Pipe Bombings of Mailboxes Spread

CHICAGO —  The string of mailbox pipe bombings that has rattled nerves across the Great Plains continued west Monday, when a bomb was found in Colorado, as well as another in Nebraska. Both bombs appeared similar to 15 others found since Friday in Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska, authorities said.

Authorities are confident the same person or group of people has planted all the devices, six of which exploded, injuring four postal workers and two residents.

Law enforcement officials reiterated their calls Monday for caution, telling U.S. Postal Service employees and rural residents on a rough east-west line through the nation’s midsection to assume the worst--that more bombs were out there.

The 16th bomb was found Monday in the south-central Nebraska town of Hastings, within a few dozen miles of some of the other devices. The bomb, which did not explode, was discovered by a resident who had been out of town for the weekend, authorities said.

Mail delivery resumed in the areas of Illinois and Iowa where it had been halted Saturday, although postal workers in the affected areas refused to deliver mail unless residents removed or propped open the doors to their standalone mailboxes.

In Illinois and Iowa on Friday, six bombs exploded and two others were discovered that did not detonate.

More than 550 miles to the southwest, a resident of the small town of Salida, Colo., discovered a bomb just after noon Monday. It also did not explode.

Authorities spent much of the day Monday trying to determine whether the Salida bomb was the work of the bomber or bombers working in the Midwest or that of a copycat. Well after nightfall, they decided it matched the 16 others.

“We have a rather disturbing pattern where the subjects are moving west rather quickly,” FBI agent Mark Mershon said. “We’re looking for someone who is mobile. We’re moving mountains to determine who that is.”

Late Monday night, meanwhile, authorities were investigating a report that a pipe bomb had been discovered in Pueblo, Colo., but it had not been definitively linked to the other cases. “We’ve got a knucklehead on our hands,” said Rich Marianos, agent in charge of the Colorado Springs, Colo., office of the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. “It’s either a copycat or the real guy. Either way, I’d love to nail him.”

In Nebraska, officials said they may have discovered why none of the eight bombs in their state detonated.

What may have been missing in the Nebraska bombs, authorities said, was a length of duct tape.

All the bombs were constructed nearly identically, of a 6-inch by 3/4-inch piece of steel pipe filled with combustible material and ignited with the charge from a 9-volt battery. The Nebraska bombs, however, lacked a piece of duct tape that in the other cases had secured a triggering mechanism.

“Maybe that’s why they didn’t go off,” said Peter Sakaris, an FBI special agent based in Omaha. “Or maybe they were designed not to go off, with the bomber thinking we already got his message and he didn’t need to blow any more up. But we certainly can’t be sure of that.

“Other than the duct tape, they were identical” and fully capable of detonating, he said.

It was unclear late Monday whether there was duct tape on the triggering device on the bomb found in Salida.

All of the devices came with a plastic zip-top bag and a folded piece of paper on which was typed an antigovernment screed that federal profilers say appears to have been written by an older male who is perhaps obsessed with death.

“You allow yourself to fear death!” the note reads at one point. “World authorities allowed, and still allow you to fear death! In avoiding death you are forced to conform.”

The note also promises more “attention getters.”

Before Sept. 11, a string of mailbox pipe bombings would hardly have made even the local news, Sakaris said. But the Postal Service was already on edge after anthrax-laced letters passed through its system last fall, killing five people on the East Coast.

With the threatening note and the FBI calling the bombings “domestic terrorism,” investigators--and the media--have swarmed to the sites of the incidents.

About 150 postal inspection agents, 70 FBI agents, more than a dozen members of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and several dozen more state and local officers were on the case by late Monday.

Representatives of the FBI’s field office in Omaha were doing the morning television shows, the evening television shows and, in between, were answering calls from news outlets ranging from the British Broadcasting Corp. in London to Voice of America.

If the job of the spokespeople was hectic, at least it felt safe.

In Tipton, Iowa, where a bomb exploded Friday, mail carrier Jim Pelzer wore safety goggles and earplugs on his route. His wife had given him the protective gear.

“My feeling was when we had 9/11 and the anthrax scare, I was a little concerned about my job safety,” Pelzer said. “But now I’m intimidated and scared.”

Times reporter Julie Cart in Denver contributed to this report.