Speaker 1: Thinking Sideways is not brought to you by Canadian conquistadors. Instead,
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Speaker 1: It's quickly far. Well, hey there, and welcome again to
Speaker 1: another episode of Thinking Sideways. I am Steve, of course,
Speaker 1: joined by and Joe, and once again we bring you
Speaker 1: a mystery, a really scary one this week. Well actually
Speaker 1: in some ways, just when it's yeah, there's some there's
Speaker 1: some moments during this one man. Yeah, it's gonna make
Speaker 1: a thing twice before you do a certain thing. It's
Speaker 1: very true. It's true because this week we're gonna be
Speaker 1: talking about a mystery that spans fourteen years and literally
Speaker 1: scared the hell out of postal customers in New York
Speaker 1: for a long time. I think that should be the
Speaker 1: tagline of our show. Scared the hell out of postal customers,
Speaker 1: makes you think twice about doing a thing. I didn't
Speaker 1: want to give away the game by saying what that thing?
Speaker 1: Right yet? Yeah? But actually used to be scared of
Speaker 1: doing all sorts of certain things. Yes, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of certain things that are very scared we'll get you killed.
Speaker 1: This very certain thing is dealing with your mail opening package.
Speaker 1: Because we're going to be talking about the zip gun bomber.
Speaker 1: You guys have heard of that, right of course. Actually,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people have the ubiquitous bomber.
Speaker 1: I don't know. This guy was like he never got
Speaker 1: quite the publicity at the UNI bomber. Got I was
Speaker 1: gonna say, you think of bombers at the UNI bomber
Speaker 1: zip gun bomber? Yeah, only two? I know. I wanted
Speaker 1: to say that they felt that this guy was envious
Speaker 1: of those other big but I don't know that that's
Speaker 1: really the cases we'll find as we go through this um.
Speaker 1: But I do want to say thank you to Wesley,
Speaker 1: because Wesley is the one who suggested this story to
Speaker 1: us and wish very well played. But as with a
Speaker 1: lot of these kind of stories, for those words, you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'll read the first link, I read the second link
Speaker 1: four hours later. I guess I'm covering this story. Yeah.
Speaker 1: My next week is like that too. Yeah. Um so whoever.
Speaker 1: The zip gun bomber was an individual that sent explosive
Speaker 1: packages to people in the New York area and was
Speaker 1: never caught. And so let's let's tell this story. Disclaimer here.
Speaker 1: I think we're going to probably be using the heat
Speaker 1: pronoun for the bomber because it's really a default to that,
Speaker 1: not because we don't think women can also be bombers,
Speaker 1: but just because dudes tend to like to play with
Speaker 1: things that go boom. Dudes are like the ones who
Speaker 1: killed most people. Sorry, not all men, I know, but whatever. Anyway,
Speaker 1: the majority of yes, I will end up using the
Speaker 1: heat pronoun. Actually, I think I think we have to
Speaker 1: stay here or she every time you could say they singular,
Speaker 1: then okay, well I'll let you do that, okay, okay.
Speaker 1: So our story begins on the seventh of May two
Speaker 1: when fifty four year old Joan Kip received a package
Speaker 1: at her home in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, New York. Joan
Speaker 1: had been a I think Joan actually was a guy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she still was working, so she was a guidance counsel
Speaker 1: her at a local school. But she was getting ready
Speaker 1: to leave for the weekend with her husband to celebrate
Speaker 1: Mother's Day when a package arrived in that day's mail
Speaker 1: was addressed to her, and so she opened it and
Speaker 1: lo and behold, inside was a cookbook. That's so lucky. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: and I'm okay. So presumably this as hard back as
Speaker 1: will come to make sense soon. But she believed that
Speaker 1: this was a Mother's Day president and was she she
Speaker 1: was a mother? She was, she has she had several children,
Speaker 1: at least one son and one daughter. I don't know
Speaker 1: exactly how many children she had, but she believed that
Speaker 1: it had to be a present for Mother's Day. So
Speaker 1: she pulled and pulled it out of the box and
Speaker 1: she opened the book. I'm guessing the plan was to
Speaker 1: see if somebody had written on the inside of the cover,
Speaker 1: like people do for for books that are gifts, somebody
Speaker 1: had actually well, I was just gonna say, I feel
Speaker 1: like every time I picked up a book, I opened
Speaker 1: it just just at least looking the inside. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: was presuming it, being that she thought it was a
Speaker 1: Mother's Day gift, that there would be some kind of writing.
Speaker 1: But you're right, she probably may have just automatically opened it. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: when she opened the book, it made a loud bang noise,
Speaker 1: and Joan discovered that she had been shot. Because here's yeah,
Speaker 1: because here's the thing. The book was actually a booby trap,
Speaker 1: and when she opened the front cover she sprang said
Speaker 1: trap and the book literally shot her. What. Yes, Joan
Speaker 1: was taken to the hospital, but unfortunately she died several
Speaker 1: hours later. The report, and this this is one of
Speaker 1: those things with these kind of stories, the reporting berries.
Speaker 1: Some just say that she was shot in the torso
Speaker 1: or abdomen, and other places say that she was shot
Speaker 1: in the heart, which technically is in your to I
Speaker 1: think it's probably more shot little lower down in the gut,
Speaker 1: just because when you help, if you're going to open
Speaker 1: a book, you don't hold it up like heart level
Speaker 1: to open it up unless you're short. There's a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of variables, and we'll talk about that, like how
Speaker 1: things get held when they're open. Well, I mean, here's
Speaker 1: the thing, though, is like this is really the reason
Speaker 1: that we need better gun control, because a book should
Speaker 1: never be able to go out and buy a gun
Speaker 1: and mail itself to the unwitting victim and shoot it. Well,
Speaker 1: that's the whole thing is that it's really just because
Speaker 1: you know, I mean, you know, you can't a book
Speaker 1: cannot be connected to convicted of felowy. How can you
Speaker 1: know if the book is a criminal or not. You
Speaker 1: can't know, Okay, Okay. So the police, of course, they investigate,
Speaker 1: and they're stumped, and so they start investigating everyone close
Speaker 1: to the family because they've got nothing to indicate that
Speaker 1: it's you know, no evidence points to anybody outside of
Speaker 1: the family circle. And they would initially charge Jones's son,
Speaker 1: Craig Kip, with her murder, but they could never really
Speaker 1: put a case together that was comprehensive enough that that
Speaker 1: would stand up to muster, and so that whole case
Speaker 1: fell apart, and they really didn't have anything after that.
Speaker 1: It is actually the police in the initial investigation who
Speaker 1: would name our suspect or unknown suspect the zip gun bomber.
Speaker 1: And that's based simply on the construction of what it
Speaker 1: was that this this bomb was made of. And we
Speaker 1: need to talk about it real quick because it is
Speaker 1: it technically a bomb. Technically that's really I have gone
Speaker 1: back and forth on I think, let me, let me
Speaker 1: explain the weapon, and then people their own conclusions. Our
Speaker 1: listeners are gonna want to build one for themselves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: please do not do this. It is a very dangerous
Speaker 1: thing and you're likely to hurt yourself, if not someone else,
Speaker 1: unintentionally or maybe intentionally. But the point is, don't do this.
Speaker 1: You're leaving out some details on purpose. Actually I know
Speaker 1: how to make I know how to make a certain explode,
Speaker 1: which is why I never't accept a gift from you.
Speaker 1: But but I don't do it. You know, I've never
Speaker 1: done it, even though I know how, because I like
Speaker 1: my hands. I have to have hands. So yeah, don't
Speaker 1: mess it out with explosive guys. So, a couple of
Speaker 1: things that we're gonna talk about here. So let's start
Speaker 1: off the first, which is what is a zip gun.
Speaker 1: A zip gun is an improvised firearmament. In its simplest form,
Speaker 1: it's some kind of metal tube that holds a single bullet. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're easiest ones. Then something is built into the back
Speaker 1: of that tube to strike the primer on the bullet
Speaker 1: to make a discharge off. Yea yeah, And I was
Speaker 1: gonna say that it can they can be complex. But
Speaker 1: the simplest one I saw literally was a tube with
Speaker 1: something duct taped to it and a rubber band with
Speaker 1: a nail and a piece of metal on it to
Speaker 1: pull back like a sling shot to generate a little
Speaker 1: force to set off a twenty two cartridge. Because the
Speaker 1: thing is rim fire cartridges, twenty two cartridge just don't
Speaker 1: have to have a good, solid direct hit to set
Speaker 1: them off the rim well, but they don't have to
Speaker 1: be a dead center hit, you know, like you like,
Speaker 1: you don't have to hit the primer perfectly to get
Speaker 1: that booger to go. And that's the point. They're easy
Speaker 1: to fire. It's also a very low pressure around, which
Speaker 1: is another reason because to be using a cheap, crappy
Speaker 1: piece of pipe as your barrel and use a high
Speaker 1: pressure around what you're gonna blow yourself up exactly because
Speaker 1: zip guns, bomb or zip guns are not meant to
Speaker 1: be long term weapons. And as Joash said, they they
Speaker 1: will eventually wear out. Even if you build one right,
Speaker 1: they eventually wear out from the pressure and they will
Speaker 1: blow open your hands. So no, make one, No make gun.
Speaker 1: Don't do it well, and I decided to do it.
Speaker 1: Research your ammunition to make sure it's low pressure ammo. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's good point, or you know, just don't do it.
Speaker 1: I just don't do yeah, I like my Yeah, that's right,
Speaker 1: don't do it. Um So zip guns themselves, though, this
Speaker 1: was something that was popular back in the forties and
Speaker 1: the fifties, but of course as the price of guns
Speaker 1: came down and the volume of available guns went up,
Speaker 1: it stopped making sense. Never mind the fact that zip
Speaker 1: guns are really only good for one round. There are
Speaker 1: some designs out there that are quote unquote multiple rounds.
Speaker 1: But it's a weird. Yeah, now that you see him
Speaker 1: in prison sometimes for jails and things, and obviously if
Speaker 1: you're in a certain situation where so you're in your
Speaker 1: military occupation, all the guns have been compass card it's
Speaker 1: time to be It's a good idea to know how
Speaker 1: to make yourself as zip guns. Oh yeah, no, did
Speaker 1: you see that one? Um? I was reading imp about
Speaker 1: improvised munitions and I don't remember what website it was,
Speaker 1: and they were talking about somewhere in the Eastern Bloc
Speaker 1: countries and one was found that looked like a nineties
Speaker 1: no Kia cell phone, remember the old nine. Devon will
Speaker 1: probably remember this more than you, Joe, but it was
Speaker 1: the the old Nokia nine thousands something, but it was
Speaker 1: the standard cell phone that everybody had. But if you
Speaker 1: spun the top half open and a barrel was exposed,
Speaker 1: and if you hit a certain keys on the keypad,
Speaker 1: you could fire up to four bullets. Now there's there's
Speaker 1: people that they've made him actually pursull in the US
Speaker 1: too cool little concealed gunst thing. And actually I was.
Speaker 1: I was checking out cool zip gun designs on the webs,
Speaker 1: and course, yeah, they're most of them are crude and crappy,
Speaker 1: but there's a there's a few really cool ones that
Speaker 1: I saw too, like this one where the gun was
Speaker 1: designed as a large bolt and so at the end,
Speaker 1: where the where the where the nut, where the nut
Speaker 1: screws on, where the threads are there was a loose
Speaker 1: not just threaded on there just to make it look like,
Speaker 1: you know, something you could leave it in your toolbox,
Speaker 1: you know, it would look like a bolt, don't look
Speaker 1: like a gun. And so that's the end where the
Speaker 1: where the barrel barrel thing is. And at the other
Speaker 1: end the part that the little hex part that yeah,
Speaker 1: that part there, that's the part that you pull out
Speaker 1: and snap and allowed to snap back in the spring
Speaker 1: load and that fires the gun. That's crazy. It was
Speaker 1: a really design genius concealment. Yes, yeah, but that's that's
Speaker 1: not typical for a zip gun. And by the way,
Speaker 1: after point out too, this does not appear to actually
Speaker 1: be a zip gun design. Well, and that's the thing
Speaker 1: is that is the question is, okay, so this is
Speaker 1: what we're talking about zip guns, and how does this
Speaker 1: apply to what Joan Kip received. Um, Well, the book
Speaker 1: itself that she got, the book was hollowed out to
Speaker 1: allow room for the components of a zip gun, because
Speaker 1: as Joe said, it's not really a zip contraption. Yes,
Speaker 1: it's a zip gun like contraption because inside of it,
Speaker 1: what is happening is someone has put in a short
Speaker 1: barrel er two and those barrels were apparently made from
Speaker 1: automobile breakline. Then there's at least one two caliber bullet,
Speaker 1: a couple of D cell batteries, some wires, a spring
Speaker 1: from a ballpoint pen and um and then that that
Speaker 1: spring is attached to lid. And how this thing worked
Speaker 1: is that whoever made the bomb used the spring as
Speaker 1: a part of an electrical circuit, So it becomes a
Speaker 1: bit of an i e. D. And improvised explosive device,
Speaker 1: because what happens is when they would lift lid, the
Speaker 1: spring would move, it would complete a circuit that was
Speaker 1: mounted to those batteries. Appears that there was a filament
Speaker 1: like a light filament, like an incandescent light filament on
Speaker 1: the back of the bullets, so that when the circuit
Speaker 1: was completed, that would generate heat which would then set
Speaker 1: off the primer, which would then set off the bullets.
Speaker 1: So it wasn't a physical strike. It was some kind
Speaker 1: of electrical SAP. And I don't think that's the way
Speaker 1: they actually did it, because you have to, like you
Speaker 1: have to heat that two two bullet for a while
Speaker 1: to get it to cook off, and they wouldn't all
Speaker 1: go off the same time, so that's one fired at
Speaker 1: that fire, two bullets in different directions, one of which
Speaker 1: hit Jones, the one which flew off in the other direction.
Speaker 1: And so what I think he did is the filament
Speaker 1: was actually an initiator. And there's ways you can do
Speaker 1: that if you want to make your own blasting caps.
Speaker 1: Use lightly. You use a light bulb that you've broken
Speaker 1: the glass off on, and you wrap a paper tube
Speaker 1: around it, poor black powder in there and seal off
Speaker 1: the end, and then you get yourself your blasting cap there.
Speaker 1: And so what I think he did is he had
Speaker 1: like a central little thing that he could screw two
Speaker 1: brake lines on either end. I think what he did
Speaker 1: is he before he screwed this on, he stuffed a
Speaker 1: couple of twenties two caliber bullets into them loose, screwed
Speaker 1: them on, and then the third side before he put
Speaker 1: the initiator, and he poured gunpowder in there, placed his
Speaker 1: initiator in there, and secured it and attached the bat
Speaker 1: and attached the wires to it. And I don't think
Speaker 1: probably given more information than I ever would want to
Speaker 1: give somebody in how to light one of these devices off.
Speaker 1: But the point is it was part of a larger
Speaker 1: circuit that would fire the bullets, and that was what
Speaker 1: made it different from your your typical zip gun is
Speaker 1: that it was electrically initiated, not not by yes, it's
Speaker 1: it is. The electrical initiation is what distinguishes this thing
Speaker 1: from what you know, the rubber band method that we
Speaker 1: were talking about before. One thing that I will say
Speaker 1: that I read this in at least one place that
Speaker 1: I think may be a little weird is that it
Speaker 1: said that the rounds had twice the normal amount of
Speaker 1: gunpowder in them as normal, and that either means that
Speaker 1: what Joe described is correct and or the person that
Speaker 1: did this was packing their own loads and therefore had
Speaker 1: taken and made their own bullets and packed it with
Speaker 1: twice the amount of gunpowder you would normally put in.
Speaker 1: I think that there was some confusion on that because
Speaker 1: they were saying and yeah, it's why it's it's all
Speaker 1: over the map and the way it's described. So I'm
Speaker 1: not a positive Yeah, I think there. I think that
Speaker 1: the reporters you wrote this and there was like they
Speaker 1: were said, they were there, they were double charged. And
Speaker 1: so what I took that to me after careful consideration,
Speaker 1: is that each one of those improvised barrels had to
Speaker 1: bullets in it and also more powder. But I mean,
Speaker 1: you can't pull apart like a twenties caliber long rifle
Speaker 1: cartridge and packing twice as much gunpowder. Well, I and
Speaker 1: that's I don't I don't know how this happens. So
Speaker 1: that's why it's it's a weird bit of trivia to me. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not that violently impart, but that's what I think happens.
Speaker 1: He put like two bullets in each barrel, and that's
Speaker 1: what they called the double packed and they could have
Speaker 1: just been balls, you know, like like shotgun balls or
Speaker 1: something like that. So strangely in this story, though, what
Speaker 1: happens next is nothing. For eleven whole years, nothing else happens,
Speaker 1: nothing go boom, nothing, nobody gets a package that at
Speaker 1: least this way. Yes, yes it was Kazinsky was out there,
Speaker 1: but the point is no more zip gun bombs were
Speaker 1: found until that is the fifteenth of October when our
Speaker 1: perpetrators handywork shows up again. Uh. There's a gentleman by
Speaker 1: the name of Anthony lens Up. He is on vacation
Speaker 1: at the time with his wife there in Pennsylvania on
Speaker 1: the day that this all goes down from York. They
Speaker 1: were from New York, of course, yes. But what happens
Speaker 1: is on that day their children come to visit them
Speaker 1: in Pennsylvania and they bring the mail from the lenses
Speaker 1: home with them. Say hey, mom, dad, here's all your mail,
Speaker 1: the built up kind of thing. So Anthony, he's a
Speaker 1: retired sanitation worker from New York City, but he gets
Speaker 1: the package. He opens it and inside of the box
Speaker 1: he sees what's described as a medallion box. And what
Speaker 1: I can figure out is this is essentially similar to
Speaker 1: a coin box that people will use to hold or
Speaker 1: display their coins. It's yeah, it's a velvet wrap the
Speaker 1: blue velvety wrapped box sticking out east side, not exactly,
Speaker 1: but what's similar to the box the Bok book that
Speaker 1: Joan got is that this box, it's wide and flat,
Speaker 1: but not that tall, you know, maybe an inches inch
Speaker 1: or so high. And so he opens the box and
Speaker 1: he is shot by one of the rounds that comes
Speaker 1: out of it, as well as two other family members,
Speaker 1: because it turns out this thing had three rounds in it, yeah,
Speaker 1: three barrels, and it they hit a person apiece. All
Speaker 1: of the family were and by the way, these went
Speaker 1: in all different directions, which we'll talk about in a second.
Speaker 1: But all of the people were hit, all of them
Speaker 1: were taken to the hospital. They all survived their wounds.
Speaker 1: They weren't massively life threatening. But as we talked about before,
Speaker 1: like Joe had said, is that the one it appears
Speaker 1: and I the reporting is unclear in this, but the
Speaker 1: one that hit Joan, I know it had one round.
Speaker 1: Joe seems to think that maybe it had too. I
Speaker 1: can't confirm that, but we know for sure that this
Speaker 1: one had three three rounds with three barrels, which means
Speaker 1: that whoever was putting this together was trying to hit
Speaker 1: somebody no matter what happens. Because remember, a bullet has
Speaker 1: to come out of the side. This box, or this
Speaker 1: medallion box isn't that tall, so it's not as if
Speaker 1: you could stand up a twenty two cartridge round in
Speaker 1: it and have stuff behind it to light it off easily.
Speaker 1: So it had to go out the side. So when
Speaker 1: Joan got her book, you open a book with the
Speaker 1: spine to your left, so likely the first round shot
Speaker 1: out of the bottom of the book to hit her
Speaker 1: the directly south of the spine. To hit her in
Speaker 1: the abdomen, but it also shot out the top, you know,
Speaker 1: which could also Besides, if she opened it from the
Speaker 1: direction or you know, if the guy really hit the jackpot,
Speaker 1: she opens it and somebody else is standing right in
Speaker 1: front of her, then hey, jack pot, you killed two people,
Speaker 1: Which is what happens with the lensa case because it
Speaker 1: had three and I don't know which way he opened it,
Speaker 1: but he must have in some way opened it so
Speaker 1: that one round was at him and then there was people,
Speaker 1: you know, either in front of him or to the
Speaker 1: side of him. However, the case may be so that
Speaker 1: it shot in the opposite directions and hit those two people. Well,
Speaker 1: so somebody is very intentionally figuring out the way this
Speaker 1: thing is opening to hit people, like they definitely want
Speaker 1: to take people out. Those cases are usually like books
Speaker 1: and that they have a spine. They have a hinge
Speaker 1: box side, and then there's the three other sides. So
Speaker 1: it's not like I don't think that, Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: the thing is is that they didn't set it up
Speaker 1: so that a round would go out the hinge side.
Speaker 1: That's intention is go out all the other sides because
Speaker 1: likely no matter which way somebody's opening. If it's flat
Speaker 1: to them, it's gonna get up. And that's that's the
Speaker 1: insidious bit of the way that this whole thing was.
Speaker 1: This trap was set to me, and and that that
Speaker 1: whole The use of the filament, the use of multiple rounds,
Speaker 1: the use of pointing of multiple barrels, those are things
Speaker 1: that would become signatures of the zip gun bomber. Another
Speaker 1: thing would be the return address, because the return address
Speaker 1: on the packages would appear to be from major organizations,
Speaker 1: like one of them was from the March of Dimes.
Speaker 1: And there would also be something to indicate something to
Speaker 1: entice the person to open it, like free offer inside
Speaker 1: or free gift or something something in that kind of
Speaker 1: verbiage inside. Yeah, it kind of was a big surprise,
Speaker 1: but something to draw them in. And the second gun
Speaker 1: was it also made of similar stuff. Break line is
Speaker 1: from what I can understand, it was also made from
Speaker 1: brake lines, ballpoint pen, a spring lodged in to make
Speaker 1: the circuits, some batteries in there. Yes, like these things
Speaker 1: all appear to generally be the same, and there are
Speaker 1: some questions that I have, but will address that later on.
Speaker 1: In terms of specifics, the part that makes me curious
Speaker 1: about the whole thing that makes me want to build
Speaker 1: one of these things is I don't know. I I
Speaker 1: totally see how how to build one of these things
Speaker 1: would be very easy. The tricky part, it seems to me,
Speaker 1: so you go to close this thing up, you've armed it,
Speaker 1: the batteries are all in place and connected and everything.
Speaker 1: Getting that cover shut without shooting the guns off, that's tricky.
Speaker 1: The rest of it not too hard. But I hate
Speaker 1: to tell you this, Joe, but it's not. How many
Speaker 1: times have you bought something with with like watch batteries
Speaker 1: pre installed. It's a little plastic and the watch works. Well,
Speaker 1: that's that's kind of what I was thinking, is what
Speaker 1: he must have done. But you know, I was trying
Speaker 1: to think of any other way to do it. I
Speaker 1: can't really think of it. But no, I think that's
Speaker 1: probably the simple. The tricky thing about bomb making those
Speaker 1: not blowing yourself. It's like, have we ever talked about this,
Speaker 1: that my old man was in bomb disposal? Okay, and
Speaker 1: the fact that he still has all his bits and
Speaker 1: pieces to me is amazing. But it turns out that
Speaker 1: for the most part, as long as you understand electrical
Speaker 1: search treat and the chemical comp hounds to go into it.
Speaker 1: It's pretty easy to build, disturbingly, so it's easy to
Speaker 1: build and not not you know, easy, but relatively speaking,
Speaker 1: if you know what you're doing, it's not too hard
Speaker 1: to pull him apart without igniting them. Yeah, I don't think.
Speaker 1: I don't think there's very in real life. It's not
Speaker 1: like in the movies. Whether there's they're so devilcy colomplex
Speaker 1: that if you cut the wrong wire you will all
Speaker 1: blow up. Yeah, and look, I put the greenwuyer where
Speaker 1: the red wire goes, so that you'll put a row.
Speaker 1: You figured out my clever ruse. Now it's noting like
Speaker 1: I'm not really like that at Okay, keep moving forward
Speaker 1: in her story here before you get too far off
Speaker 1: the topic. Um okay. So this whole thing with Mr
Speaker 1: Lenza happens in October of ninety three. Six months later,
Speaker 1: on the fifth of April, a package addressed to one
Speaker 1: Richard McGarrell would show up at a home that it
Speaker 1: turns out he had he no longer lived out, but
Speaker 1: he had previously been living at, and that was the
Speaker 1: home of his sister, Alice Caswell. Alice was seventy five
Speaker 1: at the time. But this package shows up at her
Speaker 1: Brooklyn home and you know, she she looks at it
Speaker 1: and she says, that's weird. Okay, well what's in here?
Speaker 1: And just like the last one, Alice opens it up
Speaker 1: and as you can guess, she was shot. She was
Speaker 1: not killed by the bullet. She did survive, though of
Speaker 1: course she was injured. And so far we've got three
Speaker 1: different victims, and it appears that there's no real connection
Speaker 1: between them, and that seems to be an ongoing thing
Speaker 1: in this case, is there's no real obvious connection for
Speaker 1: one person In the next time. Four out of the
Speaker 1: five victims had government jobs, and the government slash military
Speaker 1: employment does appear to eventually come out as a connection,
Speaker 1: but it's one the last. The last victim was a
Speaker 1: real estate agent. I think he was retired. That did
Speaker 1: he have some military connection? Was he retired military? Not
Speaker 1: that I can tell. But but let's let's keep going
Speaker 1: because we're we're too away from him. Okay, we got
Speaker 1: victims to go here. Unfortunately, was that what it is?
Speaker 1: That was just skipping ahead? So it would be over
Speaker 1: a year before the zip gun bomber would strike again.
Speaker 1: This time at the Gilmore home. The Gilmore's lived in Queens.
Speaker 1: Stephanie Gaffney, who was eighteen years old and also about
Speaker 1: eight months pregnant, was on the phone with somebody when
Speaker 1: she saw a package addressed to quote unquote Gilmore or occupant.
Speaker 1: Fun fact, opening mail that comes like that to your
Speaker 1: house is not mail fraud. Actually, any mail that comes
Speaker 1: to your house that's not opt right. Well, but even
Speaker 1: like the one before where she it was to her brother,
Speaker 1: it's not mail fraud. It's addressed to I think mail
Speaker 1: fraud is the wrong term, but it's not against the
Speaker 1: law to open mail that belongs to somebody else if
Speaker 1: it comes to you, to your home, Yeah, it's packages included. Sorry.
Speaker 1: By the way, though, what what this person is doing,
Speaker 1: our our perpetrators doing by mailing and explosive like this
Speaker 1: is against the law. It is surprised. I mean, if
Speaker 1: you consider it a gun, it's totally against the law
Speaker 1: because rifles and shotguns I've I've learned can be mailed
Speaker 1: with disclaimers, but handguns can't be sent through the U. S.
Speaker 1: Postal Service. They have to be done through other carriers.
Speaker 1: So if you consider this on the same par as
Speaker 1: that it's illegal. Bombs are definitely and yeah, if you
Speaker 1: could just like, oh, well it's a bomb, well that's yeah. Also,
Speaker 1: you know, with the intention of hurting people, pretty illegal.
Speaker 1: Illegal just generally tend to take anything serious, you know,
Speaker 1: anything having to do with them. They take extra seriously.
Speaker 1: You can plan on extra penalties. Of course, of course
Speaker 1: you're you're just gonna get the extra fed penalty. Stand right,
Speaker 1: if you lobbed a bomb through my window, they wouldn't
Speaker 1: they wouldn't care that much. But yeah, if there's to
Speaker 1: the U. S. Mail, they got all bent out of shape. Really,
Speaker 1: So Stephanie, she she finds this package. Uh, and just
Speaker 1: so you know, Gilmore was the last name of her
Speaker 1: father and her grandfather. Her grandfather had been a New
Speaker 1: York City police officer. I can't say that for sure.
Speaker 1: I don't know why her name is different than her father's,
Speaker 1: but there's all kinds of reasons there. I'm not gone there.
Speaker 1: I can't guess. But the point is is that the
Speaker 1: package contained a book. So we've gone book medallion box,
Speaker 1: medallion box, and we're back to a book. And when
Speaker 1: she opened that book, it went off just like all
Speaker 1: the other packages. But she wasn't hit directly. Instead, she
Speaker 1: was hit by the shrapnel and apparently she was burned.
Speaker 1: It burned her abdomenrapnel. Well, the when the bullet goes off,
Speaker 1: it can shatter the break line. His break line is
Speaker 1: not heavy duty metal. I mean, we just hadn't said
Speaker 1: that yet, so I understand what thank you I was asking.
Speaker 1: It's my impression that the rest of these have been
Speaker 1: just like a gun going off and people getting hit
Speaker 1: by bullets. We hadn't said anything about their actually being
Speaker 1: an explosion going on. Okay, so we I think Joe
Speaker 1: and I made a presumption in the beginning when we
Speaker 1: talked about the fact that zip guns are not permanent guns,
Speaker 1: and they can explode. They can misfire and discharge their
Speaker 1: the power in the ignition, and it may not actually
Speaker 1: shoot the bullet. It may just just blow up. But
Speaker 1: you know, another another source of strapping off from this
Speaker 1: is like, say, if you're building yourself a little homemade thing,
Speaker 1: and you've got a box inside a hall of that
Speaker 1: book and you don't want to be too obvious about it,
Speaker 1: so you don't cut a hole for the barrel to
Speaker 1: stick out of. But it's a book. Yeah, there's so so, yeah,
Speaker 1: but you're not going to get injured from some people.
Speaker 1: We can go the long and the short of his
Speaker 1: part of it exploded and she was something hitter piece
Speaker 1: of something hitter being you know. It wasn't threatening, but
Speaker 1: of course she's pregnant. They immediately and something blew up.
Speaker 1: They immediately take her the hospital and the doctors say,
Speaker 1: your baby's in distress. We're gonna induce labor. Don't worry.
Speaker 1: She had a healthy baby girl. Everybody was fine. She
Speaker 1: survived the burns and she recovered from all of that,
Speaker 1: so she is okay there. So here's something to keep
Speaker 1: in mind for Stephanie is that the reason that she
Speaker 1: wasn't hit with a round when this package went off
Speaker 1: is that she didn't open it straight on, like we
Speaker 1: talked about before, how you'd open it with a hinge
Speaker 1: with a book with she had. She said, she opened
Speaker 1: it at an angle, so almost as if the corner,
Speaker 1: the lower right hand corner was pointed straight at her.
Speaker 1: So when she opened and it went off, that's the
Speaker 1: reason that she wasn't hit with a round. So she
Speaker 1: was very lucky. And why she did that, I can't
Speaker 1: remember why it was because she was on the phone
Speaker 1: doing it one handed, or I can imagine it's a
Speaker 1: ricking bomber, that's why. But you're asking a serious question.
Speaker 1: Um No, she was very lucky though that she has scraped,
Speaker 1: you know, escaped getting shot and having much much more
Speaker 1: harm from from this. Probably getting shot and the gut
Speaker 1: when you're pregnant is kind of serious, yea. Our our
Speaker 1: final incident would take place on the twenty of June.
Speaker 1: Again nearly all an entire year passes between incidences, and
Speaker 1: our next player on the docket would be Richard Basil.
Speaker 1: He is seventy seven. Richard got a package that had
Speaker 1: a video cassette in it, and I have to presume
Speaker 1: based on the time that it's a VHS concept beta,
Speaker 1: because beta is better. I can't think it was going
Speaker 1: by that point. I was gonna say, I don't know
Speaker 1: what else would be a video cassette. I'm pretty sure
Speaker 1: it was a VHS cassette, and I'm pretty sure he
Speaker 1: didn't cram a couple of decl batteries in to this one.
Speaker 1: So well, but this one so okay, So here, let's
Speaker 1: talk about this, because that's been a lot of time
Speaker 1: trying to figure this one out. Is a video cassette
Speaker 1: is about the same height as those medallion boxes. And
Speaker 1: I think remember the VHS cassettes always came in that
Speaker 1: cardboard sleeve, so sometimes they came in those big plastic things,
Speaker 1: which made them even bigger. So if it if it
Speaker 1: was in the sleeve or the plastic thing, that would
Speaker 1: explain how he got Actually, the plastic case would yes,
Speaker 1: the crime shehell would totally explain how he managed to
Speaker 1: get a d sel a couple of de cells in there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think he would have used de sails anyway,
Speaker 1: because I mean, using the sails on a big book
Speaker 1: is great because they weigh a lot. But you pick
Speaker 1: up a video cassette, you're presuming this guy thinks about that.
Speaker 1: Somebody's going to realize that as they're picking up his
Speaker 1: happy let. This guy planned to stuff pretty carefully. He
Speaker 1: probably took that, but obviously, you know, he opens it
Speaker 1: and it goes off and it shatters a window in
Speaker 1: his home. He's not hurt, his wife isn't hurt. Again,
Speaker 1: just like with Stephanie, he didn't open it directly square on.
Speaker 1: He had it at an angle. He also said he
Speaker 1: had it away from him when he opened it what
Speaker 1: I take I think he said it on the table
Speaker 1: and it was He just kind of looked at it
Speaker 1: was like I wonder what that is, and he reached
Speaker 1: over to open it or pull it out of its case,
Speaker 1: and that's when he ignited it. But you know, lucky
Speaker 1: for him, the worst thing it did was break a
Speaker 1: window in his house. Yeah that's pretty expensive. Well it
Speaker 1: is expensive, but then against so its single pane windows.
Speaker 1: But after that, the zip gun bombers seems to stop entirely.
Speaker 1: There's there's no more loaded packages sent to New York
Speaker 1: residence in the last twenty years. And as far as
Speaker 1: I know, and this is an open investigating because Joan
Speaker 1: was killed, so not all the details are out there,
Speaker 1: but as far as I know, no fingerprints or DNA
Speaker 1: evidence was ever recovered from the packages, and the police
Speaker 1: don't really have a clue of who or why this
Speaker 1: was done by. Uh, they haven't ever charged anyone. And
Speaker 1: as Joe said before, everybody that received one of these
Speaker 1: packages apparently had either a civil service or a military connection,
Speaker 1: but there's no real connection other than they worked for
Speaker 1: a government body. I mean, they all worked for different
Speaker 1: groups like sanitation department, education, department, um cop, I mean
Speaker 1: a real estate Yeah. And then there's Richly like his wife,
Speaker 1: both retired real estate and so none of it makes
Speaker 1: any sense really. Well, had it occurred to me that
Speaker 1: maybe maybe think I was bent out of shape over
Speaker 1: certain issues, and some of them were government related like
Speaker 1: sanitation or whatever, or the schools or the police. But
Speaker 1: but trying to make a point by targeting one random
Speaker 1: retire sanitation worker is weird. Well, I agree, I agree,
Speaker 1: But that's this symbolic act maybe, and then and and
Speaker 1: maybe the reason he's targeted a real estate agent is
Speaker 1: perhaps you know, housing prices in New York City and
Speaker 1: say shot up. Yeah, I'm serious. And so I thinks, Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna pix one person that I think is part
Speaker 1: of the problem here and just kill him, you know.
Speaker 1: And so that's that's kind of what I'm wondering, because
Speaker 1: I'm just trying to understand the connection between all these people. Yeah, well, yeah,
Speaker 1: if there is, we can Yeah, I was gonna say,
Speaker 1: we can talk maybe in theory the fact that maybe
Speaker 1: there doesn't always have to be a connection. It might
Speaker 1: be totally random, and it maybe it just happens at
Speaker 1: three quarters of people who live in New York work
Speaker 1: for the freaking government. Maybe that's what it is. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: I will tell you that this is still an ongoing
Speaker 1: investigations that don't call the police. Yeah, totally call the police.
Speaker 1: Last thing I read said that there is a hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollar reward out for, you know, for information leading
Speaker 1: to an arrest, which at this this long past, I
Speaker 1: really kind of don't think it's going to ever happen.
Speaker 1: But as we talked about, it's a serious crime because
Speaker 1: somebody was killed and be they're violating federal law by
Speaker 1: sending guns and explosives and things you should never be
Speaker 1: doing through the US Postal Service. Uh, the the U
Speaker 1: s postal services for Netflix and game Fly And that's
Speaker 1: because nobody sends anything else through the mail. So hey,
Speaker 1: nobody sends anything except for like those stupid packets of
Speaker 1: coupons and Exfinity stuff through the mail. And you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know. I some some bozo sent me a
Speaker 1: wedding save the date card in the mail the other day,
Speaker 1: So that's that's getting used it as well. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know, And I'll talk. I'll tell you about it later,
Speaker 1: will mock it later, Okay, well, that is all that
Speaker 1: we have in terms of the story, so we should
Speaker 1: probably move to the theory section. But before we do,
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Speaker 1: code sideways. Go there now and we're back. So let's
Speaker 1: talk about our first theory. Theory number one is that
Speaker 1: the bomber is Craig kip Son of Correct This, and
Speaker 1: this is the initial belief of the New York Police Department.
Speaker 1: Craig was, at the time that his mother was killed,
Speaker 1: twenty seven years old, and apparently had been working for
Speaker 1: his father at their marine consulting business. What marine consulting
Speaker 1: business is, I don't know. Marines come in, it's how
Speaker 1: do I claim my gun? And then I don't. Oh,
Speaker 1: I think it's I don't think that's it. I think
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's the that's the thing where you um,
Speaker 1: you know, talk to people about the sea. You consult one, Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Not long before the package that killed
Speaker 1: Joan Arride. Craig was fired by his father for reasons
Speaker 1: that I don't know, something wrong. He must have done
Speaker 1: something wrong. He told them that their boats were thinking
Speaker 1: because of God. Yeah. Maybe the cops believed that Craig
Speaker 1: had sent the package to his parents as a way
Speaker 1: to get back at them. Supposedly his handwriting was similar
Speaker 1: to writing that was on the package. Uh, though, I'll
Speaker 1: be honest, I've only seen that listed on the entry
Speaker 1: in Unsolved Mysteries about this story, and I don't trust
Speaker 1: what you see on the old USM page. So who
Speaker 1: knows but they But by the way, it wasn't curse
Speaker 1: that it was block letters, if I recall correctly, right,
Speaker 1: I don't know that for sure. I've never I've never
Speaker 1: seen a photo of it, so I can't say for sure.
Speaker 1: But I also do remember reading. I believe it was
Speaker 1: on the same Unsolved Mysteries post Craig sent was picked
Speaker 1: up by sniffer dogs on the package, But I don't
Speaker 1: know how long after the fact that happened, and if
Speaker 1: Craig had been in the home and near the package
Speaker 1: after dated or whatever. Right, Like, So there's there's a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of questions that for for that bit of
Speaker 1: information from the Unsolved Mysteries entry that I have. But
Speaker 1: what doesn't make sense to me is, Okay, why did
Speaker 1: he send it to his mother? Because it sounds like
Speaker 1: his dad was the one who fired him, so why
Speaker 1: would he target her. Well, you don't know why he
Speaker 1: was fired. I mean, it's it's possible that it was
Speaker 1: mom's behest. Yeah, it could have been the mom's behest.
Speaker 1: It's also you know, the other thing is he could
Speaker 1: have been trying to get back at his dad by
Speaker 1: hurting his mom because he knew his dad loved his
Speaker 1: mom and like it would hurt him to see her
Speaker 1: hurting or to lose her versus him. You know, it's
Speaker 1: that like death is too good for him sort of thing.
Speaker 1: I got to hurt the people near him, or maybe
Speaker 1: he was kind of a control for you can he
Speaker 1: insisted on an opening all the mail himself, you know,
Speaker 1: and the dad, And yeah, it was just so dad
Speaker 1: would automatically get it no matter who it was mailed to.
Speaker 1: Kind of his daughter actually open it all up, you know,
Speaker 1: except for on Mother's Day. But yeah, I have bigger
Speaker 1: problems with this than well, yeah, I mean you know,
Speaker 1: ignoring that and presuming that the cops are right, what
Speaker 1: is Craig's connection to all of the other victims. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: and even if we're going to go with the typical
Speaker 1: Joe theory of it was just the one person and
Speaker 1: they're trying to cover it up, why wait twelve years
Speaker 1: after you'd already been exonerated and they like, couldn't love you,
Speaker 1: a case against you? Why wait that long? That's why
Speaker 1: he is not exactly the ideal suspects here. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe one of the others. But again, that long gap
Speaker 1: does sort of looked funny. But that's my that's my
Speaker 1: big question mark. I guess with like all of these
Speaker 1: as as, I know, that's going to be your theory
Speaker 1: of choices. This it was one person and all the
Speaker 1: rest of them were just this weird collateral damage, where
Speaker 1: that twelve year gap is really troubling for any of
Speaker 1: the theory. That's why I don't I don't believe whoever
Speaker 1: whoever mailed if it was more than one person and
Speaker 1: said they wanted to kill somebody, but covered it by
Speaker 1: by mailing it to several random people. And as also,
Speaker 1: I think that what it was is somebody works, say
Speaker 1: in the New York City Police Department or wherever the
Speaker 1: wherever the bomb fragments were capt somebody could examine the
Speaker 1: fragments see how the original bomb was made ten twelve
Speaker 1: years before, and picked up the idea the idea and
Speaker 1: ran with it. Then maybe, but the whole thing against
Speaker 1: Craig doesn't make any sense. I'll be and I'll be
Speaker 1: honest with you that the second theory that we have
Speaker 1: here doesn't make any sense either, because it's it's even
Speaker 1: thinner than the first one, which is that Harold Kip
Speaker 1: did it. Jones husband. Well, I mean it's not enough
Speaker 1: to fire you, dude, I gotta like you thrown in
Speaker 1: shail too. Yeah, well, okay, maybe, I mean there's the
Speaker 1: traditional you know, matrimonial discontent is something there, but I've
Speaker 1: only seen this listed in one place and it's never
Speaker 1: fleshed out. I really think that some writer dove tailed
Speaker 1: it in and I foolishly have now just repeated it.
Speaker 1: But there's nothing to support it anywhere. So that one, actually,
Speaker 1: I think is a complete another useless theory. I'm sure
Speaker 1: the police looked at because but but I think that
Speaker 1: it very quickly fell apart because there's just nothing to
Speaker 1: support it. Well, I mean it could have been not Again,
Speaker 1: there's nothing to support this whatsoever. But you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: when I look at cases like this, they think, well,
Speaker 1: the intention wasn't to kill. It was too maim so
Speaker 1: that that person became more reliant on their spouse because
Speaker 1: their spouse was feeling moon chausen by props or kind
Speaker 1: of thing, or even just like was feeling like, oh,
Speaker 1: this person is going to leave me because they don't
Speaker 1: need me anymore. So they've got to need me again.
Speaker 1: And if they're a paraplegic, they'll need me. I'll have
Speaker 1: to take care of them. They'll be depended on me. No, no,
Speaker 1: I I mean, you may be right, Devon, but again
Speaker 1: they're bad. Yeah. Well, let's let's move on to the
Speaker 1: next there, which at least has some substance to it,
Speaker 1: and that this was all done by a guy named
Speaker 1: Stephen Wabra. This is a guy we have not introduced
Speaker 1: into the story yet because he wants to make sure,
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, completely outside character. So let's talk about Mr Wavra.
Speaker 1: They didn't know any of these people. That's a big problem. Okay,
Speaker 1: So back in three, the cops rated Wabra's house for
Speaker 1: some reason which I can't find why they did it.
Speaker 1: We call that an undisclosed reason. Correct, Okay, but when
Speaker 1: when they did, they found the makings of a book
Speaker 1: bomb on his kitchen to able, and by that mean,
Speaker 1: I mean a haul out out book with the components
Speaker 1: of a bomb. And I think that well, and I
Speaker 1: think this means, yeah, it does, but I think this
Speaker 1: means a real bomb, not a zip gun style bomb,
Speaker 1: but more of an i e. D. Like a real
Speaker 1: go boom kind of bomb. By the way, to address
Speaker 1: something you said much earlier Devon about what is this
Speaker 1: really a bomb? Actually not entirely. Bombs are meant to
Speaker 1: just blow up and send stuff flying in all directions,
Speaker 1: you know, whereas these things direct bullets and specific directions.
Speaker 1: So so there sort of a bomb. But I think
Speaker 1: that's why they call it a zip gun is they
Speaker 1: didn't know really what the hell to call him. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of a hybrid between a gun and a bomb.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, but but you know, they find this stuff
Speaker 1: and Wadra at the time, he says he was planning
Speaker 1: to use it on a local military base. And the
Speaker 1: reason why, well, we're not entirely sure of, because it
Speaker 1: turns out that Wabra served in the Navy from seventy
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three, and while he was enlisted, he was
Speaker 1: diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. And how much that particular illness
Speaker 1: played in his decision to build this bomb, it's hard
Speaker 1: to say. I mean, it's feasible that it played a
Speaker 1: significant role, but we don't know if he was receiving
Speaker 1: treatment or getting medications, so I don't know. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to point to that as his sole reason to
Speaker 1: do all that. And as we and as as as
Speaker 1: we've pointed out before, um statistically, people who are diagnosed
Speaker 1: with things like schizophrenia are more likely to be victims
Speaker 1: of crimes than they are to be perpetrators of crimes.
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean that they don't do things. It
Speaker 1: doesn't mean that some people do do that. But also
Speaker 1: totally you know, it could also be that he was
Speaker 1: booted from the Navy and he was just bitter about it,
Speaker 1: you know, because it booted for legitimate reasons. You really
Speaker 1: don't want to have people who have mental issues. Well,
Speaker 1: and like I said, he said, he tanned. He intended
Speaker 1: to take this this bomb and take it to a
Speaker 1: military base, so he obviously had some listen. The guy
Speaker 1: wrote a two hundred and fifty page manifesto but put
Speaker 1: a shame Yeah, in terms of sheer number of pages. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: But the thing is that that incident three that didn't
Speaker 1: that wasn't obviously a zip gun bomb, and it didn't
Speaker 1: directly connect him to the death of Joan Kip. It
Speaker 1: would be later discovered that he did have a connection
Speaker 1: to her because he had gone to Dyker Heights Junior
Speaker 1: High School where she had worked. He apparently had been
Speaker 1: held back for two years and she had been a
Speaker 1: guidance counselor and he had interacted with her. But he
Speaker 1: also said he had nothing against her. But also that's
Speaker 1: like a long time. It was a long time. But
Speaker 1: also I spent a long time since I've been in
Speaker 1: high school. I don't remember, you know, I never got
Speaker 1: held back, and there were other kids that did occasionally.
Speaker 1: I don't recall it. The guy, this counselor, has really
Speaker 1: got any input into those decisions anyway. Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: number of reasons that the kids I knew got held back,
Speaker 1: whether it be from behavioral problems directly, like you know,
Speaker 1: skipping school, kind of problems or just failing classes. But
Speaker 1: I don't know what the reasons were that he was
Speaker 1: held back. And I gotta tell you that holding a
Speaker 1: kid back two years is pretty extreme. Although they used
Speaker 1: to do that lot. They used to think that that
Speaker 1: was how they would clean you up, as they would
Speaker 1: hold you back, you just needed another year to learn. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but I don't know. It was always my nightmare when
Speaker 1: I was in I was like, oh, I got the
Speaker 1: worst thing ever I do. The nineteen year old kid
Speaker 1: who was a junior in high school. It was like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I just think that's a really long time to hold
Speaker 1: onto it. And for that to not be connected to
Speaker 1: anybody else, you know, would be one thing. If like
Speaker 1: a bunch of teachers or people connected to that school
Speaker 1: or the hometown we're getting this stuff. But for this one, like, well,
Speaker 1: he happens to have gone to a school where she
Speaker 1: worked ten years ago. Yes, over ten years. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is that makes you think of that that scene
Speaker 1: where Steve Busimi has the list of people written down
Speaker 1: and he's putting on the lipstick and then crossing them out.
Speaker 1: That was in that I can't remember the name of
Speaker 1: the movie. I know, Yeah, but that's that's Billy Madison.
Speaker 1: But that's the kind of thing that you would expect.
Speaker 1: But the thing is is that there's there's all kinds
Speaker 1: of problems with this because apparently when Joan got her bomb,
Speaker 1: Wafro was in jails. I was gonna say it sounds
Speaker 1: like he would have been in jail if they Yeah,
Speaker 1: so he was. He was already incarcerated, and then he
Speaker 1: was again arrested in this This arresting nine would take
Speaker 1: place because he was in the Brooklyn Public Library and
Speaker 1: found to have yet another hollowed out book. But inside
Speaker 1: that book he had exacto knives. Apparently what I heard
Speaker 1: in one account anyways, that he was hiding razor blades
Speaker 1: and had the pages of library books. It sounds like
Speaker 1: what he'd done is put his exactor knives in his
Speaker 1: hollowed out book to to smuggle them in, and that
Speaker 1: was putting them in other books. So when they rested him,
Speaker 1: they found four two caliber cartridges on him, which based
Speaker 1: on his record and I'm presuming the terms of his
Speaker 1: parole were a violation of parole. So he was instantly
Speaker 1: hit with the book. No pun intended a little bit,
Speaker 1: So they obviously charged him and he went to jail.
Speaker 1: So that also means that if that's in ninety five
Speaker 1: and he's in custody, it doesn't make any sense that
Speaker 1: he could have been responsible for the last bomb, which
Speaker 1: was in so this this doesn't work. Yeah, but the
Speaker 1: cops obviously really must have believed he was the bomber
Speaker 1: because and the prosecutors too, because typically people don't even
Speaker 1: go to prison at all, there go back president for
Speaker 1: parole violations. So setting him back for ten years, that's
Speaker 1: pretty I think that he probably from what I can gather,
Speaker 1: it was he had had many, many, many encounters with
Speaker 1: But I'm just saying because somebody that this one that happened.
Speaker 1: It was a ninety months sentence that he got out
Speaker 1: in two thousand five after serving a ninety months sentence.
Speaker 1: I don't know what came before that. So he just
Speaker 1: he keeps he's uh. I think he spent more life
Speaker 1: in incarcerated than he has out in the free world.
Speaker 1: So that that gives you an idea. Thanks Joe, thanks
Speaker 1: for screwing up there, pudding. Well let's move on to
Speaker 1: the next theory here, which is that it wasn't Stephen Wabra,
Speaker 1: it was Stephen Wabra and a friend. Because once the
Speaker 1: cops got ahold of the fact that, oh, well, he
Speaker 1: was in jail, they immediately said that he had an accomplice. Okay, wait,
Speaker 1: let let me run with this. Though this this, this,
Speaker 1: this will is a self fulfilling prophecy, just let it happen.
Speaker 1: So their theory is that Uabra assembled the components of
Speaker 1: the bombs and then mailed them to a partner who
Speaker 1: was outside of the the jail system, and that person
Speaker 1: then mailed the packages, which I have to say, stealing
Speaker 1: a phrase from Devon is the dumbest thing I've heard
Speaker 1: all day. But well, I was gonna say in a
Speaker 1: long time, but I was. I decided just to classify
Speaker 1: today because here are lots of dumb things because I'm
Speaker 1: on the internet all the time. Um, because but listen,
Speaker 1: they go, they go through Chrisoners outgoing mail. They inspected,
Speaker 1: so we can't like that just doesn't pass the sniff
Speaker 1: test to me. That they would be like, oh, look,
Speaker 1: he's got these little metal tubes and he's got these
Speaker 1: springs and he's just mailing it out. That's weird. But
Speaker 1: know it's it's it is an idiotic although it's not
Speaker 1: it's not inconceivable that an accomplice actually did mail the
Speaker 1: last bomb while he was locked up in jail. It's
Speaker 1: not because what about the first one, because it appears
Speaker 1: he was incarcerated when the first one happened as well. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that one could have been a different person, or
Speaker 1: it could have been as accomplice. But I mean, it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, one of these bombs, they're not that complicated.
Speaker 1: I mean, Wabra, it could have been this accomplice actually
Speaker 1: showed Uabra how to make these bombs. That could be
Speaker 1: that Wabra showed him the other guy, how to make them,
Speaker 1: because they're not that hard to make. And that's not
Speaker 1: a bad point that you're making their Joe. I will
Speaker 1: mention here before we get to before we finished this
Speaker 1: particular theory that the second party's name is never given,
Speaker 1: which is frustrating because there's a roommate in three time,
Speaker 1: when the cops come in and find him with all
Speaker 1: this explosive stuff, there's a roommate who he says was
Speaker 1: never involved. But that roommate's name is never disclosed. So
Speaker 1: we'll call him Justin. Yeah, let's call him Justin because this,
Speaker 1: we're presuming that Justin is also the person that is
Speaker 1: involved in the later mailing while he's in jail. They
Speaker 1: do say that there's some loose ends that they tie
Speaker 1: to Justin, which is the fact that the victims and
Speaker 1: Justin appear to have all used the same pharmacy even
Speaker 1: though they're all over the city. I thought that was, well,
Speaker 1: it's it's either they used the same pharmacy or they
Speaker 1: lived in the same neighborhoods, so over this span, and
Speaker 1: so some of these are in Brooklyn summer and Queens.
Speaker 1: One is oh gosh, where's the other one that's on
Speaker 1: the left side of the map that I can't think
Speaker 1: something like that. Yeah, but but they're all over So
Speaker 1: it's weird that Justin, as we're calling him, is in
Speaker 1: the neighborhood or using the same pharmacy as all these people.
Speaker 1: So you can see why the cottage saying, well, this
Speaker 1: is as weird as Buddy is all over the same place,
Speaker 1: look at that guy. But it's but also like equally weird.
Speaker 1: They're not like, well, then Justin did it. They're like, well,
Speaker 1: but still was right, right? We we don't we don't
Speaker 1: have enough to pull any of them in. We're just
Speaker 1: saying this. But then they go on to what is
Speaker 1: our now our next theory, which is that it was
Speaker 1: Uabra and Justin and one of their friends. Because they
Speaker 1: getting more and more complicated because because they build on
Speaker 1: this theory, and they say that this third person who
Speaker 1: was also unnamed, and well, let's just call up Aaron.
Speaker 1: So we've got Justin and Aaron and Stephen Wavra, and
Speaker 1: they say that according to this the addition of Aaron
Speaker 1: is because Aaron was the one who was paying for
Speaker 1: the bombs and picking out the targets. So now it's
Speaker 1: one layer more removed from the actual person doing the
Speaker 1: dirty work. So Aaron tells Justin, who then tells Stephen Wavra,
Speaker 1: who then is doing it as as a way of
Speaker 1: as a way of insulating yourself from being charged with
Speaker 1: the crime and getting and going to prison. This is
Speaker 1: really perverse and stupid, because actually it's safer just to
Speaker 1: build up yourself oft and mail them yourself, because you're
Speaker 1: not letting anybody else do You're in a single cell
Speaker 1: y yeah yeah, Whereas this is a sure way to
Speaker 1: get ratted out in the Center Center jail. So it's
Speaker 1: the tumbest thing I've ever heard. I you know, I,
Speaker 1: while we're doing this, I think that's the dumbest thing
Speaker 1: I've ever heard, because it's like, basically what they did
Speaker 1: is they said, well, we've got this guy who's got
Speaker 1: um some pretty significant mental illness going on, and you
Speaker 1: know that obviously makes him dangerous. Not my words, I'm
Speaker 1: just putting words in the pop's mouths, makes him really dangerous.
Speaker 1: So he's obviously guilty of this. Now, let's see if
Speaker 1: we can find a way to make it seem like
Speaker 1: he's definitely guilty of this. Oh, he was in jail
Speaker 1: for two of the bombings. Okay, no problem, there was
Speaker 1: another person. Oh uh, that other person couldn't possibly done that. Awesome,
Speaker 1: there's another person. Still, because we are so convinced that
Speaker 1: this one person is definitely guilty, that we will tailor
Speaker 1: our story to whatever we have to tailor it to
Speaker 1: to make sure that this guy seems guilty, which is,
Speaker 1: as we've been saying, the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
Speaker 1: It does sound like the logic of a four year
Speaker 1: old telling a story. It's not even that, it's just
Speaker 1: like it's it's it's like those forensic files episodes where
Speaker 1: they're like and then twenty years later, Dina evidence proved
Speaker 1: that this person was definitely not guilty because the cops
Speaker 1: had spent eighteen hours interrogating them with like threatening techniques,
Speaker 1: so they of course said, oh, you're right, I did
Speaker 1: do that. The phrase Joe loves the rubber hose. The
Speaker 1: rubber hose. Yeah, I mean, I just think they just
Speaker 1: got so fixated, and that's really a detriment. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I'm a little bos It's a really detriment to the
Speaker 1: case in general, because I'm sure there were other things
Speaker 1: they could have been investigating that would have been like
Speaker 1: better leads coming from this stuff that they probably didn't
Speaker 1: because they were like, no, no, we've got our guy.
Speaker 1: It's fine. It's Stephen wav gets too complicated. And this
Speaker 1: applies and not just crime, but in science and other
Speaker 1: things as well. You know, sometimes anytime you have to
Speaker 1: add a third person to like make your theory work. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's another possibility is that it was it could have
Speaker 1: been somebody that wabrun knew, because it's not unusual for
Speaker 1: people to share common hobbies and pursuits. Yeah, you tend
Speaker 1: to band together around endeavors. He knew some guy, maybe
Speaker 1: somebody even met from the military or whatever, that was
Speaker 1: really into amateur bomb making and all kinds of stuff
Speaker 1: like that, and maybe this guy showed him a thing
Speaker 1: or two. But but Wabern himself never actually did a thing.
Speaker 1: And as far as mailing these things, somebody else entirely
Speaker 1: and wab for his part, didn't didn't wrap the guy
Speaker 1: up because question he turns out to actually be a patsy. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's hard to say. We've got two theories left in
Speaker 1: this uh, and these are actually going to also go quick,
Speaker 1: just like the last two the So this next theory
Speaker 1: is that this entire thing was perpetrated by some unknown crank.
Speaker 1: That's my words, because as with all stories like this,
Speaker 1: it's entirely possible that the person that is responsible is
Speaker 1: obviously unknown but is also rather unconnected to all of
Speaker 1: the individuals that were targeted, and the targeting was done
Speaker 1: based on some unknown perceived slight I mean the most
Speaker 1: subtle of interactions, you know, as in, you pass by
Speaker 1: somebody and you look at them and keep going, and
Speaker 1: they may take that as a slight kind of unknown slight,
Speaker 1: like the simplest weirdest stuff. I'm shaking their head because
Speaker 1: it's like, I don't even know that there has to
Speaker 1: be a reason. You know, sometimes people are just like
Speaker 1: I'm gonna kill some people. It doesn't matter who they are,
Speaker 1: entirely random. Although I'm gonna tell you, I like, I
Speaker 1: loved the statement from one of the New York Police
Speaker 1: Department guys. He's like, that's the weird thing about this
Speaker 1: is that New Yorkers, if they've gone a problem with you,
Speaker 1: they'll just comed at you. They'll put you in the face,
Speaker 1: or they'll throw something through your window, like they'll confront you.
Speaker 1: And this just doesn't make any should be And that's
Speaker 1: why this guy, I was going to say, and that's
Speaker 1: why this guy is clearly from the Midwest, no doubt.
Speaker 1: Well that's technically the Pacific Northwest, but whatever. Yeah, But
Speaker 1: it might be too that the people themselves are totally unimportant.
Speaker 1: They're randomly picked out of a picked out of a
Speaker 1: phone book. And it might be the bombs themselves are
Speaker 1: the message. It might be that, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: like this bomb had two barrels, this bomb at three.
Speaker 1: I mean, this one was the Odyssey, that one was
Speaker 1: Melville book. I mean, you know, it might be some
Speaker 1: sort of weird, weird code that we can't comprehend. You know,
Speaker 1: it could be something like that. Doubt it, but that's
Speaker 1: but it could it may it may well be there
Speaker 1: was a message there somewhere, but the people had nothing
Speaker 1: to do with it. Yeah. Well, our our final theory
Speaker 1: is the I think the worst in terms of like
Speaker 1: spooky worst, and that is that this is done by
Speaker 1: a bunch of copycats. Because the way this goes is that,
Speaker 1: I mean, basically, the first one was sent by somebody
Speaker 1: at eleven years went by, and there's a ton of
Speaker 1: reporting that happened on this story, and over time details
Speaker 1: leaked out. I've read the early like the early nineties
Speaker 1: reporting before the second bomb arrived, and there's tons of
Speaker 1: details that are leaking out that could give somebody an
Speaker 1: idea of what's going on, how to make the bomb,
Speaker 1: and what some of the key features were, like the
Speaker 1: multiple of the batteries and the multiple barrels. And but
Speaker 1: if you think about it, it's entirely possible that somebody's like, oh, hey,
Speaker 1: I could do that, but I have a medallion box available.
Speaker 1: Somebody else is like, oh I have a medallion box too, oh,
Speaker 1: I have a book, like if you think about it,
Speaker 1: ignoring Joan, the second and the third used a medallion box,
Speaker 1: the fourth used another book, and the fifth used a
Speaker 1: video cassette Like there's I mean, maybe that's just the
Speaker 1: cases that we're handy to the individual, or maybe they
Speaker 1: mix it up because they figured people might be paranoid
Speaker 1: about getting a book in the mail later on about
Speaker 1: getting a b medallion case in the mail, except when
Speaker 1: they did book medallion case, medallion case book VHS, right, yes,
Speaker 1: like you think you would constantly be mixing it up.
Speaker 1: But the I also, I can't get a clear sense
Speaker 1: if the way that it was set up on the
Speaker 1: inside was actually the same, because again this is an
Speaker 1: open investigation. They haven't spilled all the beans. Everything hints
Speaker 1: at that, but I've also read some stuff that makes
Speaker 1: me think that maybe there are some differences. And so
Speaker 1: they're saying we think it's the zip gun bomber, and
Speaker 1: the media said it's the zip gun bomber, but it
Speaker 1: may not actually be that. According to the investigative team,
Speaker 1: they're like, well, no, actually it's different in these three areas,
Speaker 1: but pretty pretty basic stuff. I mean, here, here's what
Speaker 1: it is you know, you know better combust No, yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't want our listeners to know any more about
Speaker 1: making bombs. Okay, I just want to say that it's
Speaker 1: very very simple. Here's here's why. Here's why it was
Speaker 1: one guy. Because all the bombs worked, so it was
Speaker 1: the same guy. I'm pretty sure we don't know, not
Speaker 1: necessarily the very first one, another one that Stephanie if
Speaker 1: it was, if the one blew, it misfired, but it
Speaker 1: still worked, I don't work yet. But so I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's conceivable that the very first one was somebody else,
Speaker 1: and in the next four were by one guy. So
Speaker 1: maybe two bombers because because of that gap, And of
Speaker 1: course the second bomber could have gotten all of his
Speaker 1: information from the papers, he could have been privy to
Speaker 1: the evidence. And there another worked for the police department,
Speaker 1: worked as a newspaper reporters, saw pictures or saw the
Speaker 1: actual bombs, had a very good idea how they were made,
Speaker 1: and again not complicated. And but again these things, even
Speaker 1: though they're not complicated, if you don't do everything exactly right,
Speaker 1: the bomb will not go off. So I think that
Speaker 1: this guy, whoever it was, was skilled enough that that
Speaker 1: he to late was able to build these bombs and
Speaker 1: actually every single one went off. If it was just
Speaker 1: a bunch of different cracks, I'm pretty sure at least
Speaker 1: one wouldn't have gone off. And you know, and and
Speaker 1: the thing that lends itself to what you're saying there, Joe,
Speaker 1: is the idea that what we talked about before, that
Speaker 1: whole double packed gunpowder issue, if indeed they mean that
Speaker 1: somebody did homeloads and put more powder in them that
Speaker 1: would traditionally be in a normal rifle round, then that
Speaker 1: would lend itself to say, oh, hell yeah, it's the
Speaker 1: same guy, because not everybody has that. Well, you can
Speaker 1: build your own bomb from regular stuff and buy your
Speaker 1: off the shelf bullet. To be able to pack your
Speaker 1: own load like that, that that requires a whole another
Speaker 1: skill set and tools set. I also think the fact
Speaker 1: that like it sounds like it was Brake lines every time.
Speaker 1: I mean, like, who, how many people just have you
Speaker 1: can go to the store by bricklin. Yeah, but doesn't
Speaker 1: it make more sense that it would just be like,
Speaker 1: aren't brink lines pretty long? Right? But that's what I mean.
Speaker 1: It's like, doesn't it make more sense that it would
Speaker 1: just be like one guy had like some break line
Speaker 1: lying around and just like cut a bunch of the
Speaker 1: junkyard and saw him out from underneath the car. Right,
Speaker 1: But it would be like the same. It seems like
Speaker 1: it'd be the same person. Really they could use. That
Speaker 1: is an ingredient that seems random for everybody to hone
Speaker 1: in onto you, right, because you could just go down
Speaker 1: to the you know, Stephen Wabro's home for zip gun construction.
Speaker 1: We've got all your your gun yeah, a k A
Speaker 1: like ace hardware, right, and like get a piece of
Speaker 1: pipe and use that. I mean, there's nothing suspicious about
Speaker 1: buying break line if you're a mechanic. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: nothing suspicious about buying any of those things. Not at all.
Speaker 1: You can get to. I mean, the bullets again, we're
Speaker 1: just as likely as just lead lead fishing sinkers. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they could have just been lead balls and yeah, and
Speaker 1: it's as far as double packed. I thought words like
Speaker 1: double charged. So that could mean they stuck in two
Speaker 1: bullets in each barrel, or it could mean they stuck
Speaker 1: in twice as much gunpowder. Yeah, there's a whole bunch
Speaker 1: of ways to go. Yeah, again, I don't think Cartridges
Speaker 1: were really involved in this at all. I think it
Speaker 1: was just it was a little bomb that had two
Speaker 1: or three barrels leading off of it, that had one
Speaker 1: or two bullets in each barrel. And that's what I
Speaker 1: think it was. That's that that there were no Cartridges
Speaker 1: there as far as I can tell, well, as far
Speaker 1: as I know, I have no clue. Like the theories
Speaker 1: are really solid. Well, anybody could have done this. I
Speaker 1: mean it's so simple, you know, I mean, how hard
Speaker 1: it is to make a little bomb and mail it
Speaker 1: to somebody. Well, I think you actually pointed out a
Speaker 1: good point, A good idea is that it actually is
Speaker 1: complicated enough to make sure that they were and that
Speaker 1: it was the patients in time to do that, But
Speaker 1: it was somebody who was meticulous. I don't know of
Speaker 1: their theories, like any of them, you guys know, I
Speaker 1: don't think any of them are good. I still I
Speaker 1: just I really am very annoyed that the police just
Speaker 1: went down. They just kind of honed in on this
Speaker 1: one person and he was the only it was, he
Speaker 1: was the only one that even halfway plausible suspect they had,
Speaker 1: which I mean years later they were still hanging on
Speaker 1: both the suspects. I don't understand why they gave him
Speaker 1: a good hard look. That makes sense. Yeah, all right,
Speaker 1: Well that's all we've got for this particular story. If
Speaker 1: you want to read about the story, you're more than
Speaker 1: welcome to do that. You can go to our website
Speaker 1: Thinking Sideways podcast dot com, where we'll have some links
Speaker 1: to the research about this story, although frankly none of
Speaker 1: us better than our podcast, so don't bother while you're there.
Speaker 1: Of course, you could listen to this and download this episode,
Speaker 1: or you can get any of them off of the website.
Speaker 1: But more importantly, on the website, you're going to find
Speaker 1: links to a couple other things, like the episode list,
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Speaker 1: To join the group, make sure to answer the questions.
Speaker 1: There's lots of fun interactions there. We are on Reddit.
Speaker 1: We have the Reddit page where there's conversation post episode
Speaker 1: conversations happen. We are on Twitter, Twitter, Thank You Joe,
Speaker 1: where Devin sends out all kinds of weird memes and
Speaker 1: funny fun stuff. So it's fun and it is Thinking
Speaker 1: Sideways without the G in the middle. We're on Instagram,
Speaker 1: so you can follow us there as well. Podcast not
Speaker 1: Thinking Sideways, Yes, podcast. Actually I got to say is
Speaker 1: that I think Twitter is the only one where we
Speaker 1: couldn't put podcast on the edge. Twitter is the outlier
Speaker 1: in that regard, but we're in all of those places.
Speaker 1: And last, and of course not least, is if you
Speaker 1: want to reach out to us and have a conversation
Speaker 1: because you have questions, or you have theories, or you
Speaker 1: have stories to suggest, or you're the zip gun bomber,
Speaker 1: You're welcome to talk to us, and you can do
Speaker 1: that by email at our email address, which is Thinking
Speaker 1: Sideways Podcast at gmail dot com. Uh that inbox is
Speaker 1: always filling up, and we're always working to empty it.
Speaker 1: So we are answering emails as quickly as possible. But
Speaker 1: with that having been said and all of those points covered,
Speaker 1: I don't have anything else. Do you too have anything
Speaker 1: else for tonight? Nope? All right, Well let's blow this
Speaker 1: pop stand and we will talk to you guys next week.
Speaker 1: Nipping on out of here, Tata, Well that wasn't very
Speaker 1: koom perfect.