Death Penalty News

PFLUGERVILLE — Several years before embarking on a bombing spree that terrorized Austin, Mark Conditt had turned against his family’s devout Christianity and declared himself an atheist. It was the first of many steps that separated the 23-year-old from his oldest friends and set him on a course of increasing isolation. He lost his job in the tech industry less than a year before the bombings. Investigators have struggled for weeks to find a single confidant who could provide a window into his life. His roommates told authorities Conditt kept his bedroom door locked and dodged questions about why. During the race to stop the attacks and in the weeks after, investigators also obtained information indicating that Conditt was questioning his sexuality. As a 17-year-old, he had written that homosexuality is “not natural,” echoing the teachings of his religious education, and raising the prospect of inner turmoil in his final months. On the day Conditt killed himself with...

A 23-year-old suspected of planting the deadly bombs that terrorised Austin for three weeks was described yesterday by his uncle as a smart and kind “computer geek” and a friend said he was an assertive person who would end up being “kind of dominant and intimidating in conversation”. Neither had any idea what motivated Mark Anthony Conditt, who authorities say died after detonating a bomb in his ute as officers moved in to arrest him near Austin. The attacks in the Texas capital and suburban San Antonio killed two people and wounded four others. “I mean, this is coming from nowhere. We just don’t know what. I don’t know how many ways to say it but everyone is caught off guard by this,” said Conditt’s uncle, Mike Courtney of Lakewood, Colorado. Austin Police Chief Brian Manley said he considered a 25-minute recording on mobile phone found with Conditt a “confession”. On the recording, Conditt describes seven explosive devices, and “we have accounted for the devices t...