Book Chapter: FBI HUNTING AWOL GI

- Chapter Opening: FBI HUNTING AWOL GI -

The video above shows how the FBI wants the public to think their criminal identification labs work, with a focus on fingerprints.  In reality, it just does not work that way and this case demonstrates that in spades.

This chapter covers how the investigation progressed, through the eyes of the public.

W

hat REDACTED BY AUTHOR did between February 1970 and December of that year is not clear in the information publicly available, but he was busy for sure, establishing alternate identities, traveling coast-to-coast, learning how to build bombs, and assembling the needed materials for his bombs.
At least one of the Social Security Account Numbers (SSAN) he used was issued sometime in 1970, for the birth certificate of someone who was born and died in the 1940s.  He first opened savings accounts for $1 at each bank to establish a “business relationship” with each, then in December 1970 he rented his first two safety deposit boxes in Chicago, the one at First National Bank on December 22, and then in January 1971[1] he rented boxes in New York and San Francisco 

Sometime before July 1971, he constructed nine time bombs and traveled across the country depositing them in the nine safety deposit boxes he rented.  It is not clear if he constructed them in Chicago, or if they were assembled in their respective target cities.  We do know someone identifying himself at Mohr signed in to access boxes at banks in Chicago and San Francisco on the same day, July 16, 1971. 

On January 13, 1972, the FBI announced REDACTED BY AUTHOR was the bomber that they were hunting.[2]  REDACTED BY AUTHOR photo was on the front pages of the Chicago Daily News that day, and in newspapers from New York to San Francisco the next.  The story had been in every edition of every paper, in the three cities where the bombs were found, every day for a week already; now the subject of the story had a real name. 

The FBI gave an estimate at the time of $40.27, and three hours time, to construct each bomb.[3]  The total financial cost of the project they estimated at $785 (about $4,515.11[4] in 2013 dollars), if he traveled by air between cities, and only one trip between each.

---

[1] http://bit.ly/170astG “All Removed Safely In 3 Major Cities,” Sarasota Herald-Tribune, January 8, 1972. Accessed July 8, 2013.
[2] “FBI hunting GI, says he planted bombs in banks,” Chicago Daily News, p. 1, January 13, 1972.
[3] “U.S. hunting bank-bomb money men,” Chicago Daily News, p. 4, January 20, 1972.
[4] Calculated with http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm using years 1971 and 2013.

Note: The footnotes here begin at 1, but in the book they are sequential from beginning to end.