just don't get every day, that you just don't see every day, that people can look at it, and see it, touch it and relate to it. up next, an explosion rips through an illinois church. >> the town was terrified. >> evidence was everywhere. >> we found evidence on top of buildings. the debris field was huge. >> two teenagers implicate one another. dungeons and dragons looks like the cause. >> i thought that was an incredibly stupid thing to do. >> but a thin, blue wire tells a different story. oakwood, illinois, is a quiet, small town of less than 1,000 residents and little, if any, violent crime. at the oakwood methodist church, as volunteers prepared for their christmas celebration, church

member brian plawer walked outside, where something caught his attention. >> some of us thought that maybe a vehicle had driven into the church. >> we got there right after the first responders did. and their first reaction was that it was a gas explosion. >> 46-year-old brian plawer was killed instantly. he left behind a wife and three children. >> very charismatic, gregarious. brian never met anybody he didn't like. >> bill adams's daughter walked out just moments before the explosion. >> it is by pure chance that it could have been my daughter, you know? i have often thought that brian took what could have happened to my daughter. >> agents from the bureau of alcohol, tobacco, firearms and

explosives were called in to investigate. >> we found metal fragmentation. we found pieces of pipe nickel. we picked up any pieces of wire we found, batteries. we did find some 9-volt batteries. we picked up everything. >> this clearly eliminated a gas line explosion. these were the ingredients of a pipe bomb, a homemade device in which gun powder is packed into a steel pipe closed with metal end caps. in this case, fragments of red painted end caps were found in the rubble along with 30-gauge blue, insulated, silver-coated copper wire. >> this was not a very common wire. it could be a particular signature of the bomber. >> a signature is something unusual or unique left by the bomber, often without knowing it. >> we actually found a piece of green plastic that had a label

on it that said "igloo legend 12," which is a cooler. >> this meant the pipe bomb was inside the cooler activated with a trip wire. investigators did not believe that the victim was the intended target. >> it was very apparent to us that this was very random. there was nothing in mr. plawer's background to indicate him being the target of a crime. >> after some digging, investigators learned two important pieces of information. first, the only store within 25 miles that sold 30-gauge blue insulated silver-coated copper wire was the local radio shack electronics store. >> since only one merchandiser sold that wire, if they kept records of their transactions, that that could prove helpful in getting a lead. >> and there was only one store

that sold the igloo brand legend 12 cooler. >> we found out that that color scheme was only sold at walmart. so, that narrowed our focus then on where that cooler could have been purchased. >> then investigators got an anonymous tip that two students at oakwood high school might have been involved. >> one of them had a past criminal history with one of the offenses being arson. >> one of the subjects had been seen in possession of a notebook that had handwritten on the front of it, "bomb recipes." >> the teenagers, 18-year-old jimmy morris and 16-year-old phil ryan, had no alibis for the time of the bombing. >> at first, they said that they were driving past the scene when the explosion happened. then they said that they were there within moments and saw

brian plawer in the moments just before the explosion. >> from a photo lineup, employees at the local radio shack store identified jimmy morris as being in their store but couldn't recall what he purchased. >> everything that the investigation showed about the teenagers indicated that they could be involved in this. >> investigators also learned that the boys were heavily involved in the game dungeons and dragons, a fantasy-oriented game played by more than 20 million people worldwide. it allows participants to assume imaginary, often violent identities. >> there had been across the country instances where the role-playing within the game of dungeons and dragons had turned violent in real life. >> both teenagers denied

involvement in the bombing and were given polygraphs. >> the polygraph indicated that they were giving some deceptive answers when questioned about bombs and bomb-making. >> eventually, they each implicated the other. >> both subjects stated that they saw the other subject in possession of a green cooler. >> it looked like investigators had solved the case, until there was another bombing just five miles away.

♪ the first assembly of god church in danville, illinois, was located five miles away from the location of the first bombing. >> the blast injured 33 people. >> most of them teenagers. >> he was injured in the church bombing may never recover emotionally. >> this second bombing was more powerful than the first. >> when we first arrived on the scene, we were in shock. there was a hole in the west wall that was big enough to drive a truck through.

it was unbelievable. >> the first explosion happened next to the pews where a church youth group was sitting. 33 people were injured. >> they had shrapnel that had been embedded in their face, some in their ears. this was just an explosion of such a powerful magnitude that debris rained down on them. >> just something that you don't see every day. involved two churches. you don't see a lot of crime against churches. >> the atf looked everywhere for pieces of the explosive device. >> we found evidence on top of buildings, everywhere. there was just -- the debris field was huge. >> eventually, atf investigators found more than 20 different bomb components, which enabled them to build a replica. this one was triggered by a

timer. this bomb was clearly larger and more powerful than the first. >> there were a lot of differences there which leaves you with two alternatives. either he's experimenting, graduating up to bigger and better things. the other alternative is that it was two separate people that made these devices. >> to find out, forensic examiners looked at the wire from the second bomb site. was this the same signature wire used in the first bomb? >> it was a silver-coated single-strand copper wire with blue insulation. >> it's 30-gauge. it's very small wire. >> but was it the same wire? atf examiner greg klees examined the extrusion marks made on the

plastic insulation as it squeezed through the dye during the manufacturing process. this process makes the wire its uniform size. >> those marks will be imparted on that plastic insulation for a number of feet before it changes dramatically. >> lined up on a comparison microscope, it was no doubt. the wire from both bomb sites came from the same source. >> in fact, that these were produced on the same forming dye at the same plant. >> they also discovered both bombs used the same blue and the same cotton string. since both bombs appeared to be made by the same individual, this eliminated jimmy morris and phil ryan. they both had solid alibis for the second bombing. but why did these boys implicate themselves in the first place? >> they offered an explanation that they were doing this because they were playing this

dungeons and dragons game. >> they really spent a lot of time wasting the time of investigators. >> i thought that was an incredibly stupid thing to do. >> then a witness came forward saying she'd seen a white male walking a german shepherd dog near the church parking lot a few hours before the first bombing. she remembered the dog had a brown leather collar with a brass name tag on it, but she couldn't provide a description of the man. was this the break investigators needed?

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come on! [ female announcer ] watch live tv anywhere. the x1 entertainment operating system, only from xfinity. after two high school students were eliminated as suspects, the atf continued to search for leads. they suspected that the blue copper wire was purchased at the local radio shack store. unfortunately, most customers who bought this wire paid cash. so, this was a dead end. the pipe had been inside a plastic cooler sold only in walmart stores. of the hundreds sold, only three were purchased with a credit card or check. those individuals were interviewed and cleared.

>> we were unable to associate that cooler with anyone that could be considered a person of interest. >> all of the other bomb components were common and could have been purchased anywhere, but investigators needed to find the bomber before he could strike again, since his devices were getting more sophisticated. >> we did feel that this was an escalation. it was a bigger device. it happened when more people were present. >> then a tipster came forward, a member of the church where this second bombing took place. >> the member of the church came up and said, i don't know if this means much, but there was this gentleman by the name of mr. white that i know and he had actually attended this church five or six years prior and had seeked actually getting into the church as a member and had been turned down. >> 40-year-old richard white lived just 12 miles away from the church with his mother and

his teenaged daughter. >> we were told by a lot of the neighbors that richard dean white was somebody that you didn't want to mess with. >> a background check revealed a troubled past. white was a high school dropout and spent time in the u.s. army but was discharged after only six weeks. later, he spent time in four different psychiatric hospitals where he was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic. >> one time he felt that there was demons underneath the floor in the bathroom, and he cut the bathroom floor out to get the demons out of there. >> eventually, white got married and landed a job with general motors. his marriage ended after just six months, and he was laid off from his job in 1987. >> he wasn't able to retain friends or any relationships and really was forced to move back home with his mother. >> white's psychiatric problems

may have been the reason why the danville church rejected his application for membership. >> there has to be an agreement between the board, and because of some of the things that happened that was contributed to him, we didn't think that that would be quite what we wanted at that particular time. >> investigators also learned that rick's ex-wife was a member of the oakwood united methodist church where the first bombing took place. >> i felt like that that was what he was trying to strike out against her and get even with her at the time that that happened. >> then, four days after the second church bombing, before investigators could interview rick white, there was another bombing. this time in a residential neighborhood several miles away. >> bomb number three. what are we going to do now? ♪

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and the best in entertainment. we call it the x1 entertainment operating system. it looks like the future! we must have encountered a temporal vortex. further analytics are necessary. beam us up. ♪ that's my phone. hey. [ female announcer ] the x1 entertainment operating system, only from xfinity. tv and internet together like never before. after two bombings and five months of investigation, the atf finally had a potential suspect in rick white. a background check revealed white had a history of psychiatric problems. >> i don't know that he had problems making friends. i just don't think rick wanted friends. his dog was his friend. and so, that satisfied rick.

>> so, investigators decided to pay white a visit. they asked rick white's mother if they could speak to him. >> is richard home? we need to speak with him. >> what's this all about? >> investigators found the garage behind the whites' home in ruins. >> there was one victim inside the building along with a dog, a large dog. >> the victim had been decapitated. a driver's license found on the work bench identified him as richard white. >> we did not know if we had a victim or a suspect. >> but that question was answered as investigators sifted through the rubble. >> there were parts of bombs in there, in the process of being made, and tools, wiring, all kinds of things that you could use to make pipe bombs.

circumstantial evidence would indicate that he intended to kill himself to avoid having to talk to the police. >> next to white's body was his german shepherd dog. it matched the description of the dog given by the witness near the first bomb site. >> he was obviously clutching the bomb close to his body, and he had his one friend in the world there with him, his other arm around his dog. >> also in the garage, investigators found blue silver-coated wire, the kind used in the two church bombings. they also found a pair of wire cutters. scientists compared the tool marks from white's wire cutters to the tool marks on the copper wire found at the danville bomb

site. >> from that comparison, i was able to conclude that this diagonal cutter that they had recovered in richard white's garage was, in fact, the diagonal cutter that cut that wire end that was found on the danville device. >> this was forensic proof that white was the bomber. >> we found an area of the garage that had red spray paint on it, and contained on that red spray-paint were perfectly round circles. the reason that was important was the device that killed mr. plawer, which was a pipe bomb with end caps on it, those end caps were painted red with a gold coating. >> but questions remained. why did rick white target churches? investigators believe white was angry at the first assembly of god church for turning down his

membership application, but he couldn't bomb that church, at least not right away. it would have been too obvious. so, he chose the oakwood united methodist church as his first target, possibly because his ex-wife was a member. >> he was experimenting. he was trying to get different things to work, different initiators for the device, different triggering systems. >> the forensic evidence shows that white placed the pipe bomb in a green cooler, not caring who would pick it up. church member brian plawer was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. in the first assembly of god church bombing, white used a stronger bomb, since this was his primary target. he placed the bomb on top of an

outdoor air conditioner. this one had a timer designed to explode during the sunday service. 33 people were injured. in october of 1998, a grand jury concluded richard white built both bombs and murdered brian plawer. the forensic evidence left no doubt. >> these investigations did not result in the prosecution. it was closure for the victim's family. >> it doesn't make the hurt less. you know, there's still pain, there's still, you know, anger, there's still hurt and loss and grief that continues and continues and continues. >> with the bombing, the

misconception is the blast destroys the evidence. the blast disperses the evidence, where it makes it harder for us to find it, but harder for us to find it, but we'll find it. -- captions by vitac -- www.vitac.com happening now, a deadly winter storm creating absolute chaos for millions of people this morning up and down the east coast. hundreds of thousands without power. major airports all but shut down this hour, roads covered in ice, schools closed. the message -- find somewhere safe and stay there. we're bringing you live, team coverage of the damage done and what's still to come. >> good morning, everyone. welcome to "early start." it is a tough morning for a huge number of people today. i'm john berman. >> a big sigh from my co-anchor. i'm christine romans. it's thursday, february 13th, 5:00 a.m. in the east. >> we'll begin with what is happening up and down the coast