Explanation of why I blog here about Brett Kimberlin

Anyone who's familiar with Brett Kimberlin will notice that my posts so far are almost all about old stuff, with barely any mention of what Brett Kimberlin has been doing lately. Here is why.

Brett Kimberlin has gotten away with more crimes than many lifelong criminals ever commit. I could list them all - and, over time, I will - but as Brett probably realizes, the trouble is that it can be too hard to get full justice out of Brett. He will not cooperate with law enforcement, will not treat his victims fairly, will abuse legal procedure, and will generally humiliate, fight, and sue his victims every step of the way. He will go fishing with various alternate explanations of history, and try to recruit whoever bites to spread his lies for him. He will hire Neal Rauhauser to help run doxing and harassment campaigns against anyone who criticizes his misdeeds. Looking over the last 36 - no, 41 - years of serious crimes by Brett Kimberlin, these strategies are, at least in his estimation, working well enough. No more.

As of now, Brett Kimberlin will be held responsible for all of his crimes. The ones from this year, the ones from 36 years ago, and all the ones in between. He is not released from responsibility unless he atones. I don’t care how old or recent the deeds are. I don’t care if some of the victims have given up. And Kimberlin is wrong If he thinks he can get away with it just by making the good guys wade through too much of his garbage. Not giving up now. Kimberlin got away with much when people were in the dark, so from now on all his misdeeds must be subjected to the light of a thousand suns.

Why, again, am I mainly writing about old stuff? Because I'm going in chronological order and it'd take me a rather long time to get to the crimes he's committed just in the prior year, which include forgery, perjury, and another one of his attempts at false imprisonment (at least, that last time, the judge understood what Brett was doing and stopped it immediately). The old stuff is still important, though. For instance, Brett needs to make good on what he owes to his surviving bombing victim, Sandra DeLong. Sandra DeLong tried for 20 years to carry on the fight herself, and perhaps she finally gave up. Well, the rest of us should join in the fight. In order for justice to win, Brett Kimberlin has to lose. That's worth fighting for, even if Brett Kimberlin wants to make it hard.

That's why I'm here.

36 Years Ago Today: Brett Kimberlin Bombs a Speedway High School Football Game

If you're not already familiar, please read my article on why Brett Kimberlin bombed Speedway, IN in the first place. The really short version is that Brett Kimberlin is a pedophile who tends to retaliate against his victims, and who covers up his crimes using further crimes.

All my sources for this post are Brett Kimberlin's own authorized biography,KIMBERLIN v. DEWALT, and this newspaper report of the Speedway Bombings, which I encourage you to read.

Speedway High School parking lot bomb left during football game

On September 6, Kimberlin set off his final bomb, this time during a football game at Speedway High School. Considering timing of events, Kimberlin probably placed the bomb in the school parking lot while the game was still taking place. The explosion happened around 8:10 pm. Carl D. DeLong was a father to one of the players, and was in the parking lot waiting for his son to come out when he noticed a brown-and-yellow gym bag in the parking lot. The bomb inside the bag went off either as Carl picked it up, or shortly after.

Injuries from the blast

The worst injuries were suffered by Carl Delong. From Citizen K, pages 91-92:

One of his eardrums was shattered, and two of his fingers had to be reattached. The force of the blast lifted him into the air. "I remember looking down on the tops of cars and wondering why they were there," he later testified. [...] "I looked down at my right leg, and my kneecap was blown up on my thigh," he recalled. "My left leg was just shredded away to the bone. I yelled, 'Oh, God, get those kids out of here,' and tried to crawl away from there."

The left leg Mr. DeLong saw before passing out was actually later re-built, but his right leg was even worse and had to be amputated. Two of his fingers and one ear were re-attached. Two years later, DeLong testified that he was still removing bomb fragments from his body.

Carl DeLong's wife, Sandra DeLong, was standing nearby and received much less severe injuries. A third unidentified victim is mentioned for receiving shrapnel wounds in his back.

Why I'm writing this blog

Brett Kimberlin has continued a disgusting, mean campaign lasting to this very day, to deny Carl DeLong's widow, Sandra DeLong, the restitution which he was ordered to pay her. The original crime was bad enough, but the cheating, lying, harassment, and vexatious lawsuits against his own bombing victim are beyond disgusting. I urge every person reading this to read about Kimberlin's awful mistreatment of his bombing victim. If you already read this, re-read it. I will never let up until Brett Kimberlin corrects this misbehavior completely. Here are just a few highlights of things Brett Kimberlin did to try to intimidate his surviving bombing victim:

• He filed a frivolous suit against her attorney.
• He filed a frivolous suit against Sandra DeLong. Nothing happened with either suit, they were just meant to annoy, harass, and waste time.
• He made apparently hundreds of thousands of dollars while in prison in the 1980s, which he laundered specifically to conceal it from the widow DeLong.
• When he got out of prison, he soon received a 6-figure inheritance; several 6-figure book advances; and some murky middleman job that seems to have involved multimillion dollar deals. The total amounts are very likely near or over $1 million in income from 1994-1997, but Brett made sure $0 of that went to his surviving bombing victim.
• Brett Kimberlin tried to hide his assets in a corporation called Brett Kimberlin Enterprises. With his assets supposedly removed from him, he claimed he had no money.
• Brett Kimberlin induced his sister to file a fraudulent bankruptcy suit against him, in hopes that it would frustrate DeLong's ability to recover damages he owed her.
• At the time, Brett Kimberlin lived in an expensive D.C. area suburb, with three new Mercedes parked in his driveway, but he still claimed he had no money to pay his bombing victim.
• Brett offered to settle with her by paying 2% of the amount the court had ordered. Note this is not "settlement" in the normal sense that happens in civil disputes, because DeLong had already successfully sued and won.

Conclusion

I will not cease until Brett Kimberlin fixes every single one of those points I listed above. I urge everyone reading this to take the same approach. I also urge all of those who are helping Brett Kimberlin's lawfare and harassment campaigns (even if you only are cheerleading it) to cease any such support for him until he corrects these grave injustices he committed against his victims.

Justice doesn't happen automatically, by itself. People have to care, and put in time, hard work, money, and expertise. If you care about justice, you should consider what you can do to help the victims.

 

36 Years Ago Today: Brett Kimberlin Blows Up a Speedway Patrol Car

Commemorating the anniversary of Brett Kimberlin's September 5, 1978 bomb (now with .445 caliber lead shot)

Brett Kimberlin's misdeeds were again front page news in the main Indianapolis area newspaper after Brett Kimberlin planted one of his bombs under a police patrol car on the night of September 5, 1978.

Brett's bombings up until this one

As I already explained in a previous post, Brett Kimberlin began his bombing spree in Speedway with four bombs, close to 10pm on  September 1, with the last going off in the first hours of September 2. These four bombs only destroyed some storefront windows, landscaping, and a car windshield, and the only injuries were minor cuts from flying glass. While I didn't write separate posts about them, he also set off a bomb in a cornfield and another near the Speedway Lanes bowling alley. Neither of these produced injuries, but they started a new twist in Brett Kimberlin's bombing spree: both used some of the huge amount of .445 caliber lead balls Brett bought a few weeks prior.

On the damage of the patrol car bombing

The bomb ripped off the tires and the fuel tank from the police car. Fortunately, the fuel tank didn't ignite. Two other nearby cars were also damaged, one "extensively" according to the above linked Indianapolis Star article. I am at pains to point out that the use of lead shot in Brett's bombs greatly raised the chances of killing someone. I speculated earlier that the use of lead shot could give Brett Kimberlin's bombs a substantial kill radius, similar to or even greater than that of an anti-personnel hand grenade. The cars damaged by Brett's September 5 bomb were in a residential parking lot next to some apartments, so this bomb posed serious danger to the public.

With Brett's ongoing bombing spree, it was only a short matter of time before someone would get hurt or killed. Because of Brett's abuse of the courts and intimidation of a bombing victim who will be the subject of my next post, a long matter of time has elapsed during which Brett Kimberlin evades justice for his bombings. Yes, he was convicted, but he never rendered the help to his victim as required by the civil courts, and indeed, by any reasonable principle of justice. This kind of injustice is what motivates me to write about him.

Gathering evidence

As before, all of Brett's  bombs were made from tubes of Tovex gel in an aluminum can, a lantern battery, a blasting cap, and a store-bought electronic timer that was specially altered. Forensic investigations noticed this pattern and began using the information to track down where they came from - for example, finding if anyone had recently bought a corresponding number of timers (and then altered them) and lantern batteries. The new bombs with lead shot added .445 caliber lead balls to the shopping list. This shopping list would of course directly implicate Brett Kimberlin, and this is part of how he got convicted and earned his moniker as the Speedway Bomber. I will be explaining that evidence in detail in later posts.

September 1, 1978: Brett Kimberlin starts Speedway Bombing spree with 4 bombs

On the evening of Friday, 1st September 1978, Brett Kimberlin unleashed his first four bombs on Speedway, Indiana. The main Indianapolis area newspaper reported the first three of the bombings as front page news the next day. These first three exploded shortly before and after 10:00 pm.  Brett Kimberlin's authorized biographer Mark Singer noted that the lack of major injuries "seemed more a matter of luck than of design." Still, the bomb Kimberlin concealed in a trash can next to the Speedway Shopping Center knocked over two bystanders and some received cuts from flying glass as storefront windows were destroyed. This first bomb also destroyed the windshield of a car in the adjacent parking lot. One of Kimberlin's other bombs that night was in a hotel dumpster and no one was very near the blast. Another bomb was "in the 1600 block of Whitcomb Avenue," a residential area. Finally, after midnight, and apparently after the Indianapolis Star's press time, bomb #4 blew up some bushes on the grounds of Speedway High School. Singer notes that "As the crow flew, it went off less than a hundred yards from the Scyphers residence." If you're not already familiar, please read why Brett Kimberlin wanted Julia Scyphers killed and why he bombed Speedway.

On the strength of the bombs

Brett Kimberlin used tubes of Tovex gel explosive in all of his Speedway bombs. Tovex is a modern replacement for dynamite that's harder to accidentally trigger, but the explosive power is very similar. These Tovex tubes are not comparable to ordinary fireworks, cherry bombs, or a typical charge of gunpowder. They are serious, powerful explosives that can break through rock and soil, shred cars, shred people and throw them up into the air, and permanently destroy eardrums. Reports on the September 1 bombings note that they were heard from up to 5 miles away.

Based on my personal understanding of hand grenades, your typical anti-personnel hand grenade probably has lower explosive power than a single tube of Tovex, however there are other factors in the lethality of an explosive device besides blast strength. I would guess that the bombs that didn't use lead shot could actually have a quite lower kill radius than a hand grenade, whereas those that did use lead shot could have killed from a frightening distance, perhaps meeting or exceeding the hand grenade's kill radius.

Brett Kimberlin's first four bombs didn't use any of the copious amounts of .445-caliber lead balls he'd bought a couple weeks before. Those lead balls will be mentioned again in later posts.

On the placement of the bombs

Brett has never explained his rationale behind bomb placement. Some of them were put in places where they were less likely to hurt anyone. Some of them, owing to confluence of timing and placement, were overwhelmingly likely to hurt someone. Speaking only of September 1, 1978, the bomb placed near the Speedway Shopping Center was placed too late at night to hit most customers, but there were still people around (as later articles will explain, some helped ID Brett Kimberlin and his car) and a few got minor cuts from flying glass. One wonders if the one placed 100 yards from the Scyphers residence was meant to intimidate. A single Tovex package would have similar explosive power to a full stick of dynamite, and would have been extremely loud from 100 yards away.

I can't find any source that explains the exact location of the Whitcomb Avenue bomb, but it makes me curious if it was placed near a house for a particular reason.

On the design of the bombs

All of Brett's bombs included Tovex explosive inside an aluminum can. Blasting caps had to be used to trigger the Tovex. The blasting caps themselves were triggered by a charge from lantern batteries, and the contact was closed by an electronic timer. Every one of Brett's bombs seems to have included all these parts. Only some of them also included any of the huge amount of lead balls Brett bought. The four bombs from the night of September 1, 1978 did not yet include lead shot.

Reminder on the apparent motive of the bombings

Brett Kimberlin set off bombs to distract and confuse the local Speedway police, who were few in number and unaccustomed to deadly crime. Brett felt he needed to distract the police because their investigation of the Julia Scyphers murder had him and William Bowman as the only two suspects. And Brett hired William Bowman to murder Julia Scyphers because Scyphers was interfering with Brett's pedophilic relationship with Scyphers' granddaughter, who Brett pursued aggressively starting when she was 10. The relationship ended when the girl was 14, apparently because they started having arguments and Brett retaliated by taking away the girl's beloved family dog, and also slapping her on two occasions.