Bates was the only fatality, but the kill-er–or killers–clearly had bigger aspirations when they pulled up 29 spikes and removed four bolts securing the antiquated track. “This was really an attempted mass murder,” one federal official at the crash site told NEWSWEEK. At first it seemed like murder fueled by right-wing hate, an Oklahoma City bombing all over again. Fleeing passengers stumbled across letters filled with references to Waco and Ruby Ridge and signed “Sons of the Gestapo.” More than 90 FBI agents descended on Hyder, Ariz., last week to search for clues in the sand, on the tracks–even in train wrecks from the past. President Clinton used the crash to restart his stalled antiterrorism legislation. But after a week in the desert, the FBI had few leads as to who did it, or why.
The best clue seems to come from the one-page, typewritten letter – four copies of which were scattered strategically near the tracks. Titled “Indictment of the ATF and the FBI,” it’s a seemingly typical militia diatribe riddled with weirdly atypical elements. For one thing, experts have never heard of “Sons of the Gestapo.” The Feds do believe that the opening narrative about the 1993 siege at Waco could have come from anti-government zealots. But then the letter asks why no “federal law enforcement agency” has investigated specific–and sometimes obscure– crimes, including the “shooting of a police officer’s wife who knows too much about drug kickbacks.” Such esoteric references–not to mention the call for federal intervention–would be unusual for right-wing groups. But if FBI agents can find a case with a policeman’s wife and drug kick-backs the letter may provide a lead.
It’s possible that the letter is a ruse by a disgruntled railroad employee. Amtrak, facing funding cutbacks and layoffs, said in June that it may abandon the route where the Sunset Limited was attacked. Southern Pacific, which owns the tracks, announced plans in August to merge with Union Pacific, which also could lead to layoffs. One thing is certain: the saboteur knew about trains. While unbolting the three-foot joint that triggered the crash, the perpetrator ran a red, insulated wire between the mils to avoid tripping a stop signal. The crash site– on a trestle, near a curve that would encourage the train to tilt–was also apparently selected with care. Brad Hellman, a rail enthusiast who recently wrote a fan-magazine article about the very stretch where the Sunset Limited crashed, says the terrorists chose the most remote location in the Phoenix area. “This guy knows this line,” Hellman says. Agents say they are looking for someone in a cowboy hat seen nearby just after the crash.
An “outraged” Clinton used the crash to prod Congress into passing his anti-terrorism bill. In the wake of Oklahoma City, the proposal, which would grant the Feds greater leeway in conducting wiretaps or deporting illegal aliens suspected of terrorism, sailed through the full Senate and the House Judiciary Committee. But an odd coalition–including the liberal ACLU and the conservative Gun Owners of America–rallied to stop it because they oppose expanding the government’s reach.
But investigators in the desert could use help. The FBI is even exploring the possibility that this was a copycat crime–of a crash in 1939. An article published the week before the crash in a journal called SP Trainline detailed how saboteurs derailed a sleeper train near Harney, Nev., by loosening a rail on a curve before a bridge. They even ran a wire to circumvent the stop signal. FBI agents interviewed the article’s author, John Signor, for two hours last week and asked for Trainline’s 1,200-person subscription list. The good news is that only 30 subscribers live in Arizona. The bad news is that, 56 years later, the Feds don’t know who killed 24 passengers in Harney.
