Gary John Mikulich, a 42-year-old Michigan man who allegedly sent faxes to a local police department in the middle of the night claiming that the FBI and their “card system” murdered his father, was arrested on Thursday for allegedly preparing a bomb intended to damage a federal building in Detroit.
Mikulich graduated from Michigan Tech University and has long complained of the FBI and their “card system” which he blames for the murder of his father and thousands of other people, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Michigan and the Detroit FBI office said in a statement.
FBI special agent Mark Davidson said in an affidavit that an employee with the FBI alerted security to a black Husky tool bag sitting outside the McNamara Federal Building on Feb. 26. Federal Protective Service Officer Ralph Smith seized the bag, but officers didn’t take any action for weeks while what appears to be an active bomb sat inside a federal building, according to the FBI.
The bag “remained with FPS officers at the McNamara Building” until March 18 (nearly three weeks later) when another officer ran it through an x-ray machine and noticed wires, electrical components and dense matters. He called the Detroit Police Bomb Squad, which took possession of the tool bag and performed a procedure to safely open the metal box that was located inside the tool bag. A secondary explosion occurred, sending the box flying about 10 feet from the explosion site and producing a puff of grayish smoke.
Upon collecting evidence after the second explosion, investigators found a hand-written note attached to the inside of the cash box that read “1. Turn switch 2. Plug, in.”
Upon further examination, the FBI determined that a spring-wound 60-minute timer made by General Electric was also part of the device. They learned from Home Depot (the exclusive retailer of the Husky bags) that only nine people had purchased that timer and that bag at the same time, and only one of them paid in cash. Security footage showed an individual getting into a four-door white Oldsmobile after making the purchase at the Home Depot in Iron Mountain, Mich., on Valentine’s Day.
The fact that the active bomb remained in the building for nearly a month after it was seized was particularly troubling news, especially when, as ABC News reports, congressional investigators were able to smuggle bomb components past security at a federal building in a 2009 U.S. Government Accountability Office sting.
As for the suspect, he appears to have been well-known to authorities before the latest incident. The Iron Mountain Police Department said it received fax messages from Mikulich with great frequency, typically between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. They claim he sent more than a dozen of the faxes since the beginning of 2011.
Each of the faxes is apparently sent on letterhead that reads “Nominated President of the United States of America” and is from “President Mikulich.” He reportedly threatened to harm FBI agents as far back as 1996, when he “admitted that he felt like shooting a couple of FBI agents but that he never intended to carry out the threat,” according to the affidavit.
Mikulich is charged with one count of “maliciously attempting to damage or destroy, by means of an explosive, any building, vehicle, or other personal or real property in whole or in part owned or possessed by, or leased to, the United States, or any department or agency thereof.” A conviction of this offense carries a penalty of 5-20 years in prison or a $250,000 fine, or both, according to a press release.
