Postal memorabilia collector Dale Speirs has done extensive research on mail bombs and even wrote a book about them. He tells us about the different sorts of mail bombs used through history, and the different types of people who used them, like Ted Kaczynski, the Unibomber. Kaczynski was caught after 17 years of mail bombings that killed three and injured many others.
Still, according to Speirs, a glaring loophole has persisted long after Kaczynski was incarcerated, and even after heightened anti-terrorism measures were put in place by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security post-September 11, 2001. The loophole concerns packages weighing more than 13 ounces, which must be presented to a retail postal clerk rather than being dropped in a street-corner letterbox, even if they have proper postage. “The idea was to force a face-to-face meeting with a postal clerk or letter carrier,” Speirs says.
Unfortunately, postal customers who ignore this rule, or who are simply unfamiliar with it, routinely receive their parcels back in their own mailboxes marked “Return to sender,” as many legitimate USPS patrons have found out. For Speirs, this raises a troubling prospect: “Mail bombers obviously do not put their real return addresses on a package” he says. “The Unabomber used this method to aim at two targets with one bomb; if his package was not delivered, then it would be ‘returned’ to another victim.”
Read an overview of the history of mail bombs at Collectors Weekly.
(Image credit: The Wreck & Crash Mail Society)