Austin bomber found, kills self

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Austin bomber found, kills self

Postby cmsellers » Wed Mar 21, 2018 8:32 pm

I don't know if any of you have been following the bombings in Austin; I haven't been talking about it because I've been seriously depressed (not about this, believe it or not), but given that two people have asked me about this in the past twelve hours, it seems like I should start a thread. Any rate, he blew up a bunch of stuff with package bombs, killing two bystanders and injuring five or six others. Then blew himself of as the police closed in on him.

People are comparing him to the Unabomber, however unlike the Unabomber he did not leave a manifesto as far as the news reported. He did leave a six-year-old blog with six posts, which I've archived here since I suspect it will be taken down soonish. The blog seems to be a biweekly high school assignment to respond to news articles, so it's not immediately relevant but does give some idea of what his political views were, at least six years ago.

In it we learn that he thinks homosexuality is unnatural and a choice, women who can't afford abortions shouldn't have sex, and sex offender registries are only a problem for men. He seems sort of like a proto-MGTOW, however it gives no indication how his views have evolved since the last post. So this could be another Isla Vista type thing where he's trying to get revenge on a misandrist society, or he could have different motivations entirely.
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Re: Austin bomber found, kills self

Postby Crimson847 » Thu Mar 22, 2018 12:16 am

Since he's 23, six years ago would mean he was 17 when he wrote the blog. Six years is a long time at that stage of life.

Looks like he sent packages to one 39-year-old father and his daughter, one middle-aged woman and her teenage son, and one very elderly woman (her age isn't mentioned, but her daughter who was injured by the bomb is 75), all at their residences. Then he set up a tripwire bomb alongside a road to injure whoever happened to come by, and then two more mail bombs turned up that detonated or were intercepted in transit at FedEx facilities, both en route to unknown addresses in Austin.

It'd be nice to know where the intercepted packages were heading. The only connection I see between the first three targets is that they're all black or Hispanic, but I don't know Austin's demographics well enough to know how unexpected that is. Meanwhile, the tripwire bomb was set up along a public road, so it was effectively addressed "to whom it may concern", suggesting that the bomber was attacking randomly rather than selecting specific targets.
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"If it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them; but the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Re: Austin bomber found, kills self

Postby cmsellers » Thu Mar 22, 2018 3:12 am

Yes, I acknowledged that, but for now we don't really have anything else to go on, at least from his own mouth.

Regarding the race of his first three victims, the interesting thing is that the first two victims were black, while the third was an elderly Hispanic lady who picked up a package addressed to one of her daughter's neighbors. This incident happened in Montopolis, which is overwhelmingly Hispanic (85%), but about as black (10%) as the metro area as a whole (8%). So you'd expect someone picking up a package by accident to be Hispanic, but if it was addressed to a black person that tells us something.

If the package in Montopolis was addressed to a black person, the odds of the bomber targeting black people only by chance are .05% or one in two thousand. If it was addressed to a non-white Hispanic person, the odds of him targeting non-white people by chance is 2%, which is "statistically significant" by frequentest standards but frankly not all that improbable. We don't know anything about who the packages that exploded in Schertz and SE Austin were addressed to, or even what neighborhoods they were addressed to. Presumably the authorities want to protect the privacy of the intended victims, but knowing that would tell us a lot more.

The tripwire bomb was set off in a very wealthy, very white part of SW Austin. The bomber would presumably have known that the victims would almost certainly be white and would likely be affluent. The tripwire bombing is far from where he actually lived, but is close to the Sunset Valley facility from which he mailed at least two of his mail bombs, so laziness could also account for his choice of location there.
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Re: Austin bomber found, kills self

Postby iMURDAu » Thu Mar 22, 2018 3:22 am

Then blew himself of as the police closed in on him.


That link described something much different than what I expected.

You can, as always, count me as being glad we all know his name, face, political leanings, education, religious affiliation and the hood he grew up in. It's all I needed from the media on this story so to reassure myself in order to argue with others. Add his chapter to the serial killer book and by the grace of unabom, please let him become a nearly infamous default avatar.
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Re: Austin bomber found, kills self

Postby Crimson847 » Thu Mar 22, 2018 3:46 am

Interesting, sellers. I'd assumed the third package was addressed to the elderly woman's mother who she was visiting, but you're right--it looks like it was addressed to one of her mother's neighbors.

That being said, the two guys who were hurt by the tripwire bomb were white, and if that was a Leave It To Beaver neighborhood the bomber should have expected that. That one is the only bombing with a different MO, and it was in a very different area than the three other completed bombings, so the possibility it was a different offender (e.g. a copycat) is worth considering. If it was the same guy, though, that certainly ruins the racial theory.
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"If it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them; but the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"
- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
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Re: Austin bomber found, kills self

Postby Krashlia » Thu Mar 22, 2018 1:40 pm

iMURDAu wrote:
You can, as always, count me as being glad we all know his name, face, political leanings, education, religious affiliation and the hood he grew up in. It's all I needed from the media on this story so to reassure myself in order to argue with others.


Goodness, you too?
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