The suspect describes the six bombs that he constructed with a level of specificity

that he identified the differences among those six bombs. There was no indication of why

these specific addresses and those that were delivered to homes or those that were placed

in the community or those that were mailed. There was no reason given for why he selected

those individuals. So what brand of crazy was this person, the Austin bomber, and then

how did they catch him? What was the technology used to figure out who he was and get on his

trail?

Both facets of that story really, really interesting in Matt Zappatowski, the National

Security Reporter for the Washington Post has been kind enough to join us to discuss it.

Hello, Matt, how are you?

Hey, great. Thank you for having me.

Oh, it's our pleasure. So listen, let's start with the apprehension. There are some pretty

interesting technology put to use to find this guy quickly. Tell us about it.

Yeah. So at the beginning of this case, police really seemed lost. They thought the first

bomb might have been like a drug deal retaliation gone awry. They were exploring family ties between

the victims. But as more and more bombs started going off, they were able to use this technology

that helps them place cell phones at a location. So they like look at a cell tower and see,

okay, what were the phones that pinged off this tower and the more locations that you go

to that they can match to that sort of that tower or different towers. They zero in on

a phone. So they're zeroing in on this disguise phone, this marked condots phone. And then

he sort of escalates even further. He uses a tripwire and he sends some bombs through

FedEx. It's FedEx. They get him. I'll be it in a disguise on a surveillance camera. They

...