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CNN LIVE TODAY
Bomber Sent Incriminating Letter to 'Badger Herald'
Aired May 8, 2002 - 11:09 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: As is also evident, we have our own terrorism concerns here in the U.S.
Accused mailbox bomber Luke Helder will go before a federal magistrate in Reno this hour. Federal agents arrested the college junior after a high-speed chase across the Nevada desert, and they're blaming Helder for planting pipe bombs across five states.
Six people were wounded in explosions. Our Charles Feldman is in Reno this morning. He is there for the court appearance.
Charles, this appears to be a young man in a lot of trouble today.
CHARLES FELDMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, if you believe what authorities say, it would be the case. But of course that's yet to be determined.
What we can tell you, though, is that it was an interesting story on how they caught up with him. Apparently, he was making some cell phone calls along his route across the country, and they were able to zero in on some of those cell phone sites that he hit, and that's how they eventually traced him to I-80, Interstate 80, running alongside Reno.
It was a very high speed chase. We're told that at one point it reached about 100 miles an hour. When they finally caught up with him, police are saying that he had a gun in the car, that he tossed a shotgun out of the window, and that he had some explosive material inside the car.
Now, you mentioned before that he's going to be appearing before a federal magistrate this morning. Indeed he will. He has not left here yet. He probably will in about half an hour's time. But we reported this morning, and it is still very much the case, that the young man is on a suicide watch.
When they did apprehend him last night, he threatened to kill himself. He was evaluated, we are told, by a medical team, and he is being kept in the jail here in Reno in isolation because of the concerns that he might take his own life.
So, interesting story how they caught up with him and the arraignment will be later this morning. And it is unclear at this point how many more days he will stay behind bars in Reno, Nevada before he is moved elsewhere, where ultimately he will face trial.
That's it from here.
KAGAN: Charles Feldman in Reno, Nevada. Thank you very much.
Well, friends are describing Luke Helder as a bright young man from a strong family.
Our Jeff Flock is in Menomonie, Wisconsin, where Luke Helder was going to school, to college -- Jeff.
JEFF FLOCK, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Indeed. In the past three years at college, art major here. Behind me perhaps you see the apartment complex where he lived.
You know, when you poke around on someone who has been charged with such a crime, you sometimes get some indication, you get some sense of why it makes sense.
In the case, though, of Luke John Helder, it doesn't seem to compute at all. At least, based on the folks that we have talked to here at the apartment complex as well as on campus, and others. The place where he worked as well. No one seemed to have that picture of him.
The many, they say, who is now sitting in jail on death watch out in Reno, is not the man they knew.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
FLOCK (voice-over): Luke Helder loved to play music. These are the sounds of the grunge garage band he put together called Apathy. On its Web site, he writes about himself, "I party, play guitar, and talk online to everyone. That's my life."
(on camera): Did he talk about politics? Government? Anything like that?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, Luke didn't really seem like anti- anything. He was the type of kid who seemed like -- a pacifist, to me, is the best word to describe him.
(voice-over) Nobody here on the U. of Wisconsin campus could believe Helder was mixed up in a domestic terrorism pipe bombing scheme, until the school paper said it got this letter from him.
Postmarked Omaha, Nebraska, the day the bombings started last week, the letter said he was on a suicide mission.
"I will die/change in the end for this, but that's OK, haha, paradise awaits," he writes. "Surely you can understand my logic."
(on camera): No, they can't understand the logic, say the people that we talked to here at Holder's Menomonie, Wisconsin complex.
His apartment, number 24, was swept by police, and the people we talked to who used to live with him say it just does not compute.
(voice-over) Matt Decorsey roomed with Helder freshman year. He saw him a few weeks ago, and says Helder seemed just fine.
(on camera): Did any of this make sense to you?
MATT DECORSEY, FORMER ROOMMATE: No, not at all. This is the farthest thing I could see him doing, something like this. He was, like I said, a really nice kid. And I just don't see him being violent like this.
(voice-over): If there was a clue to how Helder really felt, it may have been in his music.
In the letter to the school paper, Helder writes: "conforming to the boundaries and restrictions imposed by the government only reduces the substance of your lives."
Though he may never have said that to his friends, the title of this song he wrote for his band and displayed prominently on his Web site is called "Conformist."
Though the band was never very successful, Helder is getting plenty of attention now.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
FLOCK: The other thing we've done this morning is poke around in court records here. The best thing we can do is one charge, that was a possession of drug paraphernalia charge, 09-22-01, about a little more than a year ago. That was here in Menomonie. It was not a criminal charge. He had a $150 fine that he had to pay, which he did pay.
So by all accounts, it doesn't really make sense. We'll keep trying. Back to you -- Daryn.
KAGAN: All right. Jeff Flock in Menomonie, Wisconsin. Thank you.
We're going to try to make sense of it a little bit with the letter that he sent in to the school newspaper.
Officials were searching for the suspect in the mailbox bombing. They received another clue, a letter sent to the student newspaper at the U. of Wisconsin, Madison.
School officials say the letter was from Luke J. Helder, he signed it. The editor-in-chief for the "Badger Herald" is Alexander Conant, and he's joining us by phone now from Madison, Wisconsin.
Alexander, good morning. Thanks for joining us.
ALEXANDER CONANT, "BADGER HERALD": Good morning to you.
KAGAN: I pulled the letter. It's actually kind of more like a manifesto. I pulled that off of your Web site to get a chance to look at it. When did you receive it? When did the paper get it?
CONANT: We received it late Monday afternoon, and then Tuesday, after the FBI released the statement that he had been putting in everybody's mailboxes. We matched that up with what he had sent us the day before, and we called the FBI right away, and they came down and asked us some questions, and were real careful with it, put it in a plastic envelope, and took it off for further testing.
KAGAN: So help us with the timeline here. You get it on Monday. The pipe bombs were already news, because this had been going on since last Friday or Saturday.
CONANT: We got it late Monday night. Late Monday night is when I first saw it. But we get a lot of crazy letters from a lot of really crazy people. And, you know, this really was too far outside the norm of a lot of stuff we get.
So it didn't set alarms ringing until the FBI said that they were looking for the guy that sent us that letter.
KAGAN: Actually, I want to put the envelope back up there. The postmark -- where did he send it from?
CONANT: Omaha, Nebraska.
KAGAN: Oh, he did send it from Omaha.
OK. Now, I would think if you open it and read it -- I know you get a lot of different mail, we do here at CNN get some interesting mail as well, as you can imagine.
But the first line, the first couple lines of this letter. "Mail boxes are exploding. Why you ask? Attention people: you do things because you can and you want or desire to."
I mean, that's got to be a big clue that something's not right about this.
CONANT: Absolutely. I mean, and that's actually the exact same thing that he was putting in everybody's mailboxes, that envelope, which is why we called the FBI, when it matched up like that.
KAGAN: The other thing that shocked me about this, after you go through his pages and pages about what he thinks, what he believes, not afraid to die, his seeing ghosts, what he things, he signs the letter.
CONANT: Yes. It's really bizarre. The whole thing was just surreal. Still is.
KAGAN: Now, besides giving it to the FBI, what did you do with it, in terms of publishing it? I know it's on your Web site. Did you put it in your paper?
CONANT: Yes, we put excerpts of it in our paper and then we published the whole thing online at BadgerHerald.com. KAGAN: Did you have any discussions on whether or not that was a good idea, the balance of, well, this is news, you're now part of the story because you received this letter, this manifesto, but do you want to give a platform for somebody to have these views publicly?
CONANT: I suppose. I mean, it was something that a lot of people were doing. The Associated Press printed large excerpts from the letter as well.
It seemed like something that people were really interested in reading, and the ideas themselves aren't inherently dangerous. There's no -- I don't think that being exposed to his ideas will lead anybody else to go start blowing up mailboxes.
KAGAN: No, but the whole reason that he allegedly went and did this, Alexander, was to try attention to his ideas. And you don't want to encourage somebody that if they go ahead and do that, that they're going to have access to a newspaper, even if it is a student newspaper form the University of Wisconsin.
CONANT: I suppose that's true, but there is a precedent that, with the Unabomber case and the "New York Times" publishing his manifesto. I don't think that the ideas themselves are inherently dangerous. I don't see why it would be necessary to hide them, cover them up or censor them.
KAGAN: And just give us peek inside your newspaper. Where does your coverage go from here? You're now doubly part of the story, because the letter was sent to your school newspaper, but also this is a student who is part of the university system.
CONANT: I mean, we're trying hard to figure out why he sent it to our newspaper. He didn't go to school on this campus, and we know that he knew a couple of kids at Madison. But there's no obvious reason for him picking the "Badger Herald."
We break a lot of news statewide in terms of UW system stuff, so it's likely that he's heard of us, but I'm sure he's heard of "The New York Times" and the "Chicago Tribune" and other newspapers.
KAGAN: Yes, some other folks as well.
CONANT: Yes.
KAGAN: Well, thank you for insight into your newspaper and to this letter that was sent, and I'm sure was a big clue in helping the FBI track down their chief suspect in the mailbox bombings.
That's Alexander Conant. He is the editor of the "Badger Herald," which is the school newspaper for the U. of Wisconsin at Madison.
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