[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Kelly J West) writes:
continuation of case:
Homicide investigators. led by Detectives Ken Farnsworth and Jim Bell,
were on the scene of the killing at the Judge Building within minutes of
the first report. They sealed off the entire buildings to scores of
horrified witnesses and curious bystanders.
Hundreds of people had been working in the building at the time of the
explosion, and detectives began the painstaking process of questioning
each of them. Martini, one of the first questioned, told police about
the man on the elevator and the package he had been carrying. Martini
described the man as 5 feet 8 inches tall, age 30 to 35, with neatly
combed dark brown hair. The man, a Caucasian, weighed about 185 pounds
and had a distinct five o'clock shadow. It was hard to tell in the poor
lighting of the lobby, but he may also have had a a slight mustache,
Martini added.
Unfortunately for the police, that description could fit thousands of men
in Salt Lake City. Even a composite drawing proved to be of little help.
It was too nondescript. There was one thing unusual that morning.
Martini said the man was wearing a green letter jacket with brown
sleeves, the kind high school kids wear.
James Martini was not the only one who had seen something unusual that
morning. Meg Stewart, who had an office directly across the hall from
Steven Christensen, had also noticed something strange. Arriving for
work about 6:50 A.M., she stepped off of the elevator onto the sixth
floor and noticed a man standing toward the end of a dead-end hallway.
"To see someone on that floor at that time of the morning was very
alarming," she told police. "He was definitely not maintenance. The
person on the floor definitely did not belong there."
As Stewart approached her office, she noticed a cardboard box had been
left in front of Christensen's doorway. That was unusual because
maintenance people usually worked at night and would have picked up the
package and moved it into the office when they cleaned. This package had
been left sometime that morning, which was unusual considering the early
hour.
Stewart and Christensen had a practice of accepting and holding packages
for each other when either was out of the office. She bent over to pick
up the package and noticed it appeared personal. It had no postage or
official markings. It was addressed in black felt marker simply, "To
Steve Christensen." She reached to pick it up, but changed her mind. As
she looked up, she saw the same strange man watching her intently from
the stairwell. She quickly entered her office and locked the door.
Unfortunately, Meg Stewart could not provide a detailed description of
the strange man, nor could she tell police what he was wearing. Her only
description was that he was rather ordinary looking and had "small eyes
and chubby cheeks."
Stewart was getting ready to leave her office shortly after 8:00 A.M.
when she heard a deafening explosion. "Parts of the wall came in." she
explained, noting plaster fell on her right leg, causing a puncture
wound. "I crouched down. I didn't know what was going on."
The woman then heard a strange high-pitched crying sound, "like a little
child dying." She left her office and went into the hallway where she
found Christensen. He was alive, but barely. His chest was bloody, his
breathing shallow. He died moments later, from a piece of metal embedded
in his brain.
Police questioned scores of building tenants, but could find no others
who had seen the strange man carrying the package.
Bombings are extremely rare in Salt Lake City and only one officer had
any real experience in bomb construction or investigation. It had been
more than two decades since anyone had been killed by such a device. Salt
Lake officers decided to call in experts to help. Within an hour of the
explosion, agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF)
were on the scene. Agents spent most of the next two days gathering
thousands of bomb fragments and pieces of shrapnel.
While city and federal investigators were still in the early stages of
their investigation, Kathleem Webb Sheets, 50, returned home from a
morning walk about 9:30 A.M. and found a cardboard box sitting in the
driveway by her garage. It was addressed to her husband. As she cradled
it in her left arm, a bomb inside exploded, killing Kathleen instantly.
Bits of steel were blown through the home and were found in the kitchen.
The garage roof collapsed, burying the victim under plywood, said Salt
Lake County Detective Jerry Thompson. Because of the secluded nature of
her home, it was two hours before anyone discovered the morbid scene.
While the homicide investigations were still in their very preliminary
stages, detectives determined it was extremely unlikely that two fatal
bombings on the same morning would be unrelated. Salt Lake City police,
Salt Lake County sheriff's deputies and federal investigators from both
the FBI and ATF formed a special task force to investigate the killings.
ATF Special Agent Jerry A. Taylor began assembling pieces of evidence
recovered from the bombing scenes. There were a number of similarities
between the two bombs: Both were pipe bombs with rather common
components, but used C-cell battery packs as an ignition source, both
used mercury switches as a timing device and both used the same kind of
smokeless gunpowder. Unlike the bomb that killed Steven Christensen, the
bomb that killed Kathleen Sheets had no shrapnel attached to it. The
killer had taped row upon row of concrete nails to the pipe bomb that
killed Christensen.
It was Taylor's opinion that both bombs were made by the same person.
"These bombs are the unique work of a serial bomber, made with identical
components," the agent said, adding that they were not the work of a
professional killer. "A bomb such as this was never used in any
organized criminal activity that I know of. Organized crime hits are
usually five or six sticks of dynamite. It's much more of a sure thing."
The Sheets homicide gave investigators their first real indication of a
motive. Probers were confident the bomb that killed Mrs. Sheets was
intended for her husband, the owner of a large and financially troubled
investment firm. The company, CFS International, had lost millions of
dollars in recent months and was on the verge of bankruptcy. Many
people, some rumored to have connections with organized crime, had lost
small fortunes.
The organized crime angle certainly had believers early in the
investigation. "The way the bomb was made, the way it was handled and
detonated, the individual who put it together had to be a professional."
said Sheriff Pete Hayward at the time. "And when you have that type of
money flowing back and forth, there's always a possibility of organized
crime."
CFS's business problems were a logical place to begin the investigation.
Not only was Kathleen's husband the owner of the firm, but Steven
Christensen had at one time been a vice president of the company. With
CFS failing financially, Christensen had left the company a few months
before the bombing to start his own financial consulting firm. It was
possible, probers theorized, that someone somewhere held Christensen and
Kathleen's husband responsible for a bad investment.
Just as police were gathering their entire investigation toward the
probability that a disgruntled investor had killed Christensen and
Sheets, a third bombing occurred-one that would change the entire
direction of the investigation and lead police into a maze of forgeries,
frauds, and million dollar deception.
It was about 2:00 P.M. October 16th, when Mark W. Hoffman, 30, a
nationally renowned dealer in rare historical documents, was blown up by
a pipe bomb left in his parked sports car. Only this time the victim
wasn't dead.
According to Salt Lake City Police Officer James Bryant, who interviewed
Hofmann as he lay on a hospital gurney, the documents expert had just
entered his car when "something, he didn't know what, started to fall"
from the car seat. As Hofmann reached for the package, it exploded,
blasting Hofmann into the middle of the street, severing body parts and
ripping open his chest.
During a second interview, HOfmann told Bryant a brown pickup had been
following him earlier that day. The pickup was damaged on the right
front end. He couldn't remember the exact license number, but he said it
had a T, a W and two 3's in it. He also pleaded with the officer to warn
two friends to "get out of town," because the killer might target them
too.
Detective Jim Bell also interviewed Hofmann that same afternoon, but
noticed nothing unusual about Hofmann's statements. "At that time, he
was totally a victim as far as I was concerned," Bell said.
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