Free Republic

Newly released video from a Texas law enforcement helicopter shows the explosion that ended the life of Austin serial bomber Mark Conditt as pursuing officers tried to arrest him earlier this year. The video, released by the Texas Department of Public Safety, shows just how close several officers were to being injured when the homemade bomb went off the morning of March 21. Conditt was driving his SUV around 2 a.m. CT as tactical teams followed him near Round Rock, just north of Austin. The video eventually shows one police van in front of the bomber’s vehicle when another bumps...

After listening to a recording bombing suspect Mark Conditt made a day before his death, Interim Austin Police Chief Brian Manley said he never mentioned anything about terrorism... Retired FBI agent Jim Ellis spoke to CBS Austin as to why investigators didn’t label Conditt’s violence as an act of terror. “When you use the word terrorism, it’s a shock word," he said. Ellis said law enforcement typically defines terrorism as the unlawful use of force or violence against people or places to intimidate a government or its citizens to further specific political or social objectives.

The confessed Austin bomber described himself as a lifelong “psychopath” and threatened to blow himself up inside a crowded McDonald’s in a 28-minute statement recorded before his death, according to a new report. “I wish I were sorry, but I am not,” Mark Conditt said in the recording, sources told the Austin Statesman. Conditt said he feels like he’s been disturbed since childhood — but didn’t offer much else in the way of motive, acknowledging only that his three-week bombing spree caused permanent injuries to some of his victims, and left family of the two who died without their loved...

A conservative blog written by a Mark Conditt from Pflugerville, TX — the same name and city as the suspected Austin package bomber — argues against gay marriage, abortion and sex offender registries.