I’m failing to see how his death was a good thing. I mean, she died, and so did he. Would it not have been better for him to have realized he was out of element and that there was nothing more he could do? Then he would still be out there fighting crime, the criminals would have claimed on less victim, and his family wouldn’t be greiving.
Yes, we pay them to take risks. But there are limits to the kinds of acceptable risks.
It’s not looking like a fire extinguisher release, Doc, Tucker. See, those are usually parallel to the extinguisher so they bend and conform, not perpendicular. This clamp has to be designed to force something to fit it, not the other way around.
This is the key question. Did the victim tell the cops what he was supposed to do with the money? Did the cops go to the drop off point and wait for the bomber? Getting the money is the ineveitable bit of exposure that the bomber has as part of his plan. Like I asked several pages ago, was the money recovered, and was there any evidence that there was a plan to make the drop?
I’m really leaning towards serial killer instead of bank robber. This took an awful lot of effort and a lot of things had to go right in order for the plan to work. I think he just wanted to kill somebody spectacularly. And if that’s the case, he’ll strike again if he’s not caught, because his first foray into high profile murder has been a smashing success from a PR standpoint.
spooje, Thanks for the questions. I’d like further discussion on issue 1: is it just silly fantasy that popular culture (Heat with Al Pacino, among others) and some subculture (Anarchist’s Cookbook, et al) typically say 2 minutes is the optimal timeframe for robbing a bank? That’s from the time the note is handed to the time the cash satchel is handed over… Let’s keep it to generalities, here, but I’ve often wondered this from a debunking standpoint. IMO it’s not possible.
#2: Based on the early news articles, the pizza delivery to “the sticks by the radio tower” and the man’s entry into the bank happened around a 20-minute interval. goerie.com had a nice timeline, but it appears to be a rotating graphic that comes up only once in a while.
#3: Again, I was under the misapprehension Pinetti himself called 911, then refused treatment. I cannot now find any news articles that say he himself called for help.
Doc, as always, excellent explanation on the mechanics of this thing. Your logic is sound; I must then assume the bomber has some explosives’ training/experience or was just an excellent guess? After some research, I’d be hard-pressed to come up with the right amount of putty, or TNT or gunpowder to ensure my victim gets dead without velcroing myself to the “T” word in the process.
The short answer is that we don’t know. The guy was stopped for a “Felony Traffic Stop” after robbing the bank, so he must have gotten into a car and driven off. There was Crime Scene around the site where the pizza was supposed to be delivered, so the police have been there.
That’s all the information there is. Anything else and we’re making up fairy stories, unless the police release more evidence.
Which they hopefully won’t as solving this case is more important than feeding out small out of context scraps to hungry media sharks.
Crime Scene tape :wally
Mr. B’s interested in debunking? Good thing I don’t have a weak heart!
This whole situation has me creeped out.
First of all, it just doesn’t make sense to go through that much trouble to rob a bank. Bank tellers are instructed to cooperate with all hold-ups, even when the person isn’t even visibly armed. Basically, if you hand over a note saying “This is a hold-up, gimme money” you’ll get money without ever bradishing a weapon. The teller hands over and the bank lets the police go after the guy later - keeps the death toll down among employees and customers not to resist. Hey, it’s only money, right?
So in, out with the money, and flee like a bat out of hell. Plenty of Bad Guys do this and get away with the goods (at least at first).
Naw… I’m not convinced robbing a bank was the point here.
I think the point was to kill somebody. Kill someone publicly, with much publicity. Forget about the money - even if there was a drop-point indicated in Mr. Pizza Guy’s instructions there no garauntee anyone would have every come around to pick it up.
OK - did Mr. Pizza Guy piss someone off really really badly? Badly enough someone would go through considerable time and effort to kill him? Well, from what little has come through the media he didn’t seem the sort of guy to piss people off to that degree. Maybe he had outraged a psycho at some point unintentionally, And really, if it’s a personal vendetta, why go through so much trouble? Lure him out to the boondocks, put a bullet through his head, and bury him in a shallow grave - it’s been done before and, sad to say, folks have gotten away with it sometimes.
So, no, I don’t think this was something personal with Mr. Pizza Guy.
Naw… the Bad Guy(s) had something else in mind. I think Mr. Pizza Guy was an innocent victim here, a dude in the wrong place at the wrong time. Heck, he was going off-shift, right? Just blind luck he volunteered to make the delivery instead of the guy coming on shift to replace him, right?
What Mr. Bad Guy needs is someone, alone, he snap that collar onto to further the Terrible Plan. Hey… order a pizza! Those guys work alone, right? And you can get a free lunch out of it, too (I’m presuming Mr. Bad Guy did not actually pay for the pizza - I mean, why bother yourself over a little petty theft when you’re about to commit first degree murder and instigate a bank robbery, right?). If Mr. Bad Guy had a taste for chop suey it might have been the Chinese Restaurant Delivery Guy sitting handcuffed pleading for the cops to take the bomb off.
Unfortunately, the cops responding to a bank robbery discovering their chief suspect is wearing a bomb don’t have the backstory. What they have is a weirder-than-usual situation. Shit like this is not a common occurance in the US of A. Maybe Isreali cops have experience and training in how to handle human bombs (or maybe they don’t, so may of their human bombs being self-detonating) but I’m positive this is not a common occurance in Erie, Pennsylvannia. And, hell, he could have been a suicide bomber for all they knew - they look innocent enough, that’s how they get into crowds in the first place, by disguising themselves as harmless looking orthodox Jews coming from prayers or women out shopping for groceries or Moscow theater attendees or what not. Which is really my point - they just didn’t know so they acted to minimize possible damage until some experts showed up to at least deal with the bomb part of the situation.
Although I am not a professional “first responder” I do know the first and primary rule in any dangerous situation is Thou Shalt Not Make Things Worse Than They Already Are.
So… you have a bank robber wearing a bomb. Whether this guy got into this willingly or not, you have a Bad Situation. If there are no bomb experts handing to deal with the bomb then really the only thing you can do is isolate the guy wearing the bomb and take precautions to make sure no one else is hurt. Screwing around with bombs is a good way to get killed.
Actually, post-anthrax mailings, thousands of corporate office workers got mini-courses on suspicious mailings and packages (including yours truly) … and the one thing emphasized over and over and over again is that if you get a suspicious package - bomb, anthrax, whatever - the FIRST thing you do is get away from it and clear the surronding area. Which, surprise-surprise, is exactly what these cops did.
Now, presuming Mr. Pizza Guy is completely innocent it’s a goddamned shame he died. It’s horrible that he died handcuffed and screaming for help and there wasn’t a damn thing the cops could do (other than, perhaps, offer some verbal encouragement which, for all I know they did at some point - I don’t pretend to know the whole story). That’s why it’s a crime. It’s horrible, unfair, and, well, criminal. But the cops didn’t kill him. The asshole who built the fucking bomb killed him.
Could the cops have done things better? Maybe. Of course, we’ve had the luxury of two days and much more information to second-guess decisions they had to make in a matter of minutes with very few real facts.
To my mind, they clearly acted to minimize risk to human life. If the bomb squad had arrived in time Mr. Pizza Guy might be pissed off but alive. If Joe Cop had poked around the collar trying to disarm/remove it he would have most likely had no chance of removing it safely and would have died with Mr. Pizza Guy - to no end. There would have been no gain in two deaths rather than one. Hell, even bomb squad guys with all their protective gear and training still get killed doing their job - but at least they took the job knowing the risks. Mr. Average Cop does not wake up in the morning and go to work thinking he’ll have to deal with getting blown up as a normal part of his work day - that’s a job for Mr. Bomb Guy to deal with.
So… I think that, under the circumstances, the cops did the best they could that day. Maybe, after the situation is reviewed, someone will come up with a better plan for next time (I suppose it’s too much to hope there won’t be a next time. sigh) But, as I said, I don’t think the aim here was bankrobbery - the robbery is misdirection. No, the point was to kill somebody in a public manner. An execution of an innocent.
Which is also the point of shit like the “necklace bomb” mentioned earlier. What we’re talking about here, boys and girls, is a form of terrorism. Not terrorism writ large like 9/11, but that horrible form that nibbles at people in ones and twos. Like Mr. Unabomber’s decades-long nibbling. The point is to send a message, a message that a certain category of people (could be just a few, could be everybody) are not safe. The message being that you could be doing your job, being a good citizen, and suddenly be dragged into the filth of crime and get your head blown off for no damn good reason. No doubt the perpetrators of this little horror show have videotaped the TV accounts and masturbate to the replays. The fact their victim died sitting alone on the pavement pleading for help only adds to their sick, twisted enjoyment.
Oh, yeah, we could see lots more of this shit.
Because why go through all this trouble for just one act? THAT doesn’t make any sense at all. There has to be a motive beyond just “hey, this would be a cool way to rob a bank”.
And there’s so much we aren’t being told. Did Mr. Pizza Guy describe these Bad Guys to the cops? He must have - he had to say something to them, otherwise how would anyone have known where he delivered the pizza? Or any of the other few details we’ve learned? How was he forced into putting the damn thing on in the first place? How many people were involved? But the police haven’t told us everything he’s said - which isn’t all that unusual, either. Because if they had it would have been in the papers and on the news and the Bad Guys would then be sure what the cops did and didn’t know - and you want to keep the Bad Guys guessing. Guessing things like just how much DID Mr. Pizza Guy say before he died?
Yeah, this is some serious shit… imagine the effect a repeat occurance would have. Is it a lone fruitcake like a Unabomber? Is it an organized group? If a group - foreign or domestic? Is there a political agenda? Or is it “crazy serial killer getting off on murder” motivations?
Mr. Bad Guy is ahead right now - he’s got a public death beamed worldwide. We can only hope he fucks up big time before he has a chance to do this again.
Just a couple thoughts on points brought up in previous posts:
What we pay cops to do: We pay cops to maintain law and order - that is, mostly they show up after a crime is committed to gather evidence; they are a visible display of Authority that can serve to discourage criminal activities; and they deal with situations involving criminals and their apprehension. Although risks ARE part of the job we do not, strictly speaking pay them to take risks any more than we pay doctors to risk catching vile diseases while treating their patients. The risk comes as part of the job, but it’s not the main point of the job. Ditto for firemen - they are paid to fight fires, which carries some inherent risk, but the risk is not the main focus of the job
Stunt men are paid speicifically to take risks. Cops are not.
**Why Americans didn’t see the uncut footage of the man’s death: ** It’s a cultural quirk - it’s considered uncouth to show a real death on TV. It does, of course, happen from time to time - live events occassionally lead to unanticipated tragedy. When they do show such things, it’s usually proceeded by stern warnings that something nasty is about to appear on the TV so “younger and more sensitive viewers” have a chance to get out of the room and be spared the trauma of seeing this. There is also the idea that the victims relatives - already upset by a death in the family - may not want to see this broadcast over and over again. It also ties in with our current cultural norm of not releasing the names of the dead in an event publically until authorities have a chance to notify next-of-kin in person.
I don’t know if other countries have similar customs or not - but even if they did, the odds of this man having relatives in, say, Botswana is very small - whereas showing his death on local TV in the Erie, PA area means there is a high likelihood that he relatives may be watching.
No doubt, there are websites where the full, uncut footage is available for viewing.
Personally, I’ve seen enough gore in my lifetime and, given the way the world is, I’ll probably see more in the future whether I want to or not. I’d just as soon skip actually watching another human being die, thank you very much.
Mr. B, you do know the Anarchist’s Cookbook is an unadulterated crock of shit, right?
Presuming that this is the work of a nefarious bomber and not the pizza driver himself, anybody smart enough to come up with this plot and this device will no doubt have acquired a police scanner as well. All he has to do is monitor the drop point from a distance while listening to the radio; when he hears, “Suspect apprehended, send bomb squad now,” he knows the money isn’t coming and the plot is compromised, and he’s out of there.
It looks like the pizza man had another weapon in his car, that was “unique.” No word yet on what it was.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/Northeast/09/03/pizza.bomb/index.html
All we get is one tantalizing clue: “It’s not what people traditionally think of as a gun.”
Cervaise, yes, I know about the Cookbook. But other than posting subculture web sites, I’m at a loss for anecdotal information on the timing involved in bank robbery. I’m glad to know someone else has read it. Bananadine? Wing-back chairs prevent garroting? Come on.
Good analysis Broomstick.
Any guesses on why we don’t get some European carnage over here?
The rules over there are more lax, and they have no more problems then we do, so I’m wondering what our deal is.
I wonder if more of this outrage would be directed at the bombmaker, rather than at the cops, if his/her identity was known.
It’s a stunning, outrageous situation-this poor man died in a way that decent people wouldn’t countenance for a dog. That outrage has to land somewhere, and I suppose it’s easier to level it at the cops (we know who they are, we know what they do, we all have our ideas about how cops should act) than at the bombmaker (who we don’t know, who we can’t predict, and we can’t influence by voting in a city election or writing letters to the editor).
When I first heard about the story, I didn’t think for a second to blame the cops for anything. Instead, I felt sorry for the victim and wondered what kind of person would be willing to strap a bomb to the neck of a fellow human being just for money.
From what mall? Crossroads Mall? It’s only 1.7 miles away. MapQuest says a normal civilian driver should have no problem doing that in 5 minutes. Or did you mean the Pearl Street Mall, which is right across the street? Either way, 5 minutes is not exactly record time.
Crossroads.
Back on page 2, I brought this up. I was raised in Erie, and one of the more frustrating things about it is that it is crosshatched with dozens of railroad tracks, with few over/underpasses. It is very easy to get stuck in traffic for 10-15 minutes waiting for a train to pass, especially the slow-moving freight trains, with very few ways to get around them. I still think this could be a factor in the response time-the police station is downtown, and this took place on the other side of many of those tracks, very far away when you can’t get around these trains…
Bolding mine.
Must…resist…must look…away…and hit…Alt+Home
Wait a minute. There’s a bomb squad stationed at Crossroads Mall in Boulder? Do they suspect the Shish Kebab guy or something? 
Demonstration.