After hundreds of investigators swarmed Austin in recent days to stop the bomber, it was a combination of high-tech surveillance and old-fashioned shoe-leather investigating the bombings that led officials to Mark Anthony Conditt, an Austin resident who had no clear motive or criminal record.
Conditt didn’t appear to be motivated by terrorism or hate, but the confession investigators found on his cellphone was “the outcry of a very challenged young man” dealing with problems in his personal life, Austin Police Chief Brian Manley said.
The series of bombs linked to Conditt used similar components that made it easy for officials to link the devices: unusual batteries, apparently purchased online from Asia, and nails used as shrapnel, according to U.S. Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, the Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee.
Trying to find the buyer of the nails, officials “went to every hardware store” in the area to find customers who had made large purchases, and they struck gold with a Home Depot store in the Austin suburb of Round Rock, McCaul said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times.
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