Two of them were placed within 40 minutes of where I live, most of the within 2 hours drive. Has anyone read the letter that accompanied them? The guy was a whack job. I'm still trying to find a link to it.
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Mailbox bombs hurt 6 in Iowa, Illinois
Iowa News Service
Saturday, May 04, 2002, 12:26:49 PM
Delores Werling's family members say a change in her daily routine probably saved her from being critically injured when a pipe bomb exploded in her country mailbox.
Werling, of rural Tipton, was one of six people injured when pipe bombs accompanied by an anti-government letter exploded in mailboxes in rural parts of Illinois and Iowa on Friday.
Jim Bogner, the FBI agent in charge of Nebraska and Iowa, said the government is viewing the pipe bombs as "a domestic terrorism crime."
"We don't know if all the devices have been found or there are devices remaining," he said at a news conference in Des Moines.
"We probably won't know for a while."
Delivery of mail will be suspended today in rural areas east of Cedar Rapids and in western Illinois. Beyond that, no one knows. Deliveries are expected to proceed as usual in urban areas.
Eight of the pipe bombs were found Friday in an area that is roughly within a 150-mile radius of Davenport. Three were in Illinois; five were in Iowa.
Six of the devices exploded, injuring six people -- four were postal workers, two were civilians.
Two devices were detonated by law enforcement.
A joint terrorism task force is being set up for Eastern Iowa, including federal, state and local law enforcement agencies, U.S. Attorney Charles Larson Sr. said last night.
The bombs had been placed in mailboxes and set to detonate when the boxes were opened, investigators said.
A typewritten note found Inside with some of the bombs said more "attention getters" were on the way. It was signed "someone who cares."
As of 9 p.m. Friday, authorities and family members had pinpointed explosions in:
Rural Anamosa, where Doris Zimmerman was injured while retrieving mail from her rural Anamosa mailbox on the Linn-Jones county line, just north of Highway 151. She was in fair condition last night at St. Luke's Hospital in Cedar Rapids.
KCRG-TV9 said the woman lost two fingers when her mailbox exploded.
Cedar County, about two miles northeast of Tipton, where Werling was injured. She was treated and released at University Hospitals in Iowa City.
Dubuque County, just north of Dubuque, in Sageville, where a postal worker was injured when he opened a mailbox on Rupp Hollow Road and a bomb detonated. The injured man, whose name was not being released, underwent surgery for his injuries, which were not life-threatening, according to Capt. Don Vrotsos of the Dubuque County Sheriff's Department.
Morrison, Ill., in Whiteside County, where mail carrier Marilyn Dolieslager's face and left arm were injured and part of her thumb blown off in a Friday afternoon explosion.
Mount Carroll, Ill., in Carroll County, where a postal carrier was injured upon opening a rural mailbox at 11:15 a.m. Friday. The carrier was not identified.
Elizabeth, Ill., in Jo Daviess County, where postal worker Steve Ertmer suffered cuts to his hands around 2:30 p.m. Friday.
Two pipe bombs were discovered in Iowa before they exploded:
In rural Scott County, north of Davenport near Eldridge, where an explosive device was found in a rural mailbox and detonated by law enforcement.
In Dubuque County, about four miles south of Farley at 10:40 a.m., where a postal worker spotted the device in a rural mailbox and recognized it as potentially dangerous. The carrier called law enforcement officials.
The device was safely detonated by an employee of the State Fire Marshal's Office, according to Vrotsos of the Sheriff's Department.
"There was no note that I am aware of" with either of the bombs found in Dubuque County, Vrotsos said, adding that law enforcement officials do not plan to inspect every rural mailbox in the county.
The Cedar County Sheriff's Department said last night its officers would open mailboxes for people who didn't want to do it themselves. The injured Werling, 70, was riding in a car with her husband, Bryce, 72, when they pulled up to their mailbox in rural Tipton, along 201st Street, to collect their mail, according to Werling's daughter, Lynn DeKock of Cedar Rapids.
It's a job her mother usually does alone.
"She would have usually had to get out of the car, so this probably shielded her," DeKock said. "She opened it, got her mail and noticed something that looked like a flashlight in the mailbox. Then it went off. Luckily, my father was able to drive her right into town and call police."
Werling suffered cuts to her forehead, lip and hands and had her hearing damaged from the blast, DeKock said.
In Dubuque County, Rupp Hollow Road remained closed last night as investigators completed their examination of the scene.
Janice Latham, who lives at the east end of Rupp Hollow Road, just outside the roadblock, said Friday's pipe bomb incidents have made her think more about personal security.
"It makes you think twice about opening your mailbox," she said.
Tony Ball, who works at the post office in Peosta, about eight miles west of Dubuque, said that when he learned of the Sageville explosion Friday, he went looking for his two rural carriers to pull them off their routes, but they had finished before he contacted them, he said.
The investigation Postal Service Inspector Linda Jensen said consistencies in placement suggested the pipe bombs were linked, but that did not mean, she added, just one person was involved.
It appears one person would have to drive roughly 230 miles to cover the route of the bombings in Eastern Iowa and northwest Illinois.
Authorities did not announce any suspects but said last night they are pursuing "a number of leads."
Chicago FBI officials said its multi-agency Joint Terrorist Task Force would help in the investigation.
Bogner, with the FBI, will be running the investigation out of Cedar Rapids, as of today.
He said dozens of postal officials, FBI, federal Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) agents had already joined local authorities in scouring locations shortly after the first device was discovered about 1 p.m. Friday.
Jensen said the devices were three-quarter-inch steel pipes with a 9-volt battery attached. Accompanying some of the bombs was the anti-government note in a clear plastic bag.
Jon Petersen, special agent with the ATF, said at last night's press conference that the explosive devices are "of a routine nature," meaning law enforcement has seen similar devices in previous criminal cases.
Postal Service Vice President Azeezaly Jaffer said the bombs were accompanied by a typewritten note that began: "Mailboxes are exploding! Why, you ask?"
Then it said, in part:
"If the government controls what you want to do they control what you can do. . . . I'm obtaining your attention in the only way I can. More info is on its way. More 'attention getters' are on the way."
The letter also said: "If I could, I would change only one person, unfortunately the resources are not accessible. It seems killing a single famous person would get the same media attention as killing numerous un-famous humans."
Most mail carriers were pulled from their routes Friday as word of the pipe bombs spread.
"As soon as we got word of the incidents at about 2 p.m., we pulled all our carriers off the street," said Iowa City Postmaster Doug Curtiss. "However, none of our carriers noted anything suspicious."
Postal carriers made all but 112 deliveries in the Iowa City/Coralville area Friday before being pulled in, Curtiss said.
Response Iowa lawmakers praised emergency workers' response to Friday's pipe bombings, but said the incidents are examples of why rural areas can't be excluded from terrorism response training.
"While we don't know exactly where today's terrorist attacks came from, they underscore the fact that we need to make sure our national homeland security effort reaches every part of our homeland, not just the big cities," Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, said in a statement.
Gov. Tom Vilsack pledged the full cooperation of the Iowa Department of Public Safety in assisting the federal investigation.
He said state government agencies with facilities and personnel in Scott, Cedar, Dubuque, and Jones counties were told "to be on alert for suspicious activities."
Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, said he was proud "of the swift and efficient way that Iowa law enforcement officials have responded to this emergency, and I urge Iowans to be as cooperative as possible with their efforts.
"It's important to listen to the advice of our postal service and law enforcement officials to protect ourselves, but we should not let this cowardly incident cause us to panic."
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