Posted on 10/16/2005 11:02:43 AM PDT by MizSterious
The FBI read the message to the father Friday, after he came to Oklahoma to clear out his son's university-owned apartment.
Joel "Joe" Henry Hinrichs III, an engineering student, died when his bomb went off about 100 yards from the packed football stadium during the second quarter of OU's night game against Kansas State.
Hinrichs, 21, was from Colorado Springs, Colo. He had a reputation as a loner and had struggled at times with his grades. His parents had begun divorce proceedings.
Joel Hinrichs Jr. said he understood investigators found the message on the computer screen when they arrived at the apartment.
"It was a single line of text on his computer," said the father, who lives in Colorado Springs. "The cursor was still blinking at the end."
The father said he could not recall the exact wording but said his son used profanity in the message and was obviously very angry. "He wrote he was dissatisfied with the situation and was going to quit living," the father said.
His description of the message is consistent with the recollection of others who have been briefed about the investigation by the FBI.
No links to terrorist groups
FBI officials have said they may never know whether the student wanted to get inside the stadium. The student did not have a season ticket.
FBI officials also have said the investigation has not found any links between the student and terrorist organizations.
His father said he thinks his son was just committing suicide and never intended to hurt anyone else.
The father said the FBI on Friday showed him the fractured bench where his son was sitting when the bomb exploded and photos of his son's headless body and a tattered backpack.
The father said when cleaning out the apartment, he learned his son apparently had been having trouble sleeping and had bought Sominex, a sleep aid.
The younger Hinrichs had a long fascination with ammunition and bombs, his relatives and friends said. Inside his bedroom in Norman were several used metal artillery shells -- the largest about 2 feet long. He had belts of used brass shell casings, a box of spent bullets and military ammo containers.
He also had items more typical of many college students -- textbooks, empty liquor bottles, magazines and a martial arts movie videotape.
The father allowed two reporters from The Oklahoman into the bedroom briefly Thursday.
Bomb experts removed explosive-related materials from the apartment Oct. 2. Contributing: Randy Ellis
Thanks for the info on Cole.
About the matches--Hinrichs was sitting on a wooden bench which blew to smithereens...right? Maybe the splintered bench pieces looked like matchsticks to some people.
Is there a photo anywhere of the "matchsticks"?
I remember that Kasich was a close friend of Condit's, and hung out at Condit's wild parties at that apartment where investigators found hundreds of different DNA samples (from orgies?) Kasich might even have been a roomie of Condit's at that time..I don't remember. But there was a lot about it on FR threads after Chandra disappeared.
I guess that was during Kasich's brief bachelor interlude between his two marriages.
The suicide note is always found after the cover up fails...
Know three people that saw them -- kitchen matches.
So was Joe Scarborough. Kasich wasn't married at the time -- you are correct and neither was Joe.
That statement is definitely an awkward construction, and probably ceated by someone who uses English as a second language. Esp. the "quit living". That's like the French idiom: cesser de ------.
Do you think this particular computer was brought into the apartment after the search? If so, why? Those hard drives had to be taken during the initial search -- was this a laptop that someone had taken out of the apartment before the search?
This inquiring mind wants to know because I refuse to believe law enforcement would allow a computer to remain when they obtained a search warrant for the apartment and confiscated explosives and other items but they want me to believe they left a computer turned on? Anyone that believes that computer story should be interested in swamp land Sooners are selling in AZ.
I'd missed this post earlier, and just now found it. You bring up such an important point--all the explosives, the ticket(s) to Algiers, the packed bags, and the map (clearly visible to all who looked at his car). All of this implies plans for the future, not suicide.
Like I said, I think it makes reading it easier, but adds no meaning. But then neither does the first. There a good linguistic analysis of the second amendment here, by a guy with no ax to grind on the subject, AFAIK. (Well the interviewer/correspondent does, but not Roy Copperud, a retired professor of journalism at the University of Southern California and the author of American Usage and Style: The Consensus, who did the grammatical analysis
Supposedly, the FBI read the note to the father, either over the phone or in person, so it could be they did take the hard drives, but after copying down the supposed suicide note. The one the father can't recall (defies all belief).
Just in case there are more "lone suicide" mixed up students out there somewhere? Considering this would be the first in the history of College football, if that's what it was, another doesn't seem too terribly likely.
"Hinrichs was sitting on a wooden bench which blew to smithereens...right?"
Looked like concrete to me, in the few pictures that were posted.
They were "detained", and the handcuffs, and the guns, were for "their safety and that of the officers involved". (Isn't that what they say on cops when they handcuff some guy with no shirt and a mullet, or no shirt and drunk as a skunk or high as a kite?)
The thing is, they can't arrest someone without probable cause to believe they've committed a crime. But they can detain them for some period.
Got a link to that information? National Enquirer or similar does not count. Not that I doubt it. You'd probably find thousands different DNA samples at any of the Kennedy Compounds, or at that house in New York where the Impeached One lives.. well maybe at his Harlem office, pickings might be better they, and the Witch of the House wouldn't be around.
It was sitting on a concrete pad, and attached to bolts in the concrete. The replacement bench was wood, or at least fake wood. Since there have been no photos of the scene released that were taken before the clean up, I guess it could have been a concrete bench.
Of course having no pre clean up pictures is very odd too. Heck we get picture of suicide bombings in, England, Iraq and Israel almost before the smoke clears, but there were no photogs at the game?
I haven't been posting as long as you have. However, often it easy to pick out a non English poster via their word useage.
Some are excellent posters and conservatives and some are lousy moles.
We develop a skill re word useage when we frequent this board. The so called computer suicide note left on this computer doesn't sound like something written by an American born in this country.
"This inquiring mind wants to know because I refuse to believe law enforcement would allow a computer to remain when they obtained a search warrant for the apartment and confiscated explosives and other items but they want me to believe they left a computer turned on? Anyone that believes that computer story should be interested in swamp land Sooners are selling in AZ."
You are absolutely on target here. Any FBI agent who wouldn't seize any computer in any situation like this should be fire and his supervisors up at least 3 levels.
Particuliarly since 9/11 in any civilized country in an incident like this one, the computers are seized instantly and probably forever.
If it wasn't done, ship out the termination packages in a 767. A whole lot of inept people need to be fired.
"logical thought process would tell you that this was more than a one person blowing himself up while leaving all those explosives, ticket, packed bag, car loaded, and map all set. Maybe he was leaving the area and school instead of checking out on life."
After he failed 3 times to get into the stadium, he was setting on the bench. His watcher, then speed dialed the cell phone detonator in his back pack to remove the living evidence. This was what probably happened to the Jihadist in London who got erased on the top deck of the Double Decker Bus.
He probably thought that he would just drop off his backpack where it could kill and maim the most people after he left the stadium. He planned to be in his Lincoln heading out of Norman to parts that were mapped out in his road Atlas when the bomb went off. Instead he got a surprise cell phone from his watcher which detonated the bomb in his backpack while he was on the bench.
Remember Atta and the other 9/11 pilots had not told their musclemen plane hijackers that they were on a one way trip in the hijacked planes.
"It was sitting on a concrete pad, and attached to bolts in the concrete."
Well, maybe that's what I'm remembering, but I'm still thinking it was one of those slab benches.
University adminstration types are typically very "matchy" with their campus accoutrements, though, so I'd imagine that it looks like any other original one on campus at OU.
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