When 23-year-old Austin, Texas bomber Mark Anthony Conditt began his rampage March 2 killing 38-year-old Anthony Stephan House, and 10 days later 17-year-old Draylen Mason, no one knew the motives of the young man who terrorized Austin for three weeks. Austin Police Chief Brian Manley said his department has yet to establish a motive, despite the fact the two men killed were both African American. No one doubted the motives of 23-year-old Dylann Roof who gunned down nine worshipers in Charlotte’s Emanual First African Episocal Church June 17, 2015, including killing Pastor and State Senator Clementa Pickney. Roof was charged by Federal authorities nine counts of hates crimes in a wanton racist attack at a black bible study. Yet for some reason it’s hard for Austin authorities to consider the very real possibility that Conditt intended to kill black people, certainly his two victims.
Establishing a motive doesn’t begin to tell the whole story of what happens when young people go berserk, especially ones described by family-and-friends as quiet and law abiding, up till their violent episodes. African Americans could easily make the case that Conditt was a racist, despite the absence of supporting evidence like notes or social networking posts. When a 23-year-old white kid kills two African Americans it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out at least a plausible explanation. Police officials have a 25-minute videotape of Conditt before his death when he blew himself up March 21 before an Austin SWAT team approached his vehicle. Going through the elaborate premeditation of buying all the parts needed to assemble, then systematically plant bombs at strategic points to kill and maim victims, suggests something different than some mass killers that go postal.
Conditt’s description by his family and friends as a reserved young man without a police record suggests that he was a slow burn until methodically executing his diabolical plot to kill and injure his victims. Conditt’s crimes more resemble those of the Tsarnaev Brothers who made and detonated pressure cooker bombs April 15, 2013 near the finish line of the Boston Marthon, killing three. It didn’t take long for police to establish Islamic terrorism as the motive for the Chechen-born brothers, radicalized in Chechnya, local mosques and on the Internet. With Conditt it’s more murky because he has no ties to terror or racist groups or extremists Websites. “They keep killing us and we keep talking about how ‘nice they were before they killed us,’” said HuffPost columnist Jessica Luther. Luther quoted Austin residents Dr. Ramey Berry and Dr. Christen Smith, both writing about Austin’s long history of racism.
Whether there’s evidence of racism or not, Berry and Christen believe the Austin community was built on racial segregation. “Austin’s geographic and cultural layout was designed to segregate and marginalize people of color,” said Berry and Christen, convinced that Conditt’s motives were steeped in racism. Luther quotes a federal study that found Austin “has one of the fastest rates of suburban poverty growth in the country.” “Others researchers have found that the metro area ranks among the worst in the country for income and economic segregation,” as reported in the local Austin Chronicle. All point to the very real possibility that racism drove Conditt to build bombs and target black people. Brookings Institution found that Austin is the “only U.S. city experiencing double-digit population growth that saw its African American population actually decline,” more evidence of racism.
When the police chief says no motive has been found in Conditt’s three-week rampage, he’s not reading between the lines. Austin hosts the ultraconservative Alex Jones radio show, famous for his “Info-Wars,” known for whipping up white conspiracy theories ranging from Mideast terrorism to race wars. When Tea Party fanatic Andrew Joseph Stack flew his private plane Feb. 18, 2010 into the IRS building in Austin, it raised questions about right wing extremism gone wild. Larry McQulliams created quite stir in Austin Dec. 5, 2014 when he was shot dead by Austin police brandishing an assault rifle in public, with a van full of explosives. He was called by neighbors “a very kind person,” only “frustrated.” Austin police show the same kind of reticence to expose city’s dirty little secret that segregation and racism still plagues a city trying to market itself as the next Nashville.
Reluctant to release Conditt’s 25-minute video, Police Chief Manley says there’s nothing in it that points to any motive. With the Austin Chamber of Commerce concerned about adverse publicity, it’s clear that the city hasn’t come to grips with what happened in Conditt’s bombing spree. Building bombs requires technical skill and meticulous planning, something not part of most serial killers and mass murders. Just because Conditt doesn’t mention “hate” or “terrorism” in his video doesn’t mean that he wasn’t motivated by both. “He does not mention anything about terrorism, nor does he mention anything about hate. But instead it is the outcry of a very challenged young man talking about the challenges in his personal life that led him to this point,” said Manley. Whether Conditt’s troubled or not, it doesn’t rule out racism. Given Austin’s demographics and history, it’s not farfetched to consider racism.
