Short Fuse | FULL EPISODE | The New Detectives

Investigators search for a serial bomber whose targets sweep across New York state, setting off deadly explosions over 90 minutes that leave only vague clues about the bombers' identities. Florida

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rushed to the scene of a massive explosion at a luxury property somewhere among the twisted wreckage as clues will lead them. Investigators must piece together the shattered remains of an intricate puzzle. Every long, grueling investigation into an attack begins with a

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. Elinor Fowler, of West Valley, New York, had no idea that the phone call she received a few days after Christmas in 1993 was a prelude to death.

A delivery service asked for directions to her home so they could deliver a suspicious package L&R She called the police, they told her that anonymous packages are not a crime and they couldn't do anything. Eleanor reluctantly accepted the box and cut it. She put it in and took out the crumpled newspaper inside. She found a toolbox. Whoever sent it didn't include a note. She turned the latch and lifted the lid, causing a fatal explosion. Elinor Fowler was the first victim of what would become a serial bombing across the state. Five more. Bombs hidden inside identical tool boxes were dropped throughout northern and western New York within 90 minutes, four of the bombs exploded killing five and wounding two investigators from three New York offices of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Armas de Fuego along with his National Response team tracked explosions at each bomb site ATF is the federal agency assigned to investigate the attacks Special Agent Scott Samus of the ATF Rochester Office was one of the first agents in responding the investigation begins on December 28, 1993 when I receive a phone call from my supervisor Who tells me to respond to Buffalo?

He has had several bombings, possibly several deaths, please come and help. I'm in Rochester. I'm an hour, hour and a half away. Then he calls me a few minutes later and asks me to stay. in Rochester because there was just a detonation in Rochester with possibly some deaths there the four simultaneous bombings would stretch the limits of the ATF and other law enforcement agencies at each scene the investigators first task was to find every piece of evidence no matter how small it was how Inconsequential it seemed It was too early to say what could point them to the person who sent the deadly packages Much of the evidence consisted of small fragments coated with explosive residue To determine what type of explosive was used The evidence at each scene was bagged and sent to the chemist Coroner Doug Clay Peck at the ATF laboratories in Rockville, Maryland.

Well, in this case we had to make sure that everything was not only stored separately on Rochester's ship, but that it was shipped separately down here and that different people handled different pieces of evidence, even though things were already in airtight containers. , we wanted to make sure that was the case while the lab was processing the evidence, investigators were trying to track the packages the attacker used local delivery services and the U.S. The mail made it difficult to track the packages without realizing their deadly load. Unsuspecting drivers made their rounds. The packages weighing about 16 pounds seemed harmless enough.

How could the delivery men know that they were loaded with death? Not all of the bombs reached their targets when a driver attempted to deliver a package to correctional officer Scott Kemp at the New York State Penitentiary, he learned that Kemp was not working, the penitentiary could not accept the package, compounded by the delay that would cause him to hand it over another time, he threw the box into the back of his truck, as luck would have it, the bomb did not detonate this bomb and another one that malfunctioned was disarmed by the Erie County Sheriff's bomb squad.

They provided investigators with an important break in the case. They could now see how the bombs were built inside this device afterwards. is fired by opening it, this would activate the device, not doing the whiplash, but by opening it like this, it would trigger the device that way, which would cause the detonator to explode inside here and hit this, about four pounds of dynamite also included inside this. The device consisted of approximately eleven half Tongan shrapnel and these pieces of shrapnel were of 28 different varieties propelled by the dynamite. Each piece of shrapnel travels ten times faster than a bullet and moves between fourteen and fifteen thousand feet per second.

Fragments can pass through solid concrete. Explosives are grouped. into two categories, high explosives and low explosives, high explosives such as dynamite and c4 are the most powerful, they are used commercially for demolition and excavation and for military applications, they are very stable to work with high explosives, they require a large amount of force, a detonator to make them explode at low altitude. Explosives include gunpowder used in firecrackers and smokeless powder used in shotgun shells; They are easier to ignite than high explosives and are the explosive of choice for amateur bombers. By observing the extent of destruction at bomb scenes in New York, investigators immediately knew it was caused by high explosives.

James Crippen, a nine-year veteran of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, trains law enforcement agencies to conduct Bomb investigations at the scene and in the laboratory have seen their share of the havoc caused by high explosives. Surely, a pound of C4 is "You're going to do a lot more damage than a pound of black powder. You know, a pound of black powder, you know, makes a pretty good bomb, but you know, a pound of C-4, you know? What can devastate a building? I mean you." We're talking about a difference and a detonation velocity of between 1,200 and maybe 1,800 feet per second for black powder and about 25,000 feet per second for C4, so there's a lot more force involved, a lot more devastating force, but sometimes people can survive a bomb explosion even from a high explosive William Lazar, a resident of Roosevelt City, was the target of the New York serial bomber, but his suspicions saved his life when Lazar picked up his package of At the post office, the clerk joked that it could be a bomb, although the clerk was trying to be funny, Lazar was careful to open the toolbox with his rake, which added a little distance and caution saved his life. life when the bomb exploded several hundred miles away in Cheektowaga.

Robert Fowler was less fortunate. Eleanor Fowler's husband received the package from him at work. They were taken with a surveillance camera that captures a still image every few seconds. They tell the final moments in the lives of Robert Fowler and his co-worker John O'Donnell. Just before the explosion, another co-worker, Jeffery Kemp, offered to open the package with his pocket knife. The explosion was so powerful that it threw Fowler about 15 feet down the hallway; miraculously Kemp survived and can be seen fleeing the scene in search of help six bombs four explosions four counties in upstate New York each unexploded bomb was almost identical packed in a toolbox and mailed from Buffalo the bombing shared another element all the intended victims were related all the family members were interviewed there are other family members who were not the target who were found and interviewed and who survived and they were all asked who do you think could have done this and they all said Well, you know Mike Stevens, maybe he did.

Mike Stevens, 56, had a girlfriend named Brenda Shivir. All the targets of the attack were related to Brenda. The connection could have been a coincidence, except for one more telling detail three months earlier, Monroe County Sheriff. The bomb squad told Sammis that the manager of a restaurant near Rochester found more than 100 sticks of dynamite near a dumpster. The code numbers on the dynamite matched the dynamite from the unexploded bombs. Investigators traced the numbers to a Kentucky gunpowder company that housed a quarry that sold blasting. The supply clerks gave Samus a description of a man who had purchased 55 pounds of dynamite and fifty detonators four months earlier.

Samus' investigation revealed that this man was Earle Figley, a close friend of Mike Stevens. Samus interrogated Figley and presented him with all the evidence implicating him. Figley confessed. that he and stevens made the bombs and sent them to Brenda's family. Figley explained Stephen's motivation. Mike wanted to get revenge on his girlfriend's family for not accepting him. The relationship between the two began to become strained and Mike began tapping into his and everyone else's phone calls. relationship you are your own family is going to support you in your relationship with another person and that is what happened in this case things were not going well Brenda's relatives would tell her that if it doesn't work why don't you get out of the relationship the police had evidence enough to arrest both Pearl Figley and Mike Stevens, but they still had to build a case that could not be beaten in court, so they needed hard evidence to convict Mike Stevens in New York in 1994,

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continued to follow all the tracks.

While building their case against a serial attacker while Mike Stevens and Earl Figley were in jail, the ATF National Response Team searched Fig Lee's hotel room and found boxes identical to those used to ship the bombs. A tip was led by ATF agents and the Rochester Police bomb. An evidence squad at a storage locker that Stevens had rented several months earlier inside the locker, police discovered dynamite and detonators. The explosives provided the ATF and other agencies with the ammunition they needed in their case against Stevens, but the incriminating evidence didn't stop them. They also recovered the costumes Figley wore when he bought the team and mailed the bombs a wig, beard and theatrical makeup.

They also found the books that Stevens and Fig Lee studied to learn how to build the deadly weapons. The fact that these books exist represents the risk we run in living in a free society, according to bomb expert James Crippen, information has always existed on how to build devices, that is one of the things we live with in the United States. United because we have a very rigid vision of freedom of information. It doesn't matter how much trouble it's going to cause us in the future and I certainly agree with that point of view that you know you don't want to restrict information, you just hope that people who use it responsibly other than the explosives and the books that are stored.

Investigators also found tools in Stevens' home and, like almost everything else used in a crime, the tools can be traced to the ATF laboratory in Rockville, Maryland. Forensic investigators care

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y studied the wire cutters they found in Stevens' home. The tool marks that specialists had to match the wire cutters with the marks made with the wires found on all bombs, tool mark examiner Elizabeth Gillis, when you have two tools coming off the line production one after another, each one will have its own individuality, its own individual mark, so that when you do a test cut with the tools, you can put them in the microscope and be able to differentiate which tool made which mark first.

Gillis cuts a piece of wire using the cutter. She wants to prove that the wire is the same type found in the evidence investigators must make. She makes dozens of cuts with the tool to study the angle contact area and other attributes of the cut, only then can they match a wire to the tool that cut it. She places the test cut under a microscope or adjusts it to the appropriate angle so that in order to compare the test cut with the wire found as evidence, she then superimposes the two images to see if the cut patterns match.

In the case of Mike Stevens, investigators made a successful match, the wires used in all the bombs had been cut by the Wire cutters were found in the basement of Stevens' home, while books, wires and tools They helped investigators tighten their grip on Mike Stevens. They still wanted one more piece of evidence they needed to establish a connection between the explosives and the suspect. People think that when a bomb explodes. It goes out and explodes and everything goes away. Nothing could be further from the truth. When you have an explosion, all the explosive material becomes a gaseous state that is actually consumed in the explosion because it will go out as a heated gas and when it hits other objects, will cool down and start to cover those objects, like metal, clothing, wood or whatever, so not only will you haveunreacted explosive particles, but you will also have this gaseous film developing on other objects that you can test and get the residue from. of the ATF laboratory in Rockville, Maryland, Doug Clay Peck analyzed debris from the bomb scene to determine the type of explosive used once identified.

Clay Peck attempted to compare it to evidence collected from Mike Stevens. Explosive residue evaporates quickly, so samples were taken from the debris. packed in airtight canisters to detect explosive residue, clay Peck had to capture it as it dissipated, he prepared a pipette filled with charcoal which he then inserted into the top of the canister, the apparatus was then attached to a vacuum cleaner while the canister heated gently. extracted through the pipette the carbon inside the pipette took the chemical components of the evidence these chemicals were analyzed to see what explosive they came from the tests confirmed that dynamite was the explosive used in these bombs the next packet of clay had to prove that Stevens and Figley had recently handled dynamite, if they had had its residue, it would have remained on their clothes.

I found Stevens' boots and his clothes. Ethylene glycol nitrate dye only found in dynamite, there is no other commercial use other than dynamite for this material, researchers had done their research. In case they had linked Stevens and Figley to the explosives and tools used to make the bombs, the missing details were stitched together by Earl Figley himself from this evidence. ATF agents determined that Mike Stevens built six bombs in his Rochester hotel room with the help of Earl Figley. In fact, to take the blame off himself, Stevens made sure that Figley played a major role in the Mike Stevens murders, for which he was using her to do all the dirty work and I guess he was successful.

Anyway for a few hours, but not for long, Stephen's motive was revenge, he was determined to make Brenda Severs' family pay for rejecting him to be sure the bombs were fatal, he loaded each one with shrapnel, I have no doubt these devices were designed. to kill someone by opening them, they were strictly a booby trap device aimed at a specific person to make the bombs harder to track. Stevens stuffed the packages with Buffalo newspapers to make it appear that the packages were sent from there and not from his home in Rochester in Court Figley implicated Mike Stevens and later pleaded guilty.

He was sentenced to 20 years in prison. Convicted of the death of five people. Stevens was sentenced to four consecutive life sentences. Most of the time, when he detonates a bomb, an agonizing catastrophe begins, but in a small town in Georgia there are explosions. are an everyday occurrence around the world the number of bomb attacks increases every year a study on alcohol, tobacco and firearms revealed that from 1990 to 1994 the number of bomb attacks almost doubled in the United States alone Pete Mastan, chief of ATF training, has investigated explosions for over 30 years, well, the typical bomber is perhaps the ultimate coward that the typical bomber does not face nor does he want to face his opponent, who prefers to use whatever subterfuge and cover he can to Make sure these criminals are brought to justice by the ATF.

Young researchers and students to this testing range in Brunswick, Georgia, to teach them how to catch a bomber. Here the ATF trains evidence technicians. Fire investigators. Schematic artists and explosives technicians in academia. Every skill is refined through repetition on this day. ATF bomb scene instructors will test. the knowledge of their students by detonating three car bombs that simulate real crime scenes the men who build and package these explosives are highly trained experts their work is as delicate as it is dangerous one cannot underestimate the power of explosive materials that is why in Inexperienced hands information on bomb-making can be a recipe for disaster, as instructor Larry Casey explains that all the information available does not contain proper safety precautions and that the skills of learning sequential assembly processes, things that It is important to know for safety reasons, they are completely missing, so they are always at great risk of exploding and many times we get a call and you will find the tragic consequences in a garage or somewhere where the children were experimenting and what you get They are pieces of bodies and tools scattered everywhere and death and destruction and that is the sad part of this the instructors at the Academy begin the training sessions by building pipe bombs these bombs are not models they are real the explosive powder must be filled with a lot Be careful just a few grains caught in the thread of the tube could trigger an explosion, a small spark or even static electricity could ignite the gunpowder for the test.

The pump is positioned so that the end caps shoot into the engine compartment and rear seat, making the job of finding them more of a challenge for students when everyone has passed. The area is the moment of detonation after the explosion. ATF investigators inspect the remains. Some of the lighter fragments were thrown hundreds of feet into the forest, creating a huge area to investigate. These fragments give students valuable clues about the composition of the bomb and where it was located. was placed inside the car in the field nothing can be overlooked, investigators only have one chance to gather evidence and once the scene is revealed it will be very difficult, if not impossible, in some cases to return to that scene or recreate that scene during hours.

Days or weeks later, making it a rare opportunity to achieve perfection, it quickly becomes apparent how destructive these little pipe bombs can be. This explosion was so powerful that part of the cardboard box went through the steel door of the car and other fragments went through the roof as if they failed, the instructors prepare the next bomb by mixing several low explosives into a powerful cocktail. Work is stressful. The gunpowder should be tamped into the tube and the detonator delicately taped to the loaded bomb. In some cases, seat cushions are moistened to prevent this. fire to destroy evidence the students will need to work with the final package is ready to detonate after the explosions the students were divided into teams the team leader assigns each person a task charlie ray Rick Frank Joe and Colin will be the supervisor of that group, what you found, if you feel like you found something that is a really critical piece of evidence, it will give us guys in the car an idea of ​​what the device is to help them look deeper into certain things, let's mention that the students work together to investigate the bomb scene in the field ATF agents have to work quickly and under a lot of pressure Students are taught from the beginning they will have to work with state and local authorities, laboratory technicians and most importantly with each other to solve a crime a team begins their work by forming a perimeter around the scene then they divide the area into quadrants before beginning the search for fragments Jim the students walk along the asphalt advancing as a team so as not to miss any A fragment of evidence, Each piece is identified with a chalk circle or small orange cone and assigned a number.

In an explosive scene like this, evidence numbers can reach into the thousands. A team member records the identification number and exact location of each piece of evidence. between the fragments are measured to plot their location another team closely inspects the damage inside the car their job is to determine which fragments are part of the car and which may be parts of the bomb for many of the students this is the first time they have seen up close the devastation of the bombs, it will not be the last and although the damage to the car appears complete, there is valuable evidence embedded in the wreckage, axes, hammers and crowbars are brought in to extract these clues from the vehicle, the car is literally dissected as Students look for pieces of the bomb lodged in or behind the board.

They never know where they might find the most significant evidence. Then the students move the car and look underneath. Bombs explode in all directions and tracks are often embedded in the asphalt. Then the inspectors. What remains of the scene is swept, the debris care

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y sifted through a thin wire screen to separate any small clues that may have been overlooked. The instructors intensify the pressure and increase the realism by adding a chaotic element to the bomb scene as they call them. The survivors played panicked victims and relatives whose loved ones were killed or injured in the explosion.

The scenarios are based on real events. The students must learn to be firm but compassionate in the emotionally charged atmosphere as the actors race toward the bombed car. They are detained by students who must be able to comfort them and keep them away from the investigation once the scene is cleared, fragments are photographed and videotaped, then collected and sent to a laboratory. These thorough investigation methods must be learned if students are ever hoping to catch an attacker, you must be able to prove your investigation in a court of law and most of the time forensic evidence is needed that puts the bomb in the hands of the attacker in classroom, they receive an anatomy lesson learning the The vital parts of a bomb, tape, tube, detonator and wires are carefully examined as students begin to reconstruct the evidence gathered outside at the bombing scene.

The need for well-trained ATF investigators is crucial to solving crimes, usually when a bomb explodes on the bomber. is miles away, but in one case in Florida it struck the terrifying Lee near his home on July 9, 1985: Deafening explosions seconds apart shook a quiet suburban neighborhood in Naples, Florida. Collier County sheriff's deputies immediately arrived at the scene, but the explosion had already taken the lives of two people. Margaret Benson and her adopted son Scott were killed. Margaret's daughter, Carol Lynn, was killed. was seriously injured the Sheriff's Office knew this type of devastation was not an accident they called the ATF for help Special Agent Ralph Ostrowski I worked in the investigation during my 22 years with the ATF, particularly during my time in Cleveland, when I worked on many cases of organized crime, car bombings, this was without a doubt the worst car bombing I had ever seen.

Astrouski and his team immediately set out to find out what caused the Debris from the destruction of the exploding Chevy Suburban to be scattered four yards around, often, especially in a bombing of this magnitude, debris can be spread hundreds of feet far beyond. than it is believed they would be. ATF agents worked with police to establish a procedure for conducting evidence collection. The agents had done this many times before and knew that this case would take a long time to solve, so on the second or third day needless to say the scene became very, very tedious to work with, the agents were forced to use masks because due to the stench and they did an excellent job and recovering most of the evidence, each fragment was marked with chalk where the debris fell after the explosion, it didn't take long to discover the probable cause of the explosion.

They found pieces of large metal pipes that were not car parts. The ATF was confident that the vehicle had been destroyed by a powerful pipe bomb, but now they had to determine how it was built and who planted it. The vehicle was completely destroyed. It was a large vehicle. In 1978, the Chevy Suburban had the top off at 227 pounds in a contained vehicle. The force of the explosion caused extensive damage as evidence continued to accumulate. The officers began questioning witnesses. The first person they spoke to was Stephen. Benson, the only family member to escape injury, his mother and brother had been killed, his sister was fighting for her life in a hospital, but police reported that Stephen Benson's demeanor was perfectly calm, even optimistic. , this raised the suspicions of Collier County Captain Tom Storer, my suspicions.

They immediately realized that something was not right about what was happening, it was simply not consistent with a catastrophic event that had just occurred within 24 hours of the explosion. Steven Benson stopped talking directly to police. All questions were filtered through his lawyer, although they suspectedStephen. Benson's investigators had to be careful not to jump to conclusions, so far they had no solid evidence for or against Benson's involvement, it was too early to make accusations and they had no time to waste following a false trail, we continued evidence wherever it is found. The evidence is going to take us if we focus on one topic and use all our resources on that topic and it turns out that we are wrong, then we will have wasted very valuable time at the beginning of the investigation, when it is probably one of the most critical.

Over several periods at the sheriff's office, investigators began studying all of the evidence at the scene, including pieces of electronic circuitry and batteries, elements of a shooting device. They knew that whoever planted the bomb had some experience assembling electronic components. Ralph Ostrowski and Jack Gant began studying a Schematic artists map the explosion that gives them a clear view of the epicenter and direction of the explosion. The purpose of these sketches that we are looking at here today is to help the investigator when he testifies in court and is questioned by the defense. where each piece of these items was collected and must be able to testify that he collected these items from a location around the car.

You must be able to attest to what this article is. You must be able to tell the date and time. he obtained it and identified it later that this is the item he picked up on the particular day of the crime without that testimony this evidence cannot be used in court the schematic shows where each particle of evidence was found after the explosion its small size and large The distance from the car is a testament to the tremendous power of the explosion that tore through the vehicle. Once maps were drawn and evidence collected, the investigation moved north, fragments gathered at the scene were taken to the ATF laboratory.

In Atlanta, Georgia, here investigators try to make sense of the vehicle's twisted remains. Forensic chemist Walter Mitchell, a 26-year veteran of the ATF, began with a visual inspection of the fragments through a microscope. Mitchell studied the small wafer-shaped specks that adhered to the sample and tentatively identified the particles as smokeless gunpowder to confirm that it was smokeless gunpowder, Mitchell had to test it chemically using a process called thin layer chromatography, first covering a sheet of glass with an absorbent layer and then placed dots of the smokeless powder and their unknown sample on the glass. It was immersed in a tank of solvent while the solvent was extracted, the absorbent layer carried with its small amounts of dissolved powders, if the powders were the same, they would migrate the same distance along the glass forming stripes of identical length and color Mitchell removed it and dried, then put the glass under ultraviolet light to compare the colors of the stripes;

In this case, the color of the smokeless powder and the unknown sample matched. A comparison of the lengths of the stripes matched the test that confirmed Mitchell's suspicions about smokeless powder. was used to blow up the vehicle in Naples, Florida, but lab scientists could find no way to link the attacker to the bomb fragments; the evidence would have to come from somewhere else in Naples, Florida. Forensic investigators began tracing the origin of the metal pipe they believed housed the bombs that killed pipe makers Bensons. Manufacturers put a brand on their products. Fortunately, the logo survived the explosion.

The identified agents traced the pipes to the only company in the city that sold that brand. A store employee told investigators that a few days earlier he had sold the pipes to a man wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses. The buyer said he worked for the Delray construction company. Investigators later discovered that no such company existed. They took the invoices as evidence. The signatures were nothing more than a scribble, but the paper contained something more revealing. The bills had the impression of a palm print. Could they be the link to authorities suspected of Steven Benson? obtained Benson's own palm prints to compare, they hope to find enough points of identification between the two to make a match.

In this case, these palm prints that appeared on these forms are in excellent condition and the identification points probably reached between sixty and seventy. -five points of identification no one has any doubt that these palm prints are Steven Benson's a background check on Steven Benson discovered his fascination with explosives in a high school yearbook a dedication he wrote to an old girlfriend he read I hope see this summer, then we can bomb. We had developed information that he began experimenting with explosives many years ago in Pennsylvania. We had spoken to witnesses who saw him with a firecracker and 80 and 100 type devices using copper tubes using remote control to set up.

Authorities sought out a financial auditor; the auditor determined that Benson, despite his access to a family fortune, was a terrible businessman. Police discovered that his financial failings were so extensive that Stephen began forging checks. According to her mother's accounts, when Margaret Benson discovered this, she threatened to cut Stephen out of her will. Could it be that Steven Benson saw a clear way to get to those millions? Investigators believe Benson used his electronics expertise to build the two deadly bombs and the trigger device that set them off the morning of the bombing. Stephen told everyone he was going to buy coffee and donuts, but police believe that's when he planted the bombs in the car.

Once this was done, all he had to do was activate the bombs and a family fortune would be his or at least that's what he planned after Stephen planted the bombs under the car he was driving home, he was gone for about 45 minutes. Carol-lynn Margaret Scott and Stephen prepared to drive to the Gulf Coast to inspect the property for a new house Carol-lynn reported that Stephen calmly walked alongside the group without giving any indication of the tragedy he knew was about to begin. , but when everyone was about to get into the car, carol-lynn noticed that something was wrong caroline was able to tell us that the morning they got in the vehicle to leave, things were not looking good at that moment she realized that Scott was the driver, which was very rare for Scott to ever be the driver, he noticed his mother was in the front seat. mother was rarely in the front seat and that was her place because she got very dizzy according to her plan Stephen made sure everyone got in the car just before leaving Steven excused himself to pick up something he had forgotten disappeared Inside the house, the investigation on the attacks discovered the evidence necessary to arrest and convict Stephen Benson.

He was sentenced to life imprisonment. Bombs are built from common materials by people with an uncommon thirst for revenge. They are easily hidden. They are absolutely devastating. A bomb can detonate at any time and anywhere. This simple truth makes bombings so challenging for investigators and so chilling for the rest of us, but investigators have the advantage that when an attacker attacks, he always leaves his weapon at the crime scene and with it is the residue. of his fault.