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Feds step up hunt in mail-threat case
More articles on this topic: The BishopAfter 2 sets of explosives are sent from a Chicago suburban post office, the 2-year probe of `The Bishop’ becomes a top priority
POTOMAC, Md. — At first, the man who calls himself “The Bishop” was considered just an oddball with an apparent beef against investment firms.
But in late January, authorities believe he walked into a suburban Chicago post office and mailed two pipe bombs loaded with gunpowder to offices in Kansas City, Mo., and Denver.
“It is so simple to kill somebody it is almost scary,” The Bishop had once warned in a letter.
For the last two years, The Bishop restricted his postal activity to letters, addressing them to companies in various locations around the country. Now that the threats have escalated, federal investigators in Washington, D.C., and in Chicago have intensified their efforts to catch him.
He typically makes demands about the performance of stocks, investigators have said, ordering their prices set to $6.66. His letters are filled with religious references and he gives his targets deadlines to follow his bizarre orders.
He has mentioned the country’s most infamous bombing figure: Theodore Kaczynski–the “Unabomber.” In one of his letters, The Bishop noted how Kaczynski killed three people in a campaign against modern technology just by mailing packages.
“And when the … recipient opens it, they don’t even know what hit them,” The Bishop wrote of Kaczynski’s victims in a note provided to the Tribune by an expert hired by the firms.
About 100 postal inspectors have been joined in the investigation by agents from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. It may be the biggest probe of its kind since a man tried to plant mailbox bombs in the pattern of a “smiley face” across the middle of the country in 2002, said Tripp Brinkley, program manager for dangerous mail investigations for the U.S. Postal Inspection Service.
Brinkley said The Bishop’s explosives are similar to most that the agency handles.
Virtually all mail bombs analyzed by postal inspectors have four major components, which investigators list using the acronym “PIES” for power source, initiator, explosive and a switch that triggers the mailed item when it is opened or something is removed from it.
Most devices consist of fairly common parts that can be bought at home-improvement stores, said Brinkley at the U.S. Postal Inspection Service’s national training academy in Potomac. The agency opened the secure facility last week in a show of preparedness and to discuss techniques that will be used to try to stop a suspect.
Investigators have seen switches that include mousetraps and door-alarm parts. A power source can be a simple 9-volt battery, Brinkley said. The initiator that fires the explosive can be as ordinary as the end of a light bulb.
For the two pipe bombs, The Bishop chose common gunpowder mixed with buckshot to create shrapnel and encased it in a length of ordinary white plastic pipe, investigators said. He had chosen not to fully hook the device up to detonate.
Postal investigators deconstruct explosive devices in their Maryland laboratory. Investigators said every element is analyzed to determine where it may have come from, including the ink and paper used for a note, packaging materials, wires, and the pipe or container that holds the explosive.
Some parts can have serial numbers or other identifiers that can provide data on where a component was made, which can lead investigators to where it was shipped and sold.
“Then we will exert every effort to find everyone who ever bought that kind of switch from that electronics store,” Brinkley said.
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Concern about The Bishop built slowly. When he began sending his letters, many of the companies that received them stuffed them in their “eccentric file.”
But other companies began contacting federal investigators, and a pattern emerged suggesting the suspect could be living in the Chicago area. More than half of his mailings–which tend to go out in waves–were sent from the city or its suburbs.
The first letter attributed to The Bishop was postmarked in Chicago in May 2005, and was delivered to a business in Barrington Hills. Three months later a second letter was sent from Palatine to Wilmington, Del.
Three more were sent before the end of October 2005. One was received in Milwaukee, and another was sent from there to an address in La Grange Park.
His 6th through 9th letters all were sent from Des Moines on March 13, 2006. Two went to Wisconsin, one to Minnesota and one to a company in Omaha.
At least two of the next three letters were sent again from Palatine on June 9, 2006. One arrived in Los Angeles a few days later, while the other two stayed in the Midwest.
“Time’s up,” one said, and promised a series of packages would follow.
The three letters that immediately preceded the pipe bombs had a new wrinkle. They marked the first time The Bishop mailed from outside the Midwest. The three letters were sent from Orlando on July 7, 2006, and were received in Houston, Naperville and Columbus, Ohio.
On Jan. 31, a white box addressed in scrawled handwriting arrived at a mail-reception facility a mile or so from the headquarters of American Century Investments in Kansas City, Mo.
It was addressed to an officer of the firm, and had a return address in Streamwood. A worker opened it before having it delivered to the main building, finding the white plastic pipe with wires protruding from it, along with a note that read, “Bang! You’re dead.”
A similar package was mailed to Janus Small Cap in Denver, but was rerouted to the office of a Chicago affiliate at 311 S. Wacker Drive.
“It wasn’t until the [explosives] that we understood the totality of what we were dealing with,” said David Colen, acting assistant inspector in charge of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service in Chicago.
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Authorities say real mail bombs are still rare, but workers at all 37,000 postal facilities nationwide are trained to spot a suspicious package.
The ones that turn out to be dangerous usually have a fictitious return address, and are postmarked in a different city than the return address, investigators said. Many have numerous “fragile” warnings.
The majority have handwriting with exaggerated characteristics in an attempt to foil any future analysis that might be use to identify the mailer, investigators said.
In Maryland this week, leaders of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service said inspectors are poised to react if a device from The Bishop turns up again.
The service has several vans outfitted with X-ray equipment, including one sent to Denver after The Bishop mailed a package there. Inspectors also have 18 mobile command trucks scattered across the country that can beam information and data from a remote scene to headquarters in Washington, D.C.
It’s an improvement from even a few years ago, inspectors said. During the “smiley face” bombing case, inspectors dispatched to a rural county in western Illinois were forced to take over a small sheriff’s office to do their work miles from one of the crime scenes.
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Whoever The Bishop is, he may have his wits about him. He was careful not to leave any fingerprints, investigators said.
But it’s possible the suspect did not make a completely clean drop-off when he mailed the explosive packages from a post office in Rolling Meadows on Jan. 26. Investigators said a reliable eyewitness–whom they refused to identify due to safety concerns–got a good look at a man who may be The Bishop.
That man wore an olive or dark gray “military-style” jacket, and had sandy-brown hair. The witness was even able to tell investigators the man’s hair curls as it meets his neck, that he might have blue eyes, and a birthmark on his forehead.
Postal inspectors so far are only calling the man “a person of interest,” saying it is at least likely that the man might have helpful information. They have offered a reward in the case and asked anyone who has information to call 312-983-7901.
“This is one we do need to solve quickly,” said Colen of the U.S. Postal Inspection Service. “It’s one that everyone involved in the case would like to have solved yesterday.”
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