The Unabomber’s evolution was chilling. His early bombs, crude concoctions of smokeless powder and match heads, were child’s play compared to this. The device that maimed Hauser was a three-quarter-inch-diameter pipe, sealed with metal bar stock plugs and secured with pins. Nail fragments, lead, and double-pointed tacks served as shrapnel, designed to maximize suffering. Six D-cell batteries, their casings stripped, powered a metal and wooden initiator inside the pipe, triggered by an improvised loop switch. The plastic file box was reinforced with a wooden frame, a testament to the bomber’s growing obsession with perfection.

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The homemade green cylindrical box perched atop a can on the floor was studded with dials and gauges, or so the instructor said later. Angelakos saw wires—loop switches attached to the sides running up each upright shaft of a wooden handle. This in turn was attached to the wooden box that rested on top of the gallon can. Angelakos reached out for it tentatively, and this slight movement was enough to stretch the wires. The bomber had incorporated into his device an ancillary component built to look like a piece of test or measurement equipment. In reality it was a piece of faux technology serving no function except that of exciting curiosity. The tension he unwittingly applied when he touched the device detonated an eight-and-a-half-inch-long, half-inch-wide galvanized pipe sealed on either end with threaded caps.

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ATF experts analyzed the scattered remains: a nine-inch-long, one-inch-wide pipe encased in a wooden box, secured with nails, rubber bands, screws, epoxy, three-quarter-inch black plastic tape, and half-inch filament tape. The explosive was two types of smokeless powder packed in the pipe. The makeshift trigger resembled a child’s plaything: a nail tensed by several rubber bands. Opening the handcrafted wooden box released the nail, which struck match heads, igniting the powder. Curiously, one end of the pipe was closed with a wooden stopper. The device was built from scavenged materials—hand-forged nails, reclaimed screws, items others might discard. Thus, the Junkyard Bomber emerged.

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