Latest Bomb Case Likely Work of a ‘Copycat,’ Officials Believe

The package bomb that exploded in the hands of a Hagerstown, Md., judge is probably the work of a “copycat” who is not connected to those who sent four bombs from Georgia within the last two weeks, killing two people, federal officials said Saturday.

The latest bombing victim, Washington County Circuit Court Judge John P. Corderman, 47, remained in stable condition and under armed guard at a local hospital Saturday after a pipe bomb exploded Friday afternoon at his apartment. Doctors said they believe Corderman was holding a package containing the bomb in his lap when it exploded, rupturing his eardrums and sending 3/4-inch pieces of shrapnel into the left side of his groin and right hand.

In the four earlier incidents, each bomb was described as a “nail bomb” and was mailed in a shoe-box-sized package postmarked in Georgia. Officials theorize a racial motivation in those incidents, since each of the victims had at some time been involved in efforts to desegregate school districts in the South.

Federal and local law enforcement agencies are sharing information about the five bombings, said Jack Killorin, a spokesman for the Treasury Department’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. However, he added, there is “nothing to establish a tie” between the Corderman bombing and the others.

Killorin said the Hagerstown bomb package was “different in technology,” noting that there were two bombs in the same package. Investigators said the Hagerstown bomb, while deadly, was not as powerful as the other four bombs.

The U.S. Postal Inspection Service confirmed that the pipe bomb, packaged in a Christmas food gift box, was sent through the mail and not through some other delivery service, said spokesman Paul Griffo in Washington.

Witnesses and neighbors had told investigators they saw a man deliver a package to Corderman’s third-floor apartment shortly before the 2:30 p.m. explosion.

Asked if there was a suspect in the bombing, Killorin declined to comment.

Lt. Robert Frick of the Hagerstown Police Department said he didn’t expect to have any suspects for at least “the next 48 hours.”

Frick said police checked the Washington County courthouse Friday night for bombs “just as a precaution to make sure nobody left anything under a judge’s bench or anything.” He said the search did not find any additional bombs.

In the earlier bombings, U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Robert S. Vance was killed at his home in Mountain Brook, Ala., and Savannah, Ga., lawyer and Alderman Robert Robinson was killed in his office. Similar bombs were discovered and disarmed at a federal courthouse in Atlanta and at an NAACP office in Jacksonville, Fla.

Killorin noted that many judges and civil rights groups across the country have received “phony bomb packages and phony threatening calls” since last week’s incidents.