A two-year investigation leads to the capture of a P-Section bomber who left behind a trail of violent and disturbing letters

In the early morning of January 27, 2022, an explosion rocked the neighborhood around Poppy Lane in Palm Coast. The explosion was so powerful that school buses were rerouted, roads were closed, the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office bomb squad was called, and numerous Flagler County Sheriff’s investigative resources were deployed. When the investigation was completed, the FBI and the ATF – the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives – were also involved.

Late Thursday, Flagler County sheriff’s deputies arrested Jason Robert Burns, a 49-year-old resident of 9 Bronson Lane, on charges of first-degree arson and possession of explosives, both first-degree felonies, each with a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison. Burns had previously lived with his wife and two children at 27 Poppy Lane, opposite the house in whose front yard he allegedly detonated the pipe bomb, allegedly because he accused the resident there of having an affair with his wife.

The explosion of an improvised explosive device that Flagler County Sheriff Rick Staly described today occurred just feet from residents’ homes and bedrooms. “The explosion left a 2.5 centimeter deep, 30 centimeter wide crater just meters from two houses where residents were sleeping,” he said. “Debris and fragments from the explosion were spread across several residential yards up to a distance of 30 meters or approximately 95 feet. The explosion damaged nearby homes, cars and air conditioners with enough force to damage the metal frame.”

Nobody was injured. “However, the explosion was so powerful that it could have resulted in injury or death to anyone standing nearby because they would have been hit or struck by one of the shrapnel,” Staly said.

“My baby’s whole room lit up,” said a 911 caller. “It’s really loud and it was right here,” said another caller.

Burns was immediately a person of interest “because of his hostility toward the victims of these homes,” Staly said. “Burns was also known to the Sheriff’s Office, the FBI and local businesses as a prolific author who wrote, distributed and mailed rambling tirades on various claims against the government, elected officials and corporations. All of these letters were analyzed by the FBI and our Homeland Security Department. None of these writings contained threats. We now know they were rambling insults from a budding lunatic.”

During a press conference this afternoon, Staly held up a stack of handwritten letters. Some of them were aimed at the sheriff himself. “These are really made-up topics,” Staly said, whether about himself, a car dealer or other targets.

While officers responded to approximately 60 calls at three of Burns’ neighboring homes, they also responded to eight domestic or verbal harassment calls at Burns’ family home and 11 additional times to calls involving Burns at other locations, including business Once in the public library, where he left handwritten notes.

Burns and his wife divorced in February 2023. His wife sought and received a restraining order to protect her. She argued in court that “shared parental responsibility would be harmful” to their children because Burns “suffers from a severe and untreated mental illness,” that he “is bipolar and suffers from Level 1 paranoid schizophrenia,” and that he “recently “Sick of it,” Baker acted multiple times and suffered from extreme paranoia, which recently led to him brandishing a sword in the presence of the minor child. “(Burns) also recently drove his vehicle into a tree at excessive speed.” In the request for a restraining order, she described severe beatings she suffered, including once when he hit her in the face with a shoe, another Times when he threatened to put a gun in her mouth and other times when he put a gun in her mouth, he hit her car and threw bricks through her bedroom window.

Court records show he was suffering from mental illness in 2016. After the couple’s separation and before the divorce, Burns had moved to the Bronson Lane address, but according to his former spouse, he continued to harass her, call her friends and “badly slander her,” damaging her relationships with those people. He left vile, slanderous letters about her at a local car dealership, churches and stores, telling her he wanted to dismember her or shoot her in the head. What’s notable is that he hasn’t faced any more serious consequences so far.

As the investigation continued, authorities secured search warrants and analyzed the explosives. They discovered it had been made from household items, plastic tubing and what appeared to be fireworks. They linked the pipe bomb to items found in Burns’ garage. But they also had DNA and handwriting taken from the rubble that linked it to Burns, making it unassailable evidence. Burns claimed he was sleeping in a truck with a friend at the time of the explosion. GPS data from his phone instead showed him in the area of ​​the explosion. He then claimed a friend had his phone.

Staly said the investigation took so long “because of all the forensic evidence that had to be provided.” But the investigators didn’t stop. Staly described Burns as an “unbomber in the making,” a somewhat exaggerated reference to Theodore John Kaczynski, the reclusive terrorist who killed three people and injured two dozen over 17 years by sending sophisticated bombs, before issuing a 35,000-word manifesto sent to the FBI. explain his complaints in detail. The FBI decided to release the manifesto in hopes of getting new leads on the man everyone called the “Unabomber.” The Washington Post did it – and the strategy worked. Kaczynski was arrested on April 3, 1996, in a cabin in the Montana woods that contained bomb parts and 40,000 pages of a handwritten diary. He pleaded guilty and died in prison last June at the age of 81. Psychiatrists disagreed about his mental state, with some diagnosing him as schizophrenic and others scoffing at the claim.

There was no evidence that Burns had committed or planned additional bombings, although his divorce file contains some evidence of violent behavior toward his own family members – violence that the court acknowledged when it issued the restraining order that also banned Burns from any Keep access to firearms away. The court granted him no parental rights until further notice, a drastic step. (The couple shares an 18-year-old and a 14-year-old.)

And there was some disturbing evidence that led to a stalking charge and conviction against him, such as when he left a letter for his ex-wife that contained a white, powdery substance that was clearly reminiscent of the anthrax attacks following the terrorist attacks of 2019 September 2001 should be remembered. with warnings: “I would never threaten to harm you or use the children as leverage.” But heart attacks happen,” he wrote to his ex. In another, he wrote: “The truth will come out. I’m going to get revenge.” He had planted secret cameras inside and outside the house his ex had kept after the divorce – in a smoke detector, in a phone charger, in an air freshener, in an alarm clock. His ex eventually handed over 100 letters she had received from him to the authorities.

“We knew about him, our homeland security department, my criminal intelligence unit knew about him,” Staly said. “So I wouldn’t say we just let him roam free. He may believe a little that he’s being watched – not in the way he claims. But we were aware of him and didn’t want to just let him go about his day without knowing what he was up to as best we could.”

No other devices or firearms were found in his home. Should he post his $75,000 bail, Staly said, “I’m not going to tell the public or him what our plan is, but we’re going to do our best to make sure he can’t harm anyone in this community.” “Whether it’s his ex-wife, members of the sheriff’s office, including me, members of the team that investigated him, whether they’re a county sheriff or a federal sheriff.”