We will probably never know whether the four bombs planted in Aspen on New Year’s Eve by James Blanning would have worked, whether he attempted to detonate them remotely, or their potential harm if he had done so successfully, Aspen police spokeswoman Stephanie Dasaro reported Monday, as local and federal authorities began reviewing their handling of the bomb scare.
“Due to the mechanism of disarmament by bomb technicians, the bomb package was destroyed and left in pieces,” Dasaro said via e-mail. “Unfortunately, investigators are unable to reassemble the pieces to determine if the bomb package would have been fully functioning and the extent of the damage if detonated.”
The explosive devices were dismantled by a five-person bomb squad made up of members of the Grand Junction police and fire departments, which handle explosive situations on the Western Slope of Colorado, said department spokeswoman Kate Porras.
The packages were inspected by a robot equipped with a video camera, which indicated the bombs included bladders of fuel, triggering and anti-tamper devices and wires, indicating all the elements of a functional bomb were present. An inspection of the debris left from the devices after they were disabled confirmed those findings. The bomb technicians used high-powered water canons to disarm the devices, inadvertently triggering a four-story fireball from one.
“[T]he bomb packages presented a credible threat which presented ... all the signs of a true incendiary device, that had to be acted upon without delay,” Dasaro wrote.
Because the threats targeted banks, the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) is running the ongoing probe of the bomb threats, Dasaro said.
The FBI is also conducting an investigation in Denver, where Blanning was living and working before the attempted New Year’s Eve attack. An FBI spokesperson declined Monday to release any information on what had been found in Blanning’s home, office and a related storage unit in Denver, but confirmed an investigation was ongoing there.
The Pitkin County Sheriff’s Office is handling Blanning’s suicide and investigating the contents of his green Jeep Cherokee, including a list of the would-be bomber’s enemies, ammunition and a shotgun. Blanning was found beside the car in a parking lot at the North Star Nature Preserve east of town at 2:19 a.m. New Year’s Day, dead by a self-inflicted gunshot to the head.
Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis said he planned today to review the list of names found in Blanning’s car.
Monday’s closed-door interdepartmental review included between 50 and 60 representatives from the local agencies along with the Grand Junction bomb squad, the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms. They focused on their on-the-ground operations and communication the night of the threats that shut down 16 blocks of downtown Aspen for New Year’s Eve.
They will hold another debriefing today concentrating on the status of the ongoing investigation.
The emergency response to the incident was concluded New Year’s Day, more than 24 hours after Blanning left bombs wrapped as Christmas presents at two downtown Aspen banks with threatening notes demanding money. Two more were left in an alley off of Hopkins Avenue behind a Gap store. Other than Blanning’s death by his own hand, no one was injured as a result of the bomb threats.
andrew@aspendailynews.com