Austin bombings similar to Unabomber, frmr head of FBI Detroit says

DETROIT (WJBK) - A fifth bomb exploded in Texas and federal and state investigators are still trying to find out who's behind the violence. It's eerily similar to what happened in Detroit 7 years ago.

Andy Arena, is now with the Detroit Crime Commission but in 2011, he was the head of the FBI in Detroit. He says that the men and women in Texas are looking closely at the pieces of bomb fragments left behind by the five blasts in the past few weeks - something he and his team did in 2011 when a bomb was found at the federal building downtown.

The first three bombs detonated at homes, the fourth was placed on the side of a road, and the fifth went off Tuesday morning at a FedEx center near San Antonio. All of them went off in different ways. 

"You either have one, or a group of bombers or you have copy cats," Arena said. "The initial bombings, they were packages delivered onto a porch. The second was a trip wire or trigger Wire mechanism. The third we don't know, but it probably went off prematurely."

In February 2011, Arena was in their shoes. A tool bag with an explosive was left outside the McNamara building in Detroit. Security brought it inside and stashed it away from three weeks before it was x-rayed and determined to be a bomb. Detroit police safely detonated it and track down who was responsible.
    
"We were able to get enough remnants from the bag it was in, different pieces of the bomb to identify where those pieces were sold, who manufactured them. Then we were able to identify one location-it was a Home Depot in Wisconsin," Arena said.

The receipts and surveillance led them to Michigan resident Greg Mikulich. 

Beyond the Detroit similarities, Arena says the Austin bombings are similar to the Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, who killed three people and injured 23 between 1978 and 1995. Arena says they're similar in multiple ways.
  
"Kaczynski was very good at changing his methodology. It was hard to determine exactly what it was he was trying to get at, why was he targeting certain people," Arena said.

Authorities are trying to figure out the same thing with the person or people responsible for this string of terror. 

"It's a race. This person is racing to get as many bombs out as he can before he gets caught and law enforcement is racing to catch him before he hurts more people," Arena said.

Arena says fear fuels the bombers and typically won't stop unless they're caught.