's so many key leaders at this one building. Like if this person attacks here, it would be devastating. People weren't scared. People were terrified. I remember we had got packages at the house, and my friends were like, absolutely not. You had everybody scared to open the door. Questions are being asked and not really answered. I think everybody's like, what the fuck is going on?

Somewhere in the city of Austin, whoever was building these bombs was plotting their next move. And this one would change everything. From Sony Music Entertainment, Campside Media, and Pegalo Pictures, this is Witnessed, 19 Days. I'm your host, Sean Flynn. Part 4. Theories. Serial bombers are a rare breed.

Simply put, there aren't that many people with both the technical ability and sociopathic bloodlust to pull it off. Yet when one does appear, he or she can be difficult to catch. After all, they only become serial bombers because they get away with it more than once. Police in Austin were facing a law enforcement nightmare, trying to stop random acts of terror with few leads and only fragments of evidence. They weren't the first cops to go through that. In fact, the very first serial bombings in American history followed a very similar pattern. somebody started to set off bombs in public places around New York City. Department stores, subways, theaters.

That's Michael Canal, author of Incendiary, a book on this exact topic. And at first, these were crude, homemade pipe bombs. But they did not appear to be placed with intent to kill, although that would change over time. The bombs became more sophisticated, they became more powerful, and they became more dangerous. And while this was going on, a now defunct newspaper, the old Journal American, received a series of letters from the bomber himself. And the publisher, a man named Seymour Berkson, had the brilliant idea to write back to the bomber.

And so this weird public correspondence ensued. Yet in the mid-20th century, the investigative techniques and resources available to law enforcement, and the bomb squads in particular, were rudimentary. The bomb squads, as you can imagine, in the 1940s were very, very crude. I mean, the pictures are almost comical. I mean, these people are wearing almost like homemade protective gear, and they're carrying the bombs to the back of a truck that looks like it would offer no protection at all. But bombings were not commonplace at that time. And so it was not really a very developed science.

So instead of the scalpel of forensics, investigators often reached for the sledgehammer. In those days, the way you caught criminals was you roughed up informants and you did this sort of dirty street work to solve crimes. But aside from being just, you know, bad policing, it didn't work. New York's Mad Bomber was still out there for 16 years. They had to try something different, something revolutionary. In desperation, the head of the New York forensic crime squad went to a psychiatrist whose name was James Brussel. They showed him all of the evidence, including the letters that the bomber had sent to the newspaper. And James Brussel, he looked at all of the evidence. The phrasing in the letters suggested a Slavic background.

It suggested that English may not have been his first language. There were clues to his frustrated sexuality. And he said, the man you're looking for is from a Slavic background. He lives with an older female relative. He has a history of workplace disputes. He's probably never kissed a girl. And when you catch him, he'll be wearing a double-breasted jacket. And it will definitely be buttoned.

And with those clues, the police eventually zeroed in on a man named George Metesky in Waterbury, Connecticut. George Peter Metesky. The tabloids called him the Mad Bomber. Metesky was a paranoid schizophrenic, and he had been injured in a furnace blast and never really received proper workman's compensation. This issue inflated into a kind of paranoid scenario in which he felt that he was being abused by the political and corporate powers. It became a kind of grand crusade, and it took on a sort of, in his mind, a kind of godlike quality or divine quality. He wanted to wage a campaign that would get an enormous amount of tension and that would grip New York City. And bombing, like any terrorism, was a very effective way to do it. And in fact, all of the

things that James Russell had predicted were more or less true. And this changed law enforcement forever. This peculiar genius really invented criminal profiling, and then the FBI really turned it into a science. Over the next 50 years, other serial bombers would have their moments. There was Eric Rudolph, who planted the bomb at the 1996 Summer Olympics, and then three more during five years on the run. And of course, there's the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, who, like Metesky, kept at it for 16 years before he was caught. But the Austin bomber had been active for only two weeks. The case was so fresh, the evidence so scant, that studying history would only get you so

far. The Austin bomb squad was running ragged, chasing down suspicious packages. People were scared, and every forgotten order dropped on the porch, every stray box, every unfamiliar carton became a threat. But in a strange way, perhaps a psychologically self-protective way, the bombings could be siloed, the danger compartmentalized. Packages. That's the menace. That's what we avoid. Because meanwhile, life goes on.

People go to work and school. They go out to restaurants, bars, the gym. A city of a million people doesn't shut down. And all of this was happening, the bombings, the manhunt, the funerals, during the largest cultural and economic event of the year. South by Southwest. I mean, I generally pay attention to this kind of thing because I live here and I'm risk-averse and I like to be aware of my surroundings. This is Laurel White.

She's the general manager of Fair Market, an event space near downtown. On the last day of South by, Fair Market was hosting a show with The Roots and Ludacris. Live Nation was responsible for essentially subcontracting the company that brought in the stage and all the AV and lighting. And then there were food and beverage vendors, and there were already people assembling outside. So there were many, many people involved and a lot of people on property when all of this started happening. This would be the email that came into the ticket office. It read, fuck you, I'm going to plant a bomb and watch everyone die. Then a second email, just one word, bomb. The threat came in through email,

and then we kind of had this little huddle up with Live Nation, and we said, you know, let's call 911 and report it and get instructions from there. And very quickly, an officer responded, and they immediately started taking a report. And then shortly after that, a bomb squad was deployed.

While the Roots and Ludacris were doing their sound checks, and the chattering crowd was growing outside, Laurel guided the bomb techs through the building. They came and they swept the venue. They didn't find any evidence of a bomb. Risk management is based primarily on data, facts. What evidence is there of a specific threat

and what safeguards are in place to mitigate those threats. But it's also an art. So you swept the venue. It's clean. You've invested thousands of man hours into this event, and there are many dollars at stake. But how sure are you? What's your comfort level with other people's lives? While all of that was happening, other city officials started to respond. So it wasn't just APD. I mean, first of all, not their city organization, but South by Southwest sent their top representatives over to the venue and to the client to be present. And then the decision was made. Bud Light, the show's sponsor, made the call to cancel. The next day, Questlove from The Roots sent out a

tweet. No one is more Mr. Show Must Go On than me, but we can't risk our lives if we are told there was a bomb threat. Thanks for understanding. Police quickly arrested a 26-year-old Austin man named Trevor Weldon Ingram. He'd sent both threats from his personal email address, but he was almost as quickly ruled out as a suspect in the other bombings. Turns out he'd been emailing threats to the employees at Austin's eBay branch for months. He would eventually be sentenced to two years probation and 100 hours of community service. Yet as the crowd dispersed from the canceled show and the final events were winding down that night, the next stage in the serial bomber's dark odyssey would be triggered. Austin, 911.

As a kid growing up in Chicago, there was one horror movie I was too scared to watch. It was called Candyman. It was about this supernatural killer who would attack his victims if they said his name five times into a bathroom mirror. But did you know that the movie Candyman was partly inspired by an actual murder? I was struck by both how spooky it was, but also how outrageous it was. Listen to Candyman, the true story behind the bathroom mirror murder, wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, this is Jesse Tyler Ferguson, host of the podcast, The Dinner's On Me. And whether you're a first-time wine drinker or a wine aficionado, you're guaranteed to like America's number one luxury Cabernet.

Since 1981, Justin's Vineyards and Winery has been producing world-class Bordeaux-style wines from Pasa Robles on California's Central Coast and are what put the Pasa Robles region on the winemaking map. They recently sent me some of their wines, including their Cabernet Sauvignon and their flagship wine, Isosceles. I cannot wait to enjoy these with friends and family, especially with the holidays coming up. Speaking of, Justin Wine makes great gifts for friends, family, or colleagues. They have curated gift sets and even custom etched bottles, which you could add a message or logo to. It's very fancy. Shop all of Justin's exceptional wines at justinwine.com and be sure to use promo code JESSE20

to receive 20% off your order today. That's JESSE20 for 20% off. Saturday, March 18th, 16 days after the first bomb. Rob Nunez, the chief of the Austin Bomb Squad, has a break between shifts. He's been chasing false alarms about suspicious packages for two weeks, and there's no end in sight. It was just like a blur of calls that entire week. And I finally got a day to where I got to go for a run through the neighborhood. And as I was running, the lead ATF agent, Dan, was driving out. He was going to work. And so I flagged him back, hey, how's it going? And it was to the point where I was a

little frustrated. I'm like, hey, what in the hell y'all got going on? Y'all got anything? And Dan, he just had this look. He's like, man, nothing yet. You know, it's just this frustrated, down look on his face, you know, to where I could see that they're trying. So as I'm getting ready to go in for the night shift, we get another call. Hey, there's been another explosion. It's in this neighborhood called Travis Country. Travis Country is just a couple of miles down the road from the neighborhood where me and Dan live.

While Rob rallied his team, Josh Oihus, one of the bomb techs, was catching up on some much-needed sleep. I'm already, you know, sleeping with one eye open as it is. The pager goes off. So I jump up. I already have everything ready. Run to the suburban, jump in, and I put the hammer down.

That suburban V8, that thing will go. As I'm going, I'm like exhausted, because we've been awake for days. I remember going through the intersection, I think it was like 71 and 290 or something, and I'm like slapping myself in the face. Like, wake up, someone is trying to kill you.

So I get my stuff on, start rolling to the call, have my radio on, and I start the call, have my radio on, and I start hearing information about what's going on on the scene. And they start saying that there's a tripwire. A tripwire. Okay. My brain is like, this doesn't make any sense. Like, literally, this is global war on terror stuff. A tripwire bomb, as the name suggests,

is a bomb that is tripped, or detonated, by a wire that extends some distance from the bomb itself. They're more sophisticated than a fuse stuck into a pipe full of black powder, and they require some planning to properly set. These are war zone bombs, the stuff of guerrillas, insurgents, terrorists. Hide explosives in an abandoned car, in a roadside ditch, or in a dead dog in the median, then attach the detonator to a long, thin filament that's almost impossible

to see, until it's too late. They can be horrifically effective. This tripwire bomb had been set at the entrance to a small public park in a neighborhood of palatial homes on cul-de-sacs in southwest Austin. The wire had been strung across a sidewalk, and the bomb itself had been covered by one of those signs that says, drive like your kids live here. But here's the thing. None of those details, the neighborhood, the placement, the method, fit the pattern. Here's Jeff Joseph. In the bomb tech world, tripwires are trained

and talked about ad nauseum, right? You beat over the head with tripwires. You get numb to it, but nobody ever seen a tripwire. And then, man, it's deployed. There had been a kid's birthday party at a residence right there. That sidewalk goes to a park where kids go and play all day. Kids are all over that neighborhood.

This bomb, the fourth to go off in 16 days, had been tripped by two college kids, guys in their early 20s riding their bikes along the sidewalk by the park just after sunset. I remember vividly like the fence next to where the device went off was just like peppered. And in my mind, I was thinking like maybe he upgraded the bomb size or he added something like he's adding nails or screws or something to this. I would not have been wanting to stand there when that went off. Miraculously, considering the size and force of the explosion, both victims survived. The device was low on the ground, so it caused some pretty significant injuries to the two guys, to their ankles and lower extremities.

When this device went off, like looking at the scene, right, it was in an open area and pieces and parts of this device just went everywhere. This was about 8.30 in the evening when this device went off. When we got there to the scene, we made another immediate approach to the blast area. We could see a lot of the same components. We knew that the placement and the targeting was a little bit different,

but we could determine that a lot of the components were the same. We knew that the firing mechanism was the same as the other devices and a lot of the fragmentation that was placed on the device was the same. So again, the same way we knew that the first three were related, we could see that even though this placement was different, it was all the same components. So we knew that this was the same person. The bombers' tactics were continuing to evolve, becoming more sophisticated. The first three

bombs were delivered to their targets. The first detonated when it was picked up. The next two, when they were opened. But the fourth was left out in the open, waiting to be set off by anyone who stumbled across a nearly invisible wire. Which meant just about anything could be another bomb. Sure, that package on your front stoop, but also that backpack on a nearby patch of grass. That big rock beside the jogging path. The neighbor's mailbox. Another component to our job is clearing the scene of any secondary or any other explosive devices before that scene can be released to be processed. We can run explosive canines. They're really good at finding things by odor, but they don't care about tripwires.

Now we can take a robot and run a robot down the sidewalk. We're either going to see it or we're going to run over it, and it'll blow up the robot. No harm, no foul, expensive robot, but at least no people got hurt. But a robot can only clear the specific path that it rolls through. So the only way to clear the wider area of any secondary devices was by sight. And at this point, who's pitch black outside? By the time we make the determination of the scene where the tripwire is, is clear to start processing, we're taking in the big picture of what's clear and not clear of tripwires.

We don't know if the entire neighborhood is clear. We know that there've been first responders in and out of the scene. So we have We know that there have been first responders in and out of the scene. So we have an idea that there's no tripwires right here, but we don't know the entire neighborhood, and then we don't know what's going on in this Greenbelt area.

In Travis country, the location of this fourth bombing is a sprawl of suburban homes, green spaces, shaded trails, parks, and woods, a lot of woods. So from the administrative side or the chain of command side, who's going to be the person in charge to say, the green belt, no, we're not going to worry about that. You know, it's just too big. Let's just look over here.

There's a certain level of risk that people aren't willing to take. So are we going to go down all these trails and clear for tripwires? Or are we gonna walk all these sidewalks and clear for tripwires? We're just not quite sure yet. So they put out a reverse 911 call to the entire neighborhood that we're just gonna hold this entire scene till morning.

An entire neighborhood locked down until sunrise. Austin truly is a city on edge this morning, as investigators have been waiting for daylight to begin the process of trying to find evidence after a fourth explosion overnight. You're walking a trail with a dog, looking for IEDs, basically. We were walking, and we were probably, I don't know, 100 yards. We were far and we were probably, I don't know, a hundred yards. We were far from

the blast seat where the device had gone off. And in the middle of the path was this like hunk of burned, twisted metal from the device going off. And there's like trees and all kinds of stuff. I was just like, how did this thing even make it this far? Like if you shot a gun, a tree would have caught this, caught the bullet, you know, way before this trail. So we got that bagged up for evidence. I knew from the construction of the devices, I was thinking maybe in my mind, it's somebody who's been trained. So I'm thinking this is like a veteran or an ISIS operative who's had training in, you know, simple IED construction. Who knows? So the fourth bomb really changed a number of things.

Chris Combs, the FBI special agent in charge. You've changed again the complexity of the device. This is completely random because it's a tripwire. If a three-year-old kid walks down the sidewalk or a 56-year-old man, whoever walks down there is tripping this bomb. So it's completely random. And this raises the prospect of terrorism because frankly, this is what we saw in Iraq and Afghanistan. You don't see tripwire bombs in this country. I couldn't tell you any other bomb that was a tripwire in this country. So that changed a lot as well. You know, it showed us that this was not going to stop. It showed us the complexity is getting worse.

You know, I can remember a conversation I had with the Austin police chief where I was like, are they going to try to put bombs on airplanes? We have really increased the danger as to what is going on here. So that's a change. We still really have no leads, to be quite honest with you. This, of course, was getting redundant. We have no leads. Investigators had been saying that for more than two weeks, and it was true.

They had pretty much nothing. But to be clear, this was not for a lack of resources. There were, at that time, more law enforcement officers working the Austin bombing than any other case in the country, possibly the world. Nor was it for a lack of competence, of expertise. These people were all very good at their jobs, and it certainly was not for a lack of competence, of expertise. These people were all very good at their jobs, and it certainly was not for a lack of effort. It's just that some crimes are really hard to solve. This wasn't a TV caper.

There was no screenwriter plotting out the ending. This was an unknown perpetrator, or perpetrators, building bombs in an unknown location, which were then detonated at four physically distant and seemingly unrelated locations. The bomber or bombers left no fingerprints, no footprints, no tire tracks, no DNA. And the most important thing they didn't leave, the most important piece missing for the investigators, was a motive. Most criminals do things for a reason. And when you look at terrorism,

the idea of terrorism is you do something to get your cause out there. Like, think about airplane hijacking. They want to make a statement. Al-Qaeda, they make a statement. They take credit for the bombings. Why do a bombing and not take credit for it? And that was one of the things we didn't understand. Why are you doing these bombings?

You're not taking credit for it. You haven't released a manifesto. You haven't said you want to save the world. Usually, the vast, vast majority of the time, people do things and then they tell you why they did company because we want to stop big oil, right? So we did not understand. You have these four bombings. Nobody's claimed responsibility. There's no manifesto. Nobody knows why you're doing this, right? Explain to us, because then that gets you to some leads.

Is it an al-Qaeda ISIS cell? Is it an environmental terrorist? That at least gives you a pot to go to to investigate? And right now, we have no idea. Over 17 days in March of 2018, four bombs exploded in the city of Austin. Two people were dead, four wounded, and law enforcement had very little to work with. They didn't know who the bomber was, of course, but they also didn't know who he was bombing or why. The first three bombs had suggested only the most basic of patterns. All three had detonated in east side neighborhoods of black and brown people.

In other words, the bomber, or bombers, appeared to be targeting, for whatever reason, racial minorities. But then the fourth bomb, the Tripwire explosive, was planted in a wealthy, mostly white neighborhood on the southwest side. Jason Puckett covered the bombings for KVUE TV. The Tripwire bomb changed a lot. I feel weird saying a bit of this as a white man, but there was sort of an acknowledgement in Texas towns period, but in Austin specifically, that there was a little bit more crime on the east side. It was perceived that way, at least. We did some stories sort of actually tackling whether that was accurate or not.

But a lot of that goes way back. Most Texas towns were segregated where most of the minority population lived on the east side and that came from redlining. All of that leads me to saying, I think for a majority of Austin, unfortunately, the bombs may not have felt as real as they did until they happened in that southwest part of town. It was no longer the east side where a lot of people, I think, sort of were even subconsciously going like, yeah, well, that's where crime happens. I think what also really got people on that one was the fact that it was crime happens. I think what also really got people on that one was the fact that it was so random. Suddenly, these were just two people

who were walking down the street. And that, I think, made it go from these may have been targeted in people's mind beforehand. Why would I be targeted? Now, suddenly, it's random indiscriminate attacks on people. And I think it not only made people more afraid, I think it made them step back and question everything they'd been told up till that point. Remember, when the first bomb exploded, when it

killed Anthony Stephan House, the reflexive preliminary theories from law enforcement were that it was either a targeted attack or that maybe House blew himself up when he was making a bomb. We know neither of those is true. Yet the bomber, consciously or not, deliberately or not, used stereotypes and prejudices as a kind of criminal camouflage. Here's University of Texas Associate Professor of Psychology Germaine Awad. I think it's brilliant to have it in a neighborhood where it would be questioned about what the motives were.

The assumption is, oh, well, if you have Black and brown folks in these neighborhoods, there has to be some criminal activity that's responsible. I mean, you don't know it's a pattern until a pattern occurs, right? That tripwire gave them an out to not treat this like hate crime. That's why I think this terrible Austin bomber was a genius in some ways. He was hearing this narrative, he was paying attention to the media, and he was like, oh yeah, you don't think I can switch this up? The FBI didn't call the bombings hate crimes because they didn't know,

they couldn't know, the bomber's motive. Assuming it was racial would have skewed the entire investigation. If everyone is intent on finding a racist bomber, they might very well overlook clues to the equal opportunity bomber. That said, the fact that the fourth bomb was not in a black or brown neighborhood didn't necessarily make the first three not hate crimes. It simply made the profiling by law enforcement more difficult, which could very well have been part of the bombers' plans.

So I do want to give law enforcement the benefit of the doubt in that way. But the assumption of victims being criminals is not new in society. And Austin isn't any different. I mean, I love it when people tell me, oh, Austin's a liberal city. You know, Texas is really conservative, but Austin is different. No, racism is racism. It's either hidden racism or overt racism. And the rest of Texas may be more overt, but Austin still has that covert liberal racism. I think in the newsroom, we try to not lock into narratives when we don't have evidence.

We had a lot of talks in the newsroom about whether or not the actual bomber here was aware of the coverage. And that's a weird thing to keep in mind because you're trying to inform a community, but you also are trying to be aware that the people who do this sometimes get off to this. So how can we cover this in ways that's not giving them what they want out of this? It's just a weird mental space. It's chilling to know that the person responsible is watching it, being influenced by it. The idea that the bomber was watching the media coverage,

which by this point was unavoidable for everyone, was actually something law enforcement and FBI Special Agent Chris Combs thought maybe they could work with. How can we address the bomber through one of the news conferences? Because we were pretty sure he was watching. Most people do. You know, you always hear about the arsonist that stays at the scene and watches the fire. You know, we were now 24-7 news kind of captivated the nation. We were positive that he was watching the news. So it was the next morning that we developed a plan with the behavioral analysis of the FBI about talking to the bomber and trying to get him to communicate to us because we have

no other option. We have nothing else to really go on, unfortunately. So the next morning, there's a press conference actually at the site of the fourth bombing where comments are very directed at the bomber saying, we don't know why you're doing this. We would love to talk to you so we can try to understand why are you doing this? What are you doing? Is there a cause? I will reach out to the suspect or suspects and ask that you contact us, ask that you reach out to us, communicate with us so that we can put this to an end. The overarching goal here is we need to stop the bombings, right? So we need to save lives.

And if I got to get on TV and talk to a bomber, which is a disgusting thought, and to speak to them professionally and emotionally, that's a small price to pay if I can save five children from hitting a tripwire bomb at a playground. And I was more than willing to do it. Frankly, I thought it would work. I thought it would generate a phone call into the tip line to say, hey, I'm the one that's doing it. This is why I'm doing it. Relying on the self-destructive narcissism of a serial bomber was a long shot, and Combs and the rest of the cops knew it. This neighborhood is still being locked down right now for safety, and we expect it to be so until approximately 2 p.m. today.

But at that point, they had little else to work with. And then, finally, someone who'd crossed paths with the bomber provided just the lead they needed. We went and interviewed the guy that took the packages from the bomber. The guy was obviously wearing a wig. He had a hat really pulled down over his eyes. He was wearing gloves. So the guys asked him, hey, is there anything else you want to tell us? And he goes, well, you want me to tell you about his car? And it was kind of like, what?

Like, what did he just say? Yeah, that's important. We would really like to talk about that. So now we got something. 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 Eli Khoras. Edited and assembled by Nicholas Sinakis. Original series theme by Kevin Ignatius of DOS Tapes. Interviews recorded by Nicholas Sinakis, Eli Khoras, and Alvin Cowan.

Sound mix by Craig Plackey. Production legal by Sean Fawcett of Raymond Legal PC, and fair use legal by Sarah Burns and Diana Palacios of Davis Wright Tremaine. If you'd like to donate to the Draylon Mason Fellows Program, 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.