by Phillip Pina, Knight Ridder Newspapers
ST. PAUL, Minn. - Luke Helder had a grin on his face as he zipped past Lori McDonagh’s car on a lonely stretch of Nevada highway. She had to look again before realizing who he was.
“He was smiling, calm as can be,” McDonagh said. The 21-year-old Minnesota man who police say was responsible for a five-state bombing spree was right next to her. She was shocked and nervous.
“I was relieved, too, that it was going to end,” McDonagh said of the sighting Tuesday on Interstate 80 near Reno. She used her cellphone to call police. The spree of bombs, blood and uncertainty soon was over.
For five days, Helder cast fear along rural roadways in Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado and Texas, authorities said. Along with letters filled with notes on death and anti-government ramblings, pipe bombs were placed in mailboxes of unsuspecting victims. Six people were injured, and 18 undetonated bombs were recovered.
Now, as prosecutors build their case against Helder and try to determine his motive, they are tracing the path the Pine Island, Minn., native took from University of Wisconsin-Stout industrial design student in Menomonie to a wanted suspect. He traveled thousands of miles in his father’s car, stayed in a bargain motel and escaped close calls with police. Those who met him along the way didn’t suspect the smiling, green-eyed, grunge-music fan with blond hair and a Kurt Cobain T-shirt was one of the most-wanted men in the country.
Planning began in April
While it is unclear when the plan was hatched, Helder apparently put it into motion by mid-April. He began making repeated visits to Mills Fleet Farm in Menomonie, buying many of the supplies used to make bombs. Over three weeks, he bought two dozen 6-inch-by- 3/4-inch galvanized pipes, tape, springs and other supplies, said Kurt Van Hout, ad manager for Mills.
“We sell these products day to day routinely to hundreds of people. It wouldn’t be anything out of the ordinary to notice,” Van Hout said.
Helder had begun carrying hundreds of dollars in cash. He bought a cellphone. And the once-studious college junior stopped going to classes as friends noticed his darkening demeanor.
On Thursday, May 2, sometime after noon and before 4 p.m., Helder took off. He left a note behind for his roommate saying he was going to a party in Madison, Wis. Before he left their apartment, Helder used some of the pipes and supplies to assemble eight bombs, prosecutors say in court records.
About 6:30 a.m. on Friday, May 3, Shelly Engelbrecht went to get her newspaper and noticed something odd in her rural Davenport, Iowa, mailbox. It caught the attention of the expectant mother, but she went on with her day and left it behind. It wasn’t until later that she learned it was a pipe bomb; it was removed safely.
“Not only is that my daughter-in-law, but my firstborn grandchild. We were lucky,” said Shelly’s mother-in-law and neighbor, Pam Engelbrecht.
8 bombs on the first day
In all, eight pipe bombs were placed by that Friday morning inside mailboxes in a circle stretching from eastern Iowa into western Illinois. Authorities said the locations seemed to be selected at random.
It was about 3 p.m., after most of the pipe bombs had been found, that Helder pulled up to the Suburban Inn on the western edge of Omaha, Neb., 300 miles west of Davenport. He checked in, signing his name. He paid about $40 cash, hotel manager Doug Hoellen said.
“He pretty much stayed to himself. He was like any one of the 20,000 people who check in every year,” Hoellen said. Helder asked the clerk to mail a batch of letters for him, saying they were part of a school project.
Inside Room 131, authorities say, Helder was preparing for a second night of bombings. He assembled 16 pipe bombs and left sometime that night.
It was about a quarter after midnight, the morning of Saturday, May 4, when a Boone County sheriff’s deputy pulled Helder over for speeding about 120 miles west of Omaha. After the deputy asked for Helder’s license, Helder said: “I didn’t mean to cause any harm,” Sheriff Jerry Benne said. The unsuspecting deputy told Helder he was only stopped for speeding; it was about 12 miles from where a pipe bomb was found at a home.
Truck-stop encounter
It would not be his last run-in with the law.
By 3 a.m. Saturday, May 4, Helder had driven 60 miles south to a Grand Island, Neb., truck stop.
“He just came in and bought gas. He seemed normal,” said Aaron Burr, general manager of the Bosselman Travel Center. He used a bank card, which investigators later traced.
In all, eight more pipe bombs were planted in mailboxes that night, forming a rough circle in central Nebraska.
Leads were chased across the country. But no suspect had come to light. What many did believe was that the bomber’s pattern seemed to follow Interstate 80 westward. But as investigators scoured the Nebraska targets, Helder had turned south.
On Saturday afternoon, he left a message for his roommate in Menomonie that he would not be home that night or the next. Helder suggested that James Divine “check the news and act accordingly,” court records state.
By the time Divine got the message, Helder was in Watonga, Okla., where he had his second police encounter. An officer pulled him over for not wearing a seat belt, noticed Helder was tired, gave him a ticket and let him go.
Court documents provide little detail about how Helder spent the next two days, other than to note that on Sunday, May 5 - Helder’s 21st birthday - he was stopped again, this time in Fowler, Colo.
It was about 2:45 p.m. when Capt. Ryan Gates, the lone full-time officer on the Fowler police force, spotted Helder speeding along U.S. 50. “There was nothing unusual. I ran his license and his license plates, and they came back clear,” Gates said. But he did notice Helder seemed nervous and was about to cry. He was let go with a warning.
Within 24 hours, two more pipe bombs would be found, one in Amarillo, Texas, and another in Salida, Colo. The bombs, like the eight in Nebraska, weren’t rigged to explode.
On Monday, as letter carriers across the Midwest dropped mail only into boxes with their doors left open, letters arrived at Helder’s parents’ home in rural Pine Island and at the Badger Herald newspaper at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Later in the day, when Helder started calling concerned family and friends, authorities said, he was still in Colorado.
The letters, postmarked from Omaha on Friday, detailed Helder’s beliefs in out-of-body experiences and contained fatalistic comments while attacking the “government.” Alarmed by words such as “Mailboxes are exploding” in the letter, Helder’s father, Cameron, called police in Menomonie to tell them of his suspicions. Meanwhile, Divine had found bomb-making supplies under his roommate’s bed.
By Tuesday, investigators had interviewed Helder’s family and friends. A nationwide bulletin was sent out about Helder and the 1992 Honda Accord with Minnesota license plates. Pictures of Helder were splashed across television screens.
McDonagh and her mother were on a shopping excursion to Sacramento, Calif., on Tuesday afternoon, heading west on I-80. When McDonagh reached back to give her son in the back seat a book, she noticed the smiling, young man in the Honda pulling up alongside. What caught her eye was the grin, and the fact he appeared to be reading a map.
“Mom, check out this kid,” McDonagh said. As his car inched pass them, she noticed the Minnesota plates. She recalled the news reports about the pipe bombs and the suspect. She called police.
Investigators, relying on the tip and using technology to track Helder’s cellphone calls, caught up to him near Lovelock, Nev.
Seven deputies trailed Helder westbound for 40 miles, with Helder sometimes speeding up to 100 mph and putting a shotgun to his head. Helder called his parents on his cellphone during the chase and volunteered to surrender if he was not harmed.
When his cross-country run ended 50 miles east of Reno, six leftover pipe bombs were in his car, police said. Photos of Helder in custody show him smiling.
Investigators say Helder has confessed. Now jailed in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, he did offer one clue to Nevada deputies about his methods: He was placing the bombs in the shape of a big “smiley face.”