I came across this one while looking into the Tuusula shooting. Another young man who goes on a suicide mission to kill a lot of people for no particular
reason at all.
10-11-02 Myyrmanni mall bombing
On or about 7:35PM on Friday Oct 11, 2002, an explosion occured in the Myyrmanni shopping center in Vantaa, Finland(40 miles north of Helsinki). A bomb was quickly identified as the culprit. The explosion killed seven, including two teenagers, a 7-year-old child and the bomber(his body was the last to be identified). 166 people were injured, including 10 children. 66 victims required hospitalization. There was a clown performance aimed at children at the shopping center just before the explosion occurred, possibly indicating the children were the intended target. Early reports that this was a result of poliitical terrorism were quickly changed to being the act of a lone nut-- one Petri Gerdt, 19, a Finnish citizen and a student at a local technical college. There is no question that Gerdt was interested in explosive devices:
--"....from an early age he had a fascination with fireworks and explosives."
--"Petri Gerdt had downloaded instructions for bomb making from the internet. ...When police searched his home they found instructions and material on making the bomb."
http://research.lifeboat.com/loner.htm
--During weekends he spent much time surfing the Internet. He is believed to have used the pseudonym RC on a number of message boards. RC was a frequent contributor on a message board known as the 'Forum for Home Chemistry,' focusing on pyrotechnics. RC appeared to be something of an expert in the field...
Petri's father acknowledged that his son was interested in building bombs and his son had detonated devices in the woods near their house. In a book he wrote afterward--"Petri's Path to Myyrmanni," Armas Gerdt suggested that Petri had merely been passing through the mall on his way there when the bomb was set off accidentally. But because the explosive device had thousands of steel shotgun-size pellets taped to it, police concluded his attack was intentional. Though they could not conclude whether it was a suicide attack or whether Gerdt had hoped to detonate the device remotely from a distance.
http://www.kolumbus.fi/sari.hietala/diaries/diary1004.htm
Evidently he used a mobile phone as a timer and something went wrong and the bomb exploded when he was still carrying it.
[Comment: Note how they don't even consider the possibility that someone else decided to "call" this phone number at exactly this moment.]
Though the experts were at a loss to explain the motive. His fellow students described him as an introverted person, a loner, a quiet and withdrawn young man who would sit at the rear of the classroom and who rarely took part in student events. He was described as a "quiet man who liked solitude, basketball, and computers." His acquaintainces described him as a completely normal person, with 'no indications of the dark side of the mind.' Gerdt lived with his family in Vantaa, who were deeply shocked and receiving counselling. "The incident came as a total surprise and shock to them. They had no idea of what was to happen," an investigator said.
Various theories of motive were floated: Gerdt had recently broken up with his girlfriend, he was part of a cult, he was an anti-corporate extremist(the bomb exploded outside a McDonalds), he was suffering from mental problems--though none of them seemed to pan out. Though investigators were certain of only one thing: Gerdt did not have links to any radical groups or terrorist organizations. As evidence of intent, police quoted several posts he had made in the weeks prior to the bombing attack:
On the Internet, Gerdt -- who went by the alias "rc" -- had discussed using remote-controlled detonators with "Einstein," according to The Associated Press.
"Radio-controlled is every boy's dream. No wires ... and no danger to oneself (you can go far off and hide)," "Einstein" wrote on August 28.
Three days later, "rc" replied that it wasn't foolproof because the receiver could fail, or get a signal from a wrong source.
"But I admit it's the best possible triggering device for amateurs," "rc" said. "It explodes exactly when you want it to, if you want it to."
Luckily for the police, an anonymous acquaintance--"Hessu"--seemed to close the case on the suspect:
http://edition.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/europe/10/17/helsinki.blast/
Gerdt had bragged to friends for almost a year that he would detonate a bomb in a public place, Finnish media reported. "Pete (Petri) planned the attack for at least a year," a student nicknamed Hessu told the tabloid Ilta-Sanomat.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9906EFDD143DF934A25753C1A9649C8B63
He appears to have had few acquaintances there, but the newspaper Ilto Sanomat printed an interview with a young man(aka 'Hessu') in his 20s who said he met Mr. Gerdt in a bar a year or so ago and became his friend, even as Mr. Gerdt began to speak obsessively about explosives. He ''was just raving,'' said the man, who telephoned the police hot-line number with his account of their friendship and whose statements are now being investigated by the police. ''It was nothing but 'bomb, bomb, bomb.' I never believed he would carry out his plans.'' The friend, who spoke on condition that his name not be used, told the newspaper that Mr. Gerdt had been ''excited'' by the Sept. 11 attacks and that when he discussed his own scheme, he always spoke of setting a timer so that he could escape before the bomb went off. If that is true, he clearly miscalculated and did not get out in time. ''He didn't believe he would be caught,'' the friend said. ''He said he could then boast about what he did to his buddies.''
[Comment: The quite, introverted loner goes into a bar and starts 'raving' on how he wants to bomb a lot of innocent people, so that later he can 'boast' about it to his non-existent friends. Suuuure..... ]
Like a lot of the 'Columbine-clients,' Gerdt seemed to have had 'strange dreams' before the act:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9906EFDD143DF934A25753C1A9649C8B63
Last week, several days before he set off a bomb that killed seven people... Petri Gerdt posted his last message, containing the shadowy details of a strange dream ''about accidents, authorities and other kinds of funny happenings.''
http://research.lifeboat.com/loner.htm
--"No major accidents have happened to me, but once I had a dream that a police car drove to a detonation site. Good thing I was 'floating' in another direction," wrote RC.
And there are the usual gaps in the timeline:
http://www2.hs.fi/english/archive/news.asp?id=20021018IE6
Between 6:10 and 6:20 PM on Friday Gerdt went up the Myyrmanni escalator to the third floor, where public toilets, as well as some facilities of the school Gerdt attended, are located.He must have left the building sometime later, because security cameras caught him coming in again at 7:20. Fifteen minutes later, the bomb went off killing Gerdt and six others. .... Earlier in the afternoon Gerdt had been to the district of Mellunmäki in the east of Helsinki, and police are looking into whether or not he was visiting friends during a period of three hours last Friday afternoon.
The acid test for a covert operation is the political fallout after the attack, and in this case there was plenty of reaction:
http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=Myyrmanni%20bombing
...It is important to note, though, that immediately when Gerdt's discussions on Internet Forums were discovered an unprecedented wave of anti-internet propaganda surfaced.
--Jari Liukku, assistant chief of the National Bureau of Investigation in Finland, said that Mr. Gerdt had been heavily influenced ''by crimes abroad'' and that he believed that it was no coincidence that the bombing took place on Oct. 11, a month after Sept. 11. ''A lot of people taking part in these discussions on the Internet take models from foreign crimes that have already happened,'' he said. ''It's a dangerous phenomenon, to use the Internet this way.''
--The Social Democrats seized the opportunity to intensify efforts to censor Internet news groups, bulletin boards and websites. A bill already going through parliament is seeking to extend restrictions on freedom of speech on the Internet. Itala told parliament that in future orders could be issued to remove messages, news postings and web pages. Every online publication would need to name an editor who could be held responsible for postings on message boards they operated. The bill is due to become law next autumn.
[Comment: This helpful "Pearl Harbor-type" event was 'made to order'!]
/
10-11-02 Myyrmanni mall bombing
On or about 7:35PM on Friday Oct 11, 2002, an explosion occured in the Myyrmanni shopping center in Vantaa, Finland(40 miles north of Helsinki). A bomb was quickly identified as the culprit. The explosion killed seven, including two teenagers, a 7-year-old child and the bomber(his body was the last to be identified). 166 people were injured, including 10 children. 66 victims required hospitalization. There was a clown performance aimed at children at the shopping center just before the explosion occurred, possibly indicating the children were the intended target. Early reports that this was a result of poliitical terrorism were quickly changed to being the act of a lone nut-- one Petri Gerdt, 19, a Finnish citizen and a student at a local technical college. There is no question that Gerdt was interested in explosive devices:
--"....from an early age he had a fascination with fireworks and explosives."
--"Petri Gerdt had downloaded instructions for bomb making from the internet. ...When police searched his home they found instructions and material on making the bomb."
http://research.lifeboat.com/loner.htm
--During weekends he spent much time surfing the Internet. He is believed to have used the pseudonym RC on a number of message boards. RC was a frequent contributor on a message board known as the 'Forum for Home Chemistry,' focusing on pyrotechnics. RC appeared to be something of an expert in the field...
Petri's father acknowledged that his son was interested in building bombs and his son had detonated devices in the woods near their house. In a book he wrote afterward--"Petri's Path to Myyrmanni," Armas Gerdt suggested that Petri had merely been passing through the mall on his way there when the bomb was set off accidentally. But because the explosive device had thousands of steel shotgun-size pellets taped to it, police concluded his attack was intentional. Though they could not conclude whether it was a suicide attack or whether Gerdt had hoped to detonate the device remotely from a distance.
http://www.kolumbus.fi/sari.hietala/diaries/diary1004.htm
Evidently he used a mobile phone as a timer and something went wrong and the bomb exploded when he was still carrying it.
[Comment: Note how they don't even consider the possibility that someone else decided to "call" this phone number at exactly this moment.]
Though the experts were at a loss to explain the motive. His fellow students described him as an introverted person, a loner, a quiet and withdrawn young man who would sit at the rear of the classroom and who rarely took part in student events. He was described as a "quiet man who liked solitude, basketball, and computers." His acquaintainces described him as a completely normal person, with 'no indications of the dark side of the mind.' Gerdt lived with his family in Vantaa, who were deeply shocked and receiving counselling. "The incident came as a total surprise and shock to them. They had no idea of what was to happen," an investigator said.
Various theories of motive were floated: Gerdt had recently broken up with his girlfriend, he was part of a cult, he was an anti-corporate extremist(the bomb exploded outside a McDonalds), he was suffering from mental problems--though none of them seemed to pan out. Though investigators were certain of only one thing: Gerdt did not have links to any radical groups or terrorist organizations. As evidence of intent, police quoted several posts he had made in the weeks prior to the bombing attack:
On the Internet, Gerdt -- who went by the alias "rc" -- had discussed using remote-controlled detonators with "Einstein," according to The Associated Press.
"Radio-controlled is every boy's dream. No wires ... and no danger to oneself (you can go far off and hide)," "Einstein" wrote on August 28.
Three days later, "rc" replied that it wasn't foolproof because the receiver could fail, or get a signal from a wrong source.
"But I admit it's the best possible triggering device for amateurs," "rc" said. "It explodes exactly when you want it to, if you want it to."
Luckily for the police, an anonymous acquaintance--"Hessu"--seemed to close the case on the suspect:
http://edition.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/europe/10/17/helsinki.blast/
Gerdt had bragged to friends for almost a year that he would detonate a bomb in a public place, Finnish media reported. "Pete (Petri) planned the attack for at least a year," a student nicknamed Hessu told the tabloid Ilta-Sanomat.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9906EFDD143DF934A25753C1A9649C8B63
He appears to have had few acquaintances there, but the newspaper Ilto Sanomat printed an interview with a young man(aka 'Hessu') in his 20s who said he met Mr. Gerdt in a bar a year or so ago and became his friend, even as Mr. Gerdt began to speak obsessively about explosives. He ''was just raving,'' said the man, who telephoned the police hot-line number with his account of their friendship and whose statements are now being investigated by the police. ''It was nothing but 'bomb, bomb, bomb.' I never believed he would carry out his plans.'' The friend, who spoke on condition that his name not be used, told the newspaper that Mr. Gerdt had been ''excited'' by the Sept. 11 attacks and that when he discussed his own scheme, he always spoke of setting a timer so that he could escape before the bomb went off. If that is true, he clearly miscalculated and did not get out in time. ''He didn't believe he would be caught,'' the friend said. ''He said he could then boast about what he did to his buddies.''
[Comment: The quite, introverted loner goes into a bar and starts 'raving' on how he wants to bomb a lot of innocent people, so that later he can 'boast' about it to his non-existent friends. Suuuure..... ]
Like a lot of the 'Columbine-clients,' Gerdt seemed to have had 'strange dreams' before the act:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9906EFDD143DF934A25753C1A9649C8B63
Last week, several days before he set off a bomb that killed seven people... Petri Gerdt posted his last message, containing the shadowy details of a strange dream ''about accidents, authorities and other kinds of funny happenings.''
http://research.lifeboat.com/loner.htm
--"No major accidents have happened to me, but once I had a dream that a police car drove to a detonation site. Good thing I was 'floating' in another direction," wrote RC.
And there are the usual gaps in the timeline:
http://www2.hs.fi/english/archive/news.asp?id=20021018IE6
Between 6:10 and 6:20 PM on Friday Gerdt went up the Myyrmanni escalator to the third floor, where public toilets, as well as some facilities of the school Gerdt attended, are located.He must have left the building sometime later, because security cameras caught him coming in again at 7:20. Fifteen minutes later, the bomb went off killing Gerdt and six others. .... Earlier in the afternoon Gerdt had been to the district of Mellunmäki in the east of Helsinki, and police are looking into whether or not he was visiting friends during a period of three hours last Friday afternoon.
The acid test for a covert operation is the political fallout after the attack, and in this case there was plenty of reaction:
http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=Myyrmanni%20bombing
...It is important to note, though, that immediately when Gerdt's discussions on Internet Forums were discovered an unprecedented wave of anti-internet propaganda surfaced.
--Jari Liukku, assistant chief of the National Bureau of Investigation in Finland, said that Mr. Gerdt had been heavily influenced ''by crimes abroad'' and that he believed that it was no coincidence that the bombing took place on Oct. 11, a month after Sept. 11. ''A lot of people taking part in these discussions on the Internet take models from foreign crimes that have already happened,'' he said. ''It's a dangerous phenomenon, to use the Internet this way.''
--The Social Democrats seized the opportunity to intensify efforts to censor Internet news groups, bulletin boards and websites. A bill already going through parliament is seeking to extend restrictions on freedom of speech on the Internet. Itala told parliament that in future orders could be issued to remove messages, news postings and web pages. Every online publication would need to name an editor who could be held responsible for postings on message boards they operated. The bill is due to become law next autumn.
[Comment: This helpful "Pearl Harbor-type" event was 'made to order'!]
/
