The Binge Crimes: Night Shift - 19 Days | 7. Takedown

Episode Date: May 13, 2024

As authorities close in, bombing suspect Mark Anthony Conditt manages to disappear, once again leaving law enforcement on edge. Soon, however, they track him down to a hotel parking lot just north of Austin, where they begin to carefully plan a tactical takedown. Yet when Conditt realizes law enforcement is everywhere, he decides to run, forcing an intense confrontation. 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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This podcast contains descriptions of violence and harsh language. Listener discretion is advised. Campsite Media. The Bench. Piccolo Pictures. We have the suspect. His house is surrounded. We got airplanes up.

We got literally 100 guys on surveillance surrounding this neighborhood. It's a lot of moving parts. It's our protocol. Usually you want an ambulance on standby. If we got to hit this house and it's got bombs in it, you know, we would like to have an ambulance there who can treat the wounded.

Somehow a message gets garbled, somebody misunderstands, and the EMS didn't know they were supposed to go to staging, and they pull up right in front of the house. So the surveillance guys get on the radio. I was in the command post. And they said, I don't know what's going on. An ambulance just pulled up in front of the subject's house. And we were like, oh my God, what's going on? And then they're like, hey, they're walking up to the door. They're knocking on the door.

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, that's it, they just blew the whole case. So they knock on the door. One of the roommates answers the door and they're like, hey, did somebody call for EMS at this location? And they're like, I don't know what you're talking about. And the ambulance crew is like, we were told to come here.

Who needs help? And the roommate ends up yelling back into the house to the other roommate. We didn't know who, but yells back, hey, did you call for an ambulance? And, you know, no, I didn't. I didn't call for an ambulance. So then the EMS is like, all right, it must be a false alarm. You know, sorry. Then they get back in the ambulance and they drive away.

So we do a car stop on the ambulance, pull them out, and we're like, what the heck just happened? Those two people in the ambulance, they told us the story, like, yeah, we talked to this guy. He yelled back to somebody else. So it was a miscommunication. We didn't know is the bomber in the house? Is he not in the house? That's just weird, right? An ambulance comes knocking on your door. The gig is up as far as we're concerned. So now there's another discussion. Do we need to hit this house right now?

But now it's dark. He's already got bombs. He's not going to build seven more in the next couple hours. We're not hitting that thing in the dark. Nobody had laid eyes on him. So the decision was, hey, even if he knows it's us, we're just going to wait. From Sony Music Entertainment, Campside Media, and Pegalo Pictures, this is Witnessed, 19 Days. I'm your host, Sean Flynn.

Part 7, Takedown. It's midnight, March 21st, 2018. The brief chaos of a miscommunication with EMS has subsided. Now this army of law enforcement has nothing to do but wait. They'd identified the Austin bomber as Mark Anthony Condit, but they didn't know where he was. The EMTs who'd gone to the house hadn't seen him, but he could have been in another room or somewhere else entirely.

The cops were tracking his cell phone, but they weren't picking up any pings, which likely meant Condit had his phone turned off. Maybe he sensed law enforcement was onto him. Maybe not. There were a lot of unknowns at this point. They had some downtime, enough that FBI Special Agent in Charge Chris Combs decided it was a good time

to let nonessential personnel get some sleep. No one had had a lot of that for 19 days. We had aerial surveillance on the house. It was a combination of FBI aircraft and Texas State Police DPS aircraft. So that was beaming into the command post. The decision was, again, for safety and clarity, like, hey, we got to go home and go to bed. Tomorrow's a big day. We're hitting a bomb factory.

So all the commanders go back to the hotel. The night shifts got orders. Hey, sit on that place. If he comes out, take him down. He's not allowed to leave. But we hadn't seen any activity at all. So we actually, we all went home. The day shift, there's still 300 people working, you know, the night shift. But I went back to the hotel. I literally think I got undressed to get into bed. And they called

and said, hey, we got him. He's been spotted. He's in a parking lot of a hotel off of the highway. Once we realized he wasn't at the house, then it was like, hey, we got to get him now. He's on the road we don't know if he has explosives with him send all the surveillance assets get over there get on top of him and then we requested the tactical teams to come in because again he's a bomb maker we're not going to have joe cop Cobb or Joe FBI agent try to stop him in a car. You need a tactical team.

So the order was, get those teams over there, get on top of him. With that order, another arm of this law enforcement machine came online. A highly trained precision unit. Special Weapons and Tactics. Better known as SWAT. My name is Vince Garcia. I work for the Austin Police Department, and I was on the SWAT team. Vincent Garcia was born in San Antonio, graduated high school there, and immediately enlisted in the military. After four years, he returned to Texas, Austin

this time, with an eye on joining the police SWAT team, where he thought he could use the skills he learned as a soldier. We do a lot of work for investigative units. Our SWAT team doesn't do the investigative work. We are there solely as a support element for patrol, for investigative units. If they have an individual that they're looking at, they have to meet a certain criteria for that to come over to the SWAT team. You know, if they have a crazy criminal history, they'll reach out to the SWAT team,

and we're there to help facilitate the execution of search warrants or arrest warrants. When you're on the SWAT team, you have extra training, extra tools, extra people, and they have that extra knowledge of what's going on. So, I mean, it's still a dangerous environment, but you're able to come in with all that stuff. SWAT wasn't called in until the early morning of March 21st,

but they'd been on standby for 19 days. At that point, it was just kind of day by day. We were talking about things, but for us on the team, we didn't know what to expect. We were sending representatives to some of the briefings to just get some information and update us back on the team. And a lot of us worked South by. It's additional overtime for us. So a lot of us worked South by. It's additional overtime for us.

So a lot of us worked that. We worked other special events. It was just kind of day by day. Vincent had already had a little bomb scare of his own. He was working one of those overtime shifts a few days earlier when a call came in. A call came out over in an area that I used to patrol in East Austin,

and it was a suspicious device attached to a phone line. I walked over there, and I just see orange tubes attached to a phone post, and there's five or six of them, and these wires sticking out of it, and it's all duct tape. It looked sketchy as can be. And so a buddy of mine, Rob Nunes, he came on scene. We shut down the intersection. We got everyone evacuated. And I told him, hey, it's right over there.

Maybe 40 yards or so, 50 yards from me. And he gets out and he's walking that direction. I'm just kind of watching him. And I see him looking at it. He kind of peeks around and there's a car parked along the curb. And then he kind of like gets behind that car. He's like, ooh, shoot.

I was like, I should probably do this. It ended up actually being nothing. I guess the phone company, they left some of their equipment out there, and it was just sketchy as can be. At that point, a lot of things looked sketchy. Anything out of place, anything with stray wires or shabby packaging, a box or a bag left alone on the sidewalk, a dumpster in an alleyway.

Anything could have been the next bomb. But now they had him, the bomber. The command center, the brain of the law enforcement operations in Austin, had just gone silent for the night after all non-essential personnel were told to go home or to their hotels to rest up before the takedown the next day. And then, for some reason, Mark Anthony Condit turned on his phone.

And when he did, it sent out a signal that gave law enforcement his exact location. Condit was in a small town just north of Austin, Round Rock, and the ping from his cell phone was coming from a courtyard by Marriott, one of a cluster of franchise hotels just off Interstate 35. And all those cops, bomb squad, SWAT,

TAC Intel, Austin, State, FBI, they were all awake. Here's Rob Nunez with the Austin Bomb Squad. At that point, myself and a couple of the other bomb techs, we were sent to check another residence. Some different address came up during the investigation they thought needed to be checked. We ran up to Cedar Park to check this address and while we were checking this address, some of the electronic surveillance started coming up again, and they were actually

able to pin down Condon's location to a hotel up in Round Rock. We started to head to that hotel. The SWAT team started coming up with a different assault plan to hold him in position. And we all started to descend and rally up around that hotel. The main focus at that time is, we can't let this guy get away. As a kid growing up in Chicago, there was one horror movie I was too scared to watch. It was called Candyman.

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Their plan was to search for Condit inside the hotel. After all, the red Nissan Pathfinder, that's the other car connected to Condit besides the red truck, was parked in the lot. But before they went in, one of them noticed something. Exhaust coming from the tailpipe of the SUV. Here's Rob Nunez again. They had some air assets that were flying around.

And they were able to isolate him down to a vehicle that was in the parking lot. By air assets, Rob means the helicopters that were looking for Condit from above. At this point, it's all hands on deck. They were able to see the heat signature from the vehicle, and they were able to see the heat signature from the vehicle, and they were able to recognize the vehicle. Now, Condit being in a vehicle presented a number of tactical challenges. First, the vehicle is a means to escape, and if Condit got away, well, that's a worst-case scenario for all involved.

Two, once a car is in motion, it can be used as a weapon. It can harm law enforcement and civilians if its operator intends it to. And three, Condit was a serial bomber, so the vehicle also had to be considered an explosive device. He could have bombs with him, or he could have rigged the vehicle itself to explode. And with the engine running, there was no telling how much time they had before he made a move. Chris Combs from the FBI again. So the surveillance teams have him. There's actually a Texas DPS plane up that's got him on video. DPS is the Texas Department of Public Safety. The order was, get teams over there, get on top of him, get ready for SWAT. SWAT's going to take this down because you need specialty.

Vincent Garcia of the SWAT team was one of the few officers still on duty when the signal went up. We were loading our van up and then our intel guys were like, hey, the phone's on. They had pinned him down to that location. So we started heading that way. We put on our SWAT thread, hey, get our armored vehicles and then start heading to that location. SWAT's preferred mode of transportation on calls like this were the Bearcats.

Big, black armored vehicles that looked like they could withstand a nuclear blast. The ultimate goal was to get everyone there, hope he stayed there, and didn't go mobile, and to get our Bearcats and pin the vehicle in place. Once it's pinned, you can't drive anywhere. The Bearcats are effective, but not exactly low profile, so Vincent and the SWAT team needed to keep their distance. With all sorts of law enforcement descending on the scene, they ran the very real risk of spooking Condit into running. The plan was we were going to the Rudy's Barbecue. It's just south of that hotel. We actually parked right behind it. 400 yards away from us was him.

We're going to meet up there, and we're going to just divvy everyone up. Straight down the middle, for the most part, hey, you're going to go with this Bearcat, you're going to go with this Bearcat, this is the route, and then we're going to pin it, and then we're going to go with this bear cat, this is the route, and then we're going to pin it, and then we're going to call them out.

It's a strange place for this kind of drama, this kind of tragedy, to end. All the players, the good guys and the bad guy, they're all in the sterile generic parking lots of roadside America. It's the same budget hotels you'd see in New Jersey, the same fast, casual restaurants they have in Wichita, all of them separated by wide spreads of blacktop and thin strips of lawn. Here's Josh Oihus of the Austin Bomb Squad. We're in the parking lot, and it's all public safety, first responders, and we're all getting together here, getting ready.

We were starting to feel like maybe he's in the wind. Maybe he realized because he could have been tipped off, potentially. Maybe he's out there, gone. Here's Vincent Garcia. We were definitely concerned he could have easily left town, gone anywhere else, continued, or maybe kind of blend in for a little while and then start again at another point. We're hoping that we could get him into custody.

That way, everything he's been doing would be done, and we could kind of get back to some normalcy here. All those cops watching, preparing. And Condit just sat in his car. Ten minutes passed. Then 20. What was he doing? This is our first time dealing with someone with explosives on the SWAT team.

We're going to go take a guy down that's been putting explosives or bombs on people's doorsteps. What if his whole car is full of a bomb? Or what if, you know, X, Y, Z? So when it came down to it, we were going over the plans, and it's really just two plans. It's we're going to pin it, and if that doesn't happen, we're going to do a vehicle assault. In SWAT team parlance, a vehicle assault and subsequent

takedown is an attack by SWAT team members on a vehicle a suspect is operating, with the intent to disable that vehicle so it can't be used as a weapon. And then, of course, to apprehend the suspect. It's an incredibly risky move that can go wrong in so many ways, with potentially

catastrophic consequences to the cops, to the suspect, and to the general public. We have a safety priority. It's citizens, and then it's us, and then suspect, and then evidence. But these are our plans. This is what we need to do to keep the public safe. And so as soon as it was kind of like, hey, we're going to vehicle assault them,

it was not even a second or two that someone came on the radio and was like, hey, reverse lights are on. As us and the SWAT team are starting to get in position to do a takedown, the air units start to call out, hey, the vehicle's moving. We didn't really have a plan to take down a moving vehicle, so plans are starting to get made as to, hey, what now? Sometimes plans have to be changed, right? So once the vehicle started to move, we start to develop more of a takedown contingency for a moving vehicle.

So they have plans to do that, and they do those kinds of takedowns before, but not really for a bomber. Typically for a bomber, we want to handle things remotely. We don't want to be on top of where a bomber is because we always look at the bomber is the bomb. Four bombings, six devices, two people dead, four injured, and a manhunt unlike any other in American history.

It all came down to this. And they had now, officially, run out of time. If they were going to catch the Austin move, backing out now. 10-4. Where's he at? I got him eastbound, eastbound wall lane, coming up to 35 frontage. Going to be taking a right turn southbound on 35 frontage. It's just about 2 a.m. on March 21, 2018,

and the Austin bomber, Mark Anthony Condit, is on the move. Here's Vincent Garcia with the SWAT team. He was coming south through that parking lot. We were coming north through ours. Vincent's team leader, or TL for the takedown, was Rob Justesen, a senior Austin police officer. They were both in a van directly behind Condit when he left the parking lot and made a right onto Frontage Road, which runs parallel to and eventually merges with Interstate 35. Our contingency was, if he goes mobile, then we're going to do a vehicle assault,

and we're going to try and do it before he gets on the highway. Because if he gets on the highway, speeds are way too high. It's going to be super dangerous, not only for him, but for us as well. Once he turns onto the frontage road, we give him a lead. And then we pull up behind him. There's a red light. And I feel like that red light took forever. He's red balled. He's stopped right now.

And it's just an awkward feeling because it's 2 in the morning. There shouldn't really be anyone behind you or out and about. And again, how much explosive is in his car? Is this whole thing, is this whole car filled up? Because if it was, that could have taken everyone

out. So we're sitting at this red light and I look back through our window. I see a line of headlights coming out of the parking lot. I was like, oh, well, the gig's up for sure. The light turns green.

Our other band comes around us and gets in front of the Pathfinder. We start communicating on the radio, hey, let's try and slow it down. We're trying to make it not look like it's suspicious, but at that point, our TL comes on the radio and he's like hey let's let's go ahead and block it inside of our vans the rear seating area we put some benches in so we face each other I'm sitting next to the side doors and I'm holding on to a strap and a buddy of mine he's a breacher so he's a big boy and just strong he's sitting at the rear doors

and in front of him is our canine handler and his canine ultimately RTL is like, hey, just ram them. We hit them from behind. I think we were going around 45 or so, which doesn't sound like a lot, but when you're in there and you're not buckled in at all, it doesn't take much. As soon as we hit them, I flew into my sergeant. I did not hold onto that grab handle like I thought I would. Our K-9 handler flew forward. The dog flew forward.

My buddy Jackman, that was sitting at the back doors, he flew on top of me. And then I heard the side doors open. And so at that point I knew someone had gone out. And actually I knew it was Rob because I heard his voice. Hands up! Hands up! I got Jackman off me. I got up. I started getting out. My clear glasses, my protective eyewear, they just flew right off my face. I was like, whatever.

As soon as I stepped out, I looked and I saw a drop at the front passenger window. Trying to breach it with his rifle. Hitting it multiple times. Most of the time it'll just shatter, but he ended up having a really dark tint on there. So as he's breaching it, it's just punching holes into the glass, and that tint is holding the rest of the glass together. As I make my way up to the rear passenger window,

I go to bring my rifle back so I could go ahead and strike that rear passenger window and breach that. And as soon as I bring it back, that's when the detonation happened. Just a bright flash. I see glass fly out from the front passenger window. And at that moment, everything just went silent when he pulls into the parking lot of this hotel, he ends up given a 25 minute, it's

really a video confession. He did leave a long manifesto and confession of what he did. I have heard it and it's cut and clear that it was him. He did it and he was alone. I remember at one of the parks, he's like, I'm thinking about getting into serial killing or something like that. And it's like, yeah, you're already doing that. That's next time on Witnessed, 19 days. To be continued... 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. This episode of Witnessed, 19 Days, was reported and produced by Eli Kors and Joshua Schaefer of Pegalo Pictures and Alvin Cowan. Executive produced by Josh Dean, Vanessa Grigoriadis, 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 Joshua Schaefer. Edited and assembled by Christy William Schaefer. Original series theme by Kevin Ignatius of Das Tapes. Additional music by Bally Yaw. Interviews recorded by Nicholas Thank you. 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.