[Music] bomb blast shatters a residential neighborhood and kills a police officer [Music] what's left are a million scattered fragments and no apparent motive authorities hit the streets to solve a murder but the roots of this insidious crime lie hundreds of miles away shops are bursting into flames in southern california but it takes investigators years to learn the arsonist's devastating pattern some crimes go beyond the scope of local law enforcement and into the realm of the bureau of alcohol tobacco and firefighters the felon who sets fires builds bombs or traffics and weapons isn't just breaking the law he's committing a federal [Music] [Applause] [Music] offense located just outside of boston massachusetts lies the quiet working-class neighborhood of roslindale but on october 27 1991 that sense of quiet came to an end that morning thomas shea senior backed his car out of his driveway on his way to work [Music] he heard a scraping noise and stopped to investigate [Applause] he found a small black box on his driveway [Music] though he owned an auto body repair company shea knew nothing about the mechanics of cars he assumed it was part of the undercarriage his neighbors convinced him it looked more sinister than that they urged him to call the police [Music] he was now afraid it might be a bomb bomb investigators jerry hurley and frank foley examined the small wooden box each had more than 20 years experience in high-risk situations but this time something went wrong hurley and foley were severely injured by the blast according to atf special agent jeff kerr the police did what they could until help arrived both of them still conscious both of them heroic as could be concerned for each other asking how is frank and frank asking how was jerry and people in the neighborhood started responding and ambulances were called and that was the beginning of the of quite a long investigation because police officers had been injured in the blast agents from the atf's boston office were called in the atf's national response team worked with boston police to find the culprit and the motive paramedics tried to stabilize the bomb technicians both were seriously injured they were taken to the nearest hospital [Music] later that day jerry hurley died of his injuries frank foley was maimed for life the bomber was now a killer [Music] investigators collected every speck of debris hoping some of it might be unique enough to lead to the bomber most of the fragments were common electronic components toggle switches soldered joints electrical tape batteries [Music] they could be obtained anywhere making them virtually useless as clues [Music] among the bits of shattered plastic metal and wood the atf tried to find a grain of truth at this point everyone was a potential suspect especially thomas shea senior first of all you have to question the validity of the initial statements was this thing on on the card did it fall off did he did this individual found this actually pick it up move it and then a day later move it back so those are some of the questions then why does it detonate when this officer is is standing over it that's one of the questions is is it designed for a police officer was it designed to get a police officer out there and to kill a police officer though the atf had to consider that shea might have been the bomber he wasn't a man without enemies he made a minor career out of petty litigation and was currently involved in a heated lawsuit with the owner of the garage where he rented workspace the owner was added to the list of suspects later another member of the shea family appeared on the scene okay tommy i want you to have a safe point shea's estranged teenage son tommy heard about the bombing on the news he rushed to his father's house but when his father's girlfriend wouldn't let him in he went to the police station to find out what happened he seemed genuinely concerned after investigators filled him in he answered some routine questions and left the atf would have to focus their attention on the physical evidence all of the material collected at the scene was sent to the atf lab investigators found what appeared to be the detonator small white crystalline particles coated the device the material was determined to be unexploded dynamite the technicians reasoned that the explosive had been taken out of its original casing and re-wrapped to make it fit inside the bomb the wrapping also provided the next clue bits of colored paper clinging to tape forensic chemist cynthia wallace examined the paper they looked like they were from a magazine they also had pictures of looked like mussels and maybe some fruits and vegetables and a little tiny piece of writing looking at that it appeared to me that that might be the graphic artist name who had designed the the photograph and the layout of the article so i had our librarian give me a list of all the muscle magazine uh publishers that she could come up with and i started calling them up wallace managed to find the magazine that hired that graphic artist with the publisher's help she even found the issue and page number of the layout she asked for a list of local subscribers unfortunately muscle magazines like this are usually sold over the counter and they have very few subscription sales though the quirky wrapping didn't lead directly to the bomber it helped to establish his signature the specific way he constructed the device by re-wrapping the dynamite as the evidence collection continued another clue emerged several distinctive screws they were unique to a specific brand of remote control device the component is used in remote control toys rigging it to an explosive device required some knowledge of electronics this bomber whoever he was had been doing his homework or had done this before as investigators began to create a profile of their bomber the next clue came from an unexpected source on october 31st three days after the bombing tommy shea held a press conference the bombing had garnered widespread media attention and much of it focused on his family he claimed that he was the target of the bomb he said the bomber was a man he owed fifty thousand dollars tommy's admission was news to police nothing in their investigation pointed to tommy as the target after the conference they asked him to come to the station to tell them more [Music] agents checked into tommy's story they found no evidence that could link the man tommy accused to the bombing they also did a background check on tommy shea jr and discovered he was wanted in another town for receiving stolen property police arrested him on the spot and took an inventory of everything he had in his possession it included a little address book eventually tommy was released on his own recognizance by now police had interviewed 200 people about the bombing and had made very little progress investigators turned their attention to the evidence collected from the bomb site the thousands of tiny pieces recovered from the scene had given the atf national response team enough to reconstruct the device they passed its description to various police departments before long special agent kerr got his next lead one very astute detective remembers a 1986 incident where there was an explosive incident and he provides that police report and that information to the agents that were down there they bring it back there's some similarities to this device minor similarities but similarities nevertheless in that incident five years earlier a truck had been damaged by a remote control bomb resembling the one that detonated at shea's house the main suspect in the case eventually cooperated with authorities and avoided a prison sentence his name was alfred trinkler somebody said wouldn't it be weird if that name was in tommy's book and went back to the back of it to the tees and sure enough there was yeah come on in fellas though what can i do for you today on november 6th a week after the bombing investigators paid a visit to trangler at his home a short distance from boston he had his own small electronics and communications equipment company he was very cooperative even sketching for the police the bomb he built in 1986 he denied knowing tommy shea and agreed to take a polygraph later he changed his mind about taking the test alfred trinkler certainly seemed like the front runner on the list of suspects the problem was that the police had no physical evidence to tie it to the scene [Music] to build their case or to remove trinkler from suspicion the atf tried a different tack investigators of the bombing in boston knew that the device that killed officer hurley resembled the handiwork of alfred trinkler but they didn't know if the fatal bomb was a common design or a unique one [Music] they sent the information gathered from the scene to intelligence research specialist steve scheid in washington dc shyde would be able to plug the information he knew about the device into a national database of bombing incidents we were looking for remote control bombs we were looking for bombs that had magnets attached to them bombs that had electrical detonators we were looking for particular types of switches and batteries the atf database sifted through 14 000 bombings and came up with seven hits and of those seven five were eliminated because of a clear motive or because they'd been solved that left only two trankler's 1986 bomb and the bomb found in thomas shay's driveway no matter what equation they used the answer was always alfred trinkler agents believe that trinkler and tommy shea junior worked together on the bomb but investigators had little physical evidence to tie the two men together appreciation no thanks all right thank you agents visited electronics stores in one a clerk identified tommy from a photograph he also found a receipt for merchandise purchased on october 18 just 10 days before the explosion it showed electronic components purchased by someone named ashy shea with the letters rearranged the store was across the street from a building where trenchler had been installing a microwave tower yeah agents still hadn't clearly identified why trinkler and shea would want to kill tommy's father shea's friction with his father wasn't a convincing enough motive then agents turned up a better one thomas shea senior's lawsuit against the garage owners if shea won his suit he stood to gain one hundred thousand dollars tommy shea had made some inquiries to the attorney handling the case for his father that what happens if my father dies what is does the lawsuit carry on and he was informed he had a lawsuit carries on to his heirs which would be his four children days before the bombing tommy had also told a friend that he was going to get a large sum of money [Music] a warrant was issued for tommy shea and alfred trinkler though the case against shea was mostly circumstantial investigators felt it would hold tommy shea must have thought so too shea confessed to buying the bomb components and placing the device under his father's car he said the trankler told him what to buy [Music] trankler built the bomb alfred trinkler denied any involvement even though the evidence was stacked against him tommy shea pled guilty to conspiracy to cause the death of a public servant and abetting the illegal use of explosives he was sentenced to 12 years alfred trangler's resolve never weakened he never talked and he was sentenced to life in prison trenchler and shea formed a conspiracy of two but often a seemingly simple crime can expose a vast network of corruption in this case some of the names have been changed december 9 1996 washington dc paramedics responded to the scene of a shooting in the southeast area of the city they found a young man unconscious apparently the victim of gang-related violence his name was laura henderson on the way to the hospital henderson's condition suddenly worsened the ambulance pulled over paramedics worked to stabilize him enough to get to the hospital an emt supervisor pulled up and offered to help the paramedics accepted gratefully as she worked a man approached her and demanded to see his she asked him to step away from the ambulance he pulled a gun and opened fire one paramedic struggled with the gunman the other paramedic took a shot to the foot henderson was killed instantly police processed the scene the paramedics couldn't identify the assassin the attack had happened too fast but he had been injured in the scuffle and his blood was found on the paramedic shirt the garment was kept as potential evidence the handgun retrieved at the scene which had delivered the fatal shots was a 40 caliber beretta semi-automatic but henderson was initially wounded by nine millimeter slugs police knew that two guns were used in this crime but they didn't know if one or two shooters were involved [Music] interviews with potential witnesses and people from the neighborhood yielded the tip that cracked the case a witness told police that only one shooter was involved his name was robert byrd a few days into the investigation an informant feeling it was now safe to come forward told police that on the night of the shooting she heard robert byrd ask a friend to hide a gun in his stepmother's home how long have you known mr bird tell me what happened police followed up the tip with a search warrant they talked with bird's friend who denied being involved then they uncovered a nine millimeter ruger semi-automatic handgun [Music] the weapon was sent to the police lab after test firing the weapon a ballistics comparison determined that this was the gun used to initially wound laura henderson robert byrd was arrested a warrant was issued for a sample of his blood dna testing compared it with the blood found on the shirt it matched the odds that the shooter was someone other than bird were one in 1.5 billion bird was sentenced to 58 years to life or one count of first degree murder and five counts of assault that's where the case might have ended except that one of the guns used to convict bird the nine-millimeter ruger was part of a much bigger story washington d.c has one of the country's highest rates of handgun violence despite strict laws prohibiting handguns they find their way onto the streets and most often into the hands of gang members over the past five years nearly 2 000 people were murdered in the district of columbia alone it's the job of the bureau of alcohol tobacco and firearms to stop the flow of these illegal weapons by cutting them off at their source but once the weapons are already on the street they could turn up anywhere the atf dedicates its vast resources to tracing handguns used to commit crimes but they have to find them before they can trace them records maintained by licensed gun dealers are the key to tracing guns used in crimes according to the atf's washington field division special agent in charge patrick heinz the records can pinpoint exactly how a gun falls into the wrong end every gun has a lineage a pedigree where it was manufactured what wholesaler went to what retailer who was the first purchaser of that firearm and how it weaved its way through the manufacturer to the last person that had it involved in a crime guns are traced by their serial numbers but many guns retrieved from crimes have had their numbers filed off before they can begin a routine trace atf forensic scientists have to restore the gun's serial number that's the job of firearms and tool mark examiner elizabeth gillis at the atf national lab in rockville maryland at the lab they often must raise numbers from 60 or 70 guns at a time even if the number appears completely gone gillis can usually retrieve it the stamping process actually changes the molecular structure of the metal giving it a sort of memory it just takes a little prodding to restore it after smoothing and cleaning the surface where the number was filed off it's treated with a chemical reagent because stamping the serial number weakens the metal on the surface of the gun the reagent attacks the weakened metal around the serial number at a different rate than the metal on the rest of the gun this reaction when viewed under a bright light creates a contrast making the serial number visible once the serial number has been stamped into a gun it is nearly impossible to obliterate it it's almost like indented writing like if you wrote on a pad of paper and you tore off that first sheet that you had written on the sheet below typically you can see an impression of what you wrote on that first page [Music] with a gun serial number in hand atf investigators can begin to trace it they first contact its manufacturer the manufacturer of the gun that killed laura henderson reported that it had been purchased by len jones a licensed gun dealer from missouri [Music] special agent michael mund found it peculiar that a gun sold in missouri made its way to the streets of washington dc missouri is not one of the states that we know of being a source state of firearms traffic to the district of columbia about half of the firearms that are recovered in the district of columbia come from the states of maryland and virginia with the rest of the firearms coming from the southern states as a licensed dealer jones was required by law to record every gun he purchased and to whom and when he sold it the atf found no record of who purchased the gun that killed laura henderson but jones may have been guilty of more than just bad record-keeping hoping to find the source of the gun that killed laura henderson the atf paid a visit to len jones his records indicated that he'd bought 106 handguns but a check of gun manufacturers determined that between january 1994 and february 96 he had bought more than 1500 guns this was a blatant violation of federal gun dealing laws investigators wondered how many of these weapons were on the streets of washington d.c [Music] it wasn't long before they began to find out while they were investigating jones four more crime guns were traced back to him most were in the hands of juvenile offenders and were confiscated shortly after he'd sold them when atf agents confronted jones he came clean he told investigators that between july 1994 and march 1996 he had sold over a thousand handguns to a pair of dealers from tennessee [Music] atf agents located the dealers who said they sold the firearms they had bought from jones at gun shows outside of their home state of tennessee the two had run roughshod over firearms laws not only is it illegal to sell handguns across state lines the two didn't even have a license to sell weapons in the first place they faced up to 10 years in prison but the two were just one link in the chain of criminals that was delivering guns into the hands of juveniles and other offenders in washington dc [Music] the atf was willing to work a deal if the dealers would share the names of some of their customers [Music] they told investigators that one of their best customers was a man named calvin also from tennessee over the years they had sold calvin more than 200 guns they said that calvin had bought semi-automatic pistols mostly nine millimeter and 38 rugers and larson's but the two men didn't know where calvin lived or even if that was his real name they told the agents he was an african-american man who drove a station wagon when they wanted to find him they called a pager number which they turned over to the atf [Music] agents learned that the pager number belonged to a man named calvin brown they got his address in nashville tennessee in november 1996 agents began their stakeout after a number of hours we observed the vehicle let's pull up to the location a black male was driving the vehicle and he fit the description that was given to us investigators ran the station wagons license plate and found out that calvin brown's real name was salon carroll he worked as a counselor at a youth center in nashville we felt we were we were moving along in the investigation and that we needed to uh bring it to an end so that carol could not traffic any more firearms to the district of columbia investigators devised a sting to catch carol hopefully without gunfire in december 1996 an atf informant contacted him to sell some illegal weapons carol specified that he was interested only in guns without serial numbers on january 15 1997 they met in a motel parking lot carol purchased 19 pistols and an automatic mac 10 machine gun for three thousand dollars with an additional fifteen hundred fifty dollars to be paid later when carol got out of the car to retrieve the guns atf agents moved in [Music] faced with up to 20 years in federal prison carroll admitted to selling over 200 weapons to known gang members in washington d.c what do you think these kids are doing 20 have been taken from juvenile offenders crimes committed with these guns include burglary armed assault and murder one of those weapons was sold by salon carroll to a gang member in washington d.c the gang member in turn sold it to robert byrd bird used it to murder laura henderson to date 109 weapons traced to carroll have been recovered as the result of joint atf washington dc police investigations most of the guns illegally purchased by carroll are still in criminal hands the atf continues to monitor the case this is only scratching the surface of crime that can develop from this legacy of death and of illegal firearms trafficking we don't know where these other firearms are going to show up we only hope that other people do not get hurt or murdered by them for some that hope is already in vain len jones was sentenced to 16 months for illegal sale of firearms the dealers in tennessee avoided jail time by cooperating with the atf and salon carroll was sentenced to five years in prison in three years of supervised release at his sentencing the judge referred to him as the dealer of death [Music] by trafficking illegal weapons hundreds of miles from his home salon carroll distanced himself from his crimes [Music] other criminals like to work from the inside on january 14 1987 firefighters in fresno california were called to a large fire in a fabric [Music] it was the store of a rash of suspicious blazers over the next four days seven fires were set or attempted in and around fresno tulare and bakersfield all started in shops during business hours investigators could not find any evidence of an accelerant yet all the fires spread quickly people evacuated from the stores told firefighters the blaze seemed to come out of nowhere [Applause] after ruling out other causes investigators suspected arson in every case the seven fires caused over 700 thousand dollars in damage the flames left behind few clues arsonists count on fire to destroy all evidence that might lead back to them [Music] processing fire evidence is a specialized task one that small town forensic labs don't usually handle the samples collected from the fires were sent to the atf lab near san francisco [Music] among the rebels the only promising clue was a charred cigarette butt some burned matches and a piece of yellow paper secured by a melted rubber band recovered from a fire in bakersfield investigators surmised that these innocent looking items might have been part of a simple delay device used to set the fire investigators were lucky to have found it atf senior technician daryl classy tried to raise fingerprints from the blackened remains of the incendiary device it was a challenge in the fact that the paper was charred the matches were partially burnt and the cigarette butt had already been burned so there was very little clear clean space left to find identifiable latent prints on to perform the analysis classy soaked a sample of the burned material in a chemical called ninhydrim shake it up the solution reacts with the amino acids present in perspiration residue in a fingerprint the evidence is bathed in the non-hydrogen solution and if a fingerprint is present the chemical turns it purple tests on the matches and cigarette yielded nothing classy was able to raise a single fingerprint from the yellow paper in bakersfield compared it to the prince of the firefighters who recovered the device to be certain that they hadn't accidentally left the print it didn't match any of them the next step was to submit the print to california's automated fingerprint system which contained the prince of known criminals maybe the bakersfield investigators were dealing with an arsonist with a police record but their arsonist had no matches and that meant authorities had no suspects until the arsonist struck again and left more clues behind investigators could do nothing the case and the clues were filed away and all but forgotten on march 27 1991 four years after the first fires in southern california firefighters in los angeles county were called to three burning stores in less than three hours though the blazes were within two miles of each other they occurred in separate fire districts one of the fires caused a million dollars worth of damage [Music] in another of the fires investigators again found the remains of the same type of delay device made from a cigarette and yellow paper the suspicious pattern of fires might have gone unnoticed if not for the la county sheriff's office which had jurisdiction over the whole area the sheriff suspected a serial arsonist and notified the atf [Music] agents from the atf went over the records of the various fire departments that had been investigating the suspicious fires they looked for other fires that fit the same pattern they found more than they bargained for [Music] over the past four months five fires were set in stores in and around los angeles all fit the same pattern all started during business hours no accelerant was found all were close to each other and to the freeway [Music] on march 31 1991 four days after the los angeles fires the atf convened a task force to find other fires in southern california that fit the pattern atf special agent michael matassa helped to coordinate the effort across jurisdictions as the search for the arsonist began well at that point we start interviewing witnesses employees at these stores customers at the stores trying to find out if anything suspicious is is known we start conferring with other investigators to see if they've had similar fires in their jurisdiction investigators in the lab continued to pour over the evidence collected from the fires much of the important pieces had been consumed by the blazes what was left did not yield many useful clues as part of the outreach effort an atf agent was dispatched to the monthly meeting of first the fire investigators regional strike team he shared the information the task force had gathered and asked the first members if they had anything to add one of them had much to say an investigator from the bakersfield fresno area happened to be in town and was attending the conference he pulled our investigator aside and turned us on to the possibility of similar fires occurring in the san joaquin valley in 1987. [Music] he had been in charge of the 1987 investigation when the atf forensic lab raised the fingerprint from the yellow paper recovered from one of the bakersfield fires the investigator looked back at his records as he compared the fires he realized that all the suspicious ones had been set around the time of the california arson investigators conferences more than that he realized that the fires had followed routes from the conferences heading south toward los angeles the implications were chilling the atf now had to consider the possibility that the man they were looking for was a fire investigator turned serial arsonist as the task force delved deeper into the fires in southern california they discovered a series of five fires set in atascadero san luis obispo and salinas they all fit the pattern of the previous fires and all were set on the same day after an arson investigator conference as the atf gathered files from various districts in southern california the pattern grew clearer they discovered that a total of five delay type devices had been recovered from these fires each was constructed from cigarettes matches and yellow paper [Music] now that they established a physical link among the fires atf agents retrieved the 87 fingerprint from their fresno office they submitted it to the los angeles sheriff's department automated fingerprint system which accesses state employees as well as criminals this time the computer came up with a match but it was no cause for celebration double checking only confirmed the grim conclusion the print belonged to arson investigator john orr one of california's most respected fire professionals was now the prime suspect in the 1987 1989 and 1991 fires a 17-year veteran in the glendale fire department orr had earned a statewide reputation as the sherlock holmes of fire investigation he had trained thousands of top fire investigators that ore could be responsible for setting dozens of fires over a four-year period was difficult to believe occasionally you may find as in any other profession somebody who's gone bad in the field but to have someone of his reputation and such widespread over such a long period of time i mean we're we were incredulous over they looked for some other explanation investigators who had worked with orr thought that perhaps he had just forgotten to wear gloves while handling evidence when he was deep in an investigation he got his hands on everything related to the case but war hadn't worked the 1987 fighters there was no record of him even looking at the evidence [Music] it seemed the only way john orr's fingerprint could have gotten on the incendiary device was if he had placed it himself investigators had to consider him the main suspect to prove john orr's innocence or to establish his guilt required a deeper investigation all they really had was a single fingerprint on only one device well we kept the investigation very covert because we wanted to make sure that fingerprint wasn't accidentally on the device we only had him on the one fire so now it was important for us to keep it quiet while we developed an investigation to tie him into all of these other fires that we are sure the same arsonist had committed [Music] investigators checked ohr's log sheets at the glendale fire department to see where he was when the fires were set the log sheets could give ore an alibi if he were logged in at the station he couldn't have set the fires but in every instance they reported him out of the office despite this incriminating evidence building their case wouldn't be easy or knew their business as well as they did we knew when it came time to interview him that he had done interviews so he would know what to expect in the interview and really we had to put together as much circumstantial evidence as we possibly could to prove that nobody but him could have done the fires and that was the tactic we took [Music] armed with a photo of their suspect investigators returned to the scenes of the 1987 1989 and 1991 fires they hoped to speak to anyone who might remember seeing orr they found several eyewitnesses a number of employees were able to pick him out as a customer who had been in the store prior to the fire in one store we had an employee say that she saw him carrying some paper in his hand yellow paper was part of the device and she pointed out this that the color of the paper he was carrying was yellow sure i'm just looking for some fabric witnesses at the scene of two of the fires in both cases he was spotted in the stores shortly before they burned [Music] then the atf received the forensic report on the devices recovered from the earlier fires the atf lab had identified a signature that is the devices were all built the same way using the same materials [Music] the atf surmised the arsons didn't need an accelerant because he was placing these devices in flammable items within the stores the device was designed to start the fire slowly letting it smolder until the extreme heat erupted into flame that allowed the arsonist to leave the scene long before the building was engulfed the construction of the device was simple but its design pointed to an arsonist with a keen knowledge of fire the forensic analysis concluded that the devices were the work of a single individual an individual responsible for more than 18 million dollars worth of damage the atf database of arsonists could not match these devices as the signature of any other known arsonist the report cleared away any remaining doubts investigators might have had about ohr's involvement then orr himself provided an extraordinary piece of evidence i got a phone call from uh generous supervisor and he said that he had seen a letter that the secretary was typing talking about a book that generated trying to get published in that letter he describes the suspect being a firefighter who's been setting fires for the last 10 years in southern california and had not been apprehended one suspect or hope to get the book published and to sell the rights for a television movie of the week atf agents acquired the manuscript from an author and former firefighter whom orr had solicited for advice on his novel for atf agents who dedicate their lives to investigating deadly fires and bombings bohr's book wasn't a pleasant read well frankly i couldn't believe what i was reading i mean i i originally thought that maybe it would give us a little insight into john but never in my wildest imagination i think that the exact fires we were investigating were going to be chronicled uh in this in the manuscript atf agents arrested john orr on december 4th 1991. officers searching his truck found yellow ruled paper matches rubber bands and cigarettes the same brand used in the devices in his house they found videotapes of arson fires still under investigation they had been shot at close range the evidence was conclusive leaving investigators with just one unanswered question when we uh interviewed him we were concerned with why he did it i mean we were convinced that he had done it and we had good evidence that he did it we were trying to get him to explain why which he never did in 1992 john orr was convicted of setting three fires and sentenced to 30 years in prison in september 1998 gore was convicted of murder when investigators linked him to a 1984 fire that claimed the lives of two store employees an elderly woman and her two-year-old grandson the jury deadlocked eight to four in favor of the death penalty or receive life plus 20 years no crime is committed in a vacuum when an offense involves weapons explosives or incendiary devices solving it depends on finding a pattern it's the atf's job to see the big picture and pin down the culprit [Music] [Music] [Music] you