Michigan has been ground zero to some of the major bombing cases in U.S. history including the Unabomber and the Oklahoma City bombing.
Gregory Stejskal has been part of the team solving these cases. He’s also watching with interest the latest case paying out in Austin, Texas because it is similar to his cases.
Unabomber Ted Kaczynski may have guided the bomber in Texas with the use of package bombs. He would send 16 from 1978 to 1995 including one to a University of Michigan professor at his home in Ann Arbor.
An assistant who opened it was injured when it exploded.
Stejskal helped figure out who was the Unabomber.
“It was the 10th bomb that he sent in 1985 so I was involved in that.”
Before Timothy McVeigh blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995 he practiced with friends here in Michigan. Terry and James Nichols owed a farm in Decker.
Agents found gold in the fields - pieces of bombs and chemicals in the buildings.
Stejskal tells 7 Investigator Jim Kiertzner, “They literally tested their bombs up there, much smaller bombs but tested the Ammonium Nitrate.”
The keys to solving a bombing start at ground zero, recover the elements, reconstruct the bomb, find stores where materials were purchased and by whom, search their internet activity, Google searches and in Texas they found surveillance video of the bomber sending packages.
Kiertzner asked Stejskal: “Does this tell us it’s going to happen again and it’s too easy to happen again? It is. We live in a pretty much free society and it’s quite frankly a target rich environment.”
Law enforcement tries to prevent these cases but they can also be stopped by alert people, the saying is if you see something that doesn’t seem right, say something to police or the feds.
