Due to the graphic nature of this episode, listener discretion is advised.

This episode contains discussions of murder and assault that some listeners may find disturbing.

Extreme caution is advised for listeners under 13.

Air Force captain John Hauser wanted to go to space.

It was a long-held dream he'd spent his life working towards.

He'd attended the Air Force Academy, and now was earning his doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley.

It was a grueling program, but John knew that chasing dreams is rarely easy.

He spent most afternoons exhausted in a lab or studying on campus.

That's what he was doing on a Wednesday in May, 1985, when he saw the binder.

It was an odd sight, a plain black binder with a strange plastic package bound to it with a rubber band.

Maybe on a different day, John would have called campus security.

That again, there really wasn't anything suspicious about the binder, only that it was seemingly abandoned.

John was tired, but he wanted to help.

He assumed the package was someone's lunch and opened it, looking for a name.

The movement triggered an explosion.

The next second, John felt his right arm jerk to the side, pushed by the force of a bomb exploding in his hand.

In the long seconds after the blast, he could hear nothing but a horrible buzzing,

though the room itself was deadly quiet.

He took stock of the situation, slowly piecing together what had just happened,

though it likely took him a few seconds of hazy shock to realize every one of the fingers on his right hand had been blown off.

John would never fly again.

The unabomber had seen to that.

...