Six Pipe Bombs Found in Nebraska Mailboxes; Some Leads in Bombs That Hurt 6 in Iowa, Illinois

AP ^ | May 5, 2002 | Kevin O'hanlon

[Orion78]

"One of those injured was Delores Werling, a 70-year-old, part-time teacher of the handicapped who lives on a 200-acre farmstead northeast of Tipton, Iowa, about 37 miles southeast of Cedar Rapids. Her husband, Bryce Werling, who is a retired farmer, said Saturday in an interview that he and his wife drove up to their mailbox about 11:20 a.m. Friday. His wife, sitting on the passenger side, opened the mail box, took out some mail and, noticing an object, asked her husband if he had left something in the mailbox."

Five more bombs found in mailboxes

[Orion78]

If you have a link for that I would like to read it.

[Orion78]

Bi-Weekly Bombs Worry Iowa Police (12/1/99)

DES MOINES, Iowa (APBnews.com) -- Investigators are baffled by a series of pipe bombs that were planted, apparently at random, around the Des Moines area every other Tuesday in November, police said today.

Two of the three bombs exploded, but no one was seriously injured, according to Des Moines police Lt. Kelly Willis.

Police have no suspects and no motives, and no one has contacted authorities or the news media to take credit for the bombs, he said.

"We have enough similarities and consistencies that we're looking at the same person or a group of persons," Willis told APBnews.com today. "What we're baffled about is, we don't know what the message is here. What's the perpetrator trying to tell us? What's his motive? What's her motive? We're somewhat baffled obviously by this, and that's where the community comes in. It's our belief that the eyes and the ears of the public are what's going to crack this thing."

[Mitchell]

If you have a link for that I would like to read it.

I was certain that I read it yesterday, but it's not in any of the articles posted at FR. I'll do a broader search and try to find it again.

[iowamomforfreedom]

It was a newspaper carrier that thought it was a tractor part.

This is from a QC Times article (link goes to a different story now), but it was posted on this thread, Post 158.

The first hint that Friday was not going to be like most other days was too subtle.
Between the rural, pre-dawn darkness and the shadowy hollow of a roadside mailbox, the Quad-City Times newspaper carrier was not sure what she was seeing.
At 6 a.m., the odd-looking device inside the mailbox at 22624 130th Ave. looked to her like a tractor part that had been left there by a thoughtful neighbor. She simply slid the newspaper behind the device and closed the mailbox door.
But 49 minutes later, when Shelli Ann Engelbrecht went to retrieve her newspaper, it was apparent the device inside the mailbox was no tractor part.
Within a half-hour of the call to Scott County sheriff’s deputies, the Quad-City Bomb Squad was about to begin a very long day.

I shudder to think that it might have blown up on this poor kid.

[KC_Conspirator]

Its my guess that this person is a lefty. Where else do you hear crap like (paraphrase)"1% of the nation controls 99% of the nations wealth". That phrase is taken straight out of college classrooms taught by red diaper doper babies.

[Quilla]

What I wanna know is if, according to the FBI, the bomber is putting the bombs in the mailbox at night, in hopes of attacking postal workers, how come the man in this article says "my mail was there.."? How did the mail get put into the mailbox if the bomb was put in at night? Did the postal worker open the box, see the bomb and put in the mail anyway?

Maybe this man didn't check his mailbox the previous day.

[VetoBill]

Mailboxes out here in rural Nebraska get double duty. Ag parts, eggs, baked goods get shoved into a mailbox if no one happens to be home at the time. I once returned an angle grinder I borrowed via the mailbox. No one really gives a second thought to something other than mail appearing in one's mailbox.

If the bomber's intentions were to target mail carriers he neglected a prime consideration... outgoing mail. Bills letters, etc get placed into a mailbox way before a mail carrier ever touches the box.