The Ones Left Behind

by Kathryn Casey

When you're a crime writer for a couple of decades, some things stick with you. In a prior lifetime, when I wrote for magazines, I jumped around from topic to topic. One month I'd be shadowing a criminal profiler for a couple of days, another time I'd be sitting in a courtroom covering a trial. Of course, it wasn't always crime. There were a few movie star interviews, some first ladies who welcomed me into their homes, and a couple of presidents who answered my questions. But for some reason, I kept getting drawn back to the crime reporting, and, in all honesty, those are the interviews that sometimes still keep me up at night.

I guess it was a year or so after the Oklahoma City bombing, when I was interviewing survivors and victims' families. What I remember from that assignment is the woman who described talking to her husband on the telephone that terrifying morning, fifteen years ago this past Monday. The woman's husband worked for the government in the Alfred P. Murrah building. They weren't discussing anything unusual, just your normal husband and wife early in the morning stuff, when all of a sudden the phone went dead. She didn't hear the explosion. In her living room on the outskirts of the city, she didn't feel the impact. That is, not until she got the phone call that her husband was dead. Then she screamed and fell to her knees.

Years later, after 9/11, I interviewed Lisa Beamer, the widow of Todd, (photo at the top left) the guy who said, "Let's roll!" on United Flight 93, the one the passengers took back, preventing it from being used as a bomb to blow up, experts believe, either the White House or the U.S. Capitol.

I spent much of a day with Lisa and her three children. The youngest, their only daughter, Morgan Kay, was still a baby. She was born four months after her father's death. But it's the middle child, Drew, I remember the most. I was in his father's office with him, talking about his dad. "My daddy taught me to ride a bike," he said. I think the boy was seven or eight at the time. "My daddy said he'd teach me to shoot baskets, but now he can't." A simple statement, true, but to that little boy it symbolized tremendous loss.

Perhaps the case I remember the most vividly is that of a little girl who disappeared at a small town softball park. Her mom was in the stands with her younger son, talking to neighbors, cheering on her oldest out on the softball diamond, and keeping an eye on the little girl who played with a group of children on the grass beside the field. The mom watched the little girl, but as the game broke up, the crowd stood, and for a matter of a minute or less, she couldn't see her child. By the time the mother's field of vision cleared, the little girl was gone. Parents later reported a suspicious looking man lurking around watching the children play. The girl was never found.

When I went to see them, the family still lived in the same house, and although it had been five years or so after the girl's disappearance, her bedroom was still as she'd left it on that awful afternoon they hurried to the ballpark. It was a difficult interview, filled with questions I hated to ask. The mother couldn't bring herself to talk as if her child was dead or, if the girl was still alive, what might have happened to her. "I just have to believe one day she'll come home," she told me. "I have to believe that she's somewhere and she's safe."

But more than the mother, it's the missing girl's little brother I remember. A freckle-faced kid with big blue eyes, he stared up at me with a furrowed brow. "I'm worried my mom might lose me, that someone will take me," he confided. "And I'm mad that my mom didn't find my sister."

Too young to comprehend that his mother had searched and worked for years to recover her missing daughter, the boy only understood that she had failed.

Tweet

What About the Crime Post-Blast?

by Andrea Campbell

The government defines a bombing as an incident in which an explosive or incendiary device has actually functioned. There are attempted bombings, of course, and premature explosions. The center of a bombing is referred to as the “seat.” (That's a historic photo of the Los Angeles Times bombing—October 1, 1910—at left.)

I started reading up on what it takes to work a post-blast crime scene, and though I found a lot of good information, I know it didn’t begin to scrape the surface. I guess that’s the wrong metaphor to use, because after a bomb goes off, there isn’t much surface left. Can you imagine going to the scene? There are tons of material called gross physical evidence. Most of the time you don’t know what you’re looking at, even though nearly everything is potential evidence. The debris is shredded, cut, spun, blended, burned, ruffled and any other adjective describing destruction like nothing you’ve ever seen.

Classifying and Typing

A bombing is deliberate or accidental. There are instances where these can be confused. Story has it that a man was charged with causing an explosion; he was in the business of running a grain silo. Anyone who knew anything about volatility should have known that grain dust explosions are common in silos. But back to business. There are three types of explosions: mechanical, nuclear and chemical. An example of a mechanical explosion might be a vessel -- such as a boiler or a propane tank -- under great pressure that gives at its weakest spot, dispersing its contents. Nuclear explosions are created by fission or fusion of unstable atoms, and chemical explosions are the result of either low or high explosives triggered by shock or heat.

A low explosive is typically heat-sensitive material that burns rapidly, about 1,000 feet per second. High explosives, on the other hand, are considered detonations — decomposition of molecules that are forced through a shock wave at about 10,000 feet per second. The difference between the two is significant in helping to understand what has happened; low explosives are more likely to cause a fire than the shorter impulse time associated with high explosives.

Explosives Differ in Other Ways Too

The chemicals needed for low explosions are generally substances such as black powder, pyrotechnic powders, and other fuels. High explosives include materials like dynamite, TNT, and RDX components such as C-4, those usually used by the military and for commercial applications such as imploding old buildings.

Low explosives need a housing or container, because burning produces the gases needed for expansion. High explosives give off their energy as the result of a detonation or shock wave and can be out in the open.

Bombing Materials

Bombs in criminal investigations are often called IEDs, short for improvised explosive devices. The explosive material can be commercially created or homemade. To initiate an explosion the material needs an igniter, which can be as simple as a burning fuse or as sophisticated as a complex electronic device. (The Oklahoma City bombing is pictured at right.)

The activator of the fusing system is put into three basic categories: 1.) time-activated, 2.) victim-activated, and 3.) command-activated. The first uses a time delay, the second is similar to a booby trap, and the third is set off manually, often using a remote-control device. According to GlobalSecurity.org, a person-borne suicide bomb usually employs a high-explosive/fragmentary effect and a command-detonation firing system -- a switch or button the suicide-bomber pushes to set off the blast.

Dr. Kirk Yeager, an explosives forensic scientist at the Federal Bureau of Investigation explainsit quite simply: A bomb consists of an oxidizer and a fuel. An explosion requires oxygen, provided by the oxidizer, and a fuel source, which can be as basic as sugar. A common oxidizer is ammonium nitrate, a primary ingredient of fertilizer. While bombs made with sugar and ammonium nitrate may be less potent than more advanced fuel sources, like TNT, the ingredients are easy to buy and legal to own. It’s interesting to note that the rapid oxidation in a bombing changes the colors of materials such as pipe or steel. (The 2004 Madrid train bombing is pictured above left.)

Working the Scene

A team will have a leader, a bomb technician, a photographer and sketch artist, and an evidence custodian. Depending on the size of the blast area, the team may be augmented by additional investigators.

The borders of a post-blast scene can be tremendous in size. Paul R. Laska, a retired crime scene investigator, says the lead investigator generally looks for the furthest item that can be identified as having originated at the point of the blast. A radius is established based on the distance of that item plus half again.

Search Methodology

Generally, the physical search and evidence collection are organized like a field search, with participants walking an approximate arm’s length (or wing span) apart in a grid, strip or even in a spiral pattern. Most common is the strip-style search, broken down into sectors.

Investigators don’t touch or collect the materials, but mark them out; the object is photographed where it lies. Everything is sketched, and an evidence custodian wearing gloves collects the items and often puts them into clean, unused paint cans, nylon bags, glass vials or sturdy cardboard boxes. The idea is to preserve DNA, fingerprints and explosive residue.

Searches are thought of as being three-dimensional because exploding bits can be lodged into walls, thrown onto roofs — don't forget people tossed into trees — and items driven into the ground. Yeager recalls a car whose pieces landed as high as 75 feet at a U.S. Embassy bombing.


Often investigators will suit up in protective gear including shoe covers to avoid blood-borne pathogens. The scene is monitored for hazardous materials as well.

Collecting and Preserving

Oftentimes the debris will be trucked to another area for examination. It’s taken to a secure facility where pieces can be sifted, examined for potential evidence, segregated, identified and put back together. Dr. Yeager said that he has spent a lot of his time going between different hardware stores, comparing their inventories to bomb components.

General Facts

• The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has been collecting, storing and analyzing records on explosives and arson incidents since 1976.
• The FBI works on bombings related to terrorism.
• 1997 Omnibus Consolidated Appropriations Act, 18 U.S.C. 846(b), established a national repository for incidents involving arson and the criminal misuse of explosives.
• The U.S. Bomb Data Center (USBDC) is the sole repository and contains information on more than 180,000 arson and explosives incidents investigated by ATF and other federal, state and local law enforcement and fire investigation agencies.
  According to the US Bomb Data Fact Sheet, which provides overall statistics and information such as event locations, bomb types used, and regional maps, contains the figures listed below. Explosives Incidents in the United States: In 2007: 2,772 explosives incidents, 60 people injured, 15 killed, and 633 referred for prosecution. In 2006: 3,445 explosives incidents, 135 people injured, 14 killed, and 745 referred for prosecution.
  
  

Tweet

This Month, We Remember . . .

by Donna Weaver

This month, we observe the anniversary of a national tragedy. April 19th marked 14 years since the devastating act of domestic terrorism perpetrated by political extremist Timothy McVeigh and conspirator Terry Nichols that not only destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building (pictured left), but ended the lives of 168 innocent men. women, and children, injured over 800 people, and forever ravaged the lives of their countless loved ones . . . those who survived . . . and a nation. Who could forget the photo (below) that captured the heartbreak of senseless, sudden loss that day.

Hundreds gathered last Sunday at the site of the bombing to commemorate the day where 168 empty chairs sat on the grass in place of the building that once stood there. Loved ones of the victims and survivors read the names of each of those killed and the crowd observed 168 seconds of silence for each life lost.

Several pieces of important legislation were enacted by the U. S. government as a result of the bombing of the Murrah building and its aftermath. Among those, The Anti Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996, Pub. L. No. 104-132, 110 Stat. 1214, (AEDPA) was signed by Congress to "deter terrorism, provide justice for victims, provide for an effective death penalty, and for other purposes.

Because the trials of the perpetrators and conspirators were moved out of state (from Oklahoma to Denver, Colorado), President Clinton signed the Victim Allocution Clarification Act of 1997, which allowed victims of the Oklahoma City Bombing, and those of any future acts of violence, to observe and offer victim-impact testimony at trials.

Clinton stated that "when someone is a victim, he or she should be at the center of the criminal justice process, not on the outside looking in."

Timothy McVeigh (pictured left) was arrested hours after the bombing for driving without a license plate and for carrying a concealed weapon. At his trial, the prosecution stated that McVeigh's motivation for the horrific act of domestic terrorism was his hatred of the U. S. government, which grew in part from the incidents at Ruby Ridge, Idaho in 1992, and the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas in 1993. The April 19, 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing occured on the anniversay of the end of the 51-day seige in Waco in which 50 adults and 25 children died after federal law enforcement launched a fiery assault. McVeigh was executed by lethal injection at a U. S. penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, on June 11, 2001. It was the first federal exection in 38 years.

Terry Nichols was tried twice, once by the federal government, and once by the state of Oklahoma. He was found guilty of the federal charges of conspiring to build a weapon of mass destruction and of eight counts of involuntary manslaughter of federal officers. He was sentenced to life without parole. Although the State of Oklahoma sought the death penalty for 161 counts of first-degree murder, the jury became deadlocked on the issue of death and Nichols was instead sentenced to 161 consecutive life terms without the possibility of parole.

A third conspirator, Michael Fortier, agreed to testify against McVeigh in exchange for a reduced sentence and immunity for his wife, Lori. In 1998, Fortier was sentenced to 12 years in prison and ordered to pay a $200,000 for failing to warn authorities about the attack. Fortier was released from prison in January 2006, and is living under a new identity in the Witness Protection Program.

This month also marks the tenth anniversary of the Columbine High School Massacre where teenagers Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris shot and killed 13 others before taking their own lives on April 20, 1999.

As the country observes the beginning of National Crime Victims' Rights Week today, I ask you to not only remember the victims of these and other highly publicized tragic crimes, but the hundreds of thousands of others—survivors, homicide victims, missing persons, and their families and loved ones left behind. To commemorate Crime Victims' Rights Week as well as the last week of Sexual Assault Awareness Month and Child Abuse Prevention Month, Women in Crime Ink will feature other observance posts over the next several days from our contributors and from you, our readers.

Tweet