Fires, obsession with explosives and family discord mark the path of clinic bombing

Palm Springs – His fascination with fireworks technology before Guy Bartkus' personal war on life ended with his sole suspect in blowing up a fertility clinic.

In a series of videos posted to YouTube, law enforcement officers say they believe belongs to Bartkus, and only one belongs to the modern male youth genre: War Game Video Game Clips.

The rest passes solitary experiments of chemistry, physics and explosives: hydrogen balloons burn. M-80s exploded in desert beaches. A barrel of radioactive uranium ore set up the crying of the Geiger counter.

In one video, a “melt cast” small tube hits an explosive socket into a heavy metal rod, emitting a rock slope from one rock, detonating the other.

“Saint S-!” A young man smiled in surprise.

Investigators kept in touch with Bartkus, a voice captured in a 30-minute audio manifesto, who tried to explain his hatred to those pregnant children, and it seemed that his decision to attack the Palm Springs fertility clinic.

A bomb was detonated at the American Reproductive Center in Palm Springs on Saturday morning, destroying most of the buildings, injuring four people and killing the bomber. Bartkus is the only suspect in the bomb attack, which the FBI labeled as domestic terrorism.

DNA tests of body parts found on the site showed that Bartkus was killed in the explosion. FBI case investigators, as well as law enforcement sources, described the 25-year-old as a “nihilistic conception,” a conclusion drawn from social media posts linked to Bartcus.

In those public posts, Bartkus argued that breeding without unborn consent is immoral and unreasonable in a struggling world of environmental harm, violence and overpopularity. Law enforcement sources told the Times they are also studying whether childhood trauma has laid the foundation for his beliefs.

Bartkus's father hadn't seen him in a decade, telling the Times that he was unaware of his son's extremist views.

“It's like, this is not my son. I haven't seen him in 10 years, but I still know his heart. His heart is more about helping people, not destroying people.”

The full picture of Guy Edward Bartkus is far from complete. But his father's interviews and legal filings in the San Bernardino County Superior Court provide a window into the discord that obscured Bartkus' growth. Divorce, abuse allegations and early interest in explosives were moved.

His adult life was hardly publicly public except for a series of short-term jobs, working on electronic assembly lines and working as a school bus monitor for children with special needs. It is reported that neither his mother nor his sister could live with him in the twenty-tenths of palm.

Authorities are searching for online trails to learn about Bartkus' motivations, including a website dedicated to Palm Springs Bombing. It has a 30-minute record that shows it was uploaded when it exploded and promises to explode the video (never released). There are also YouTube videos under the web alias related to Bartkus, as well as topics on Reddit and suicide forums.

Among those, Bartkus is frustrated by the death of “Best Friend,” Sophie, a woman living in Washington who runs multiple social media sites that embrace radical feminism, vegetarianism and intentional suicide. She died in April and was allegedly shot by her partner in the head. The man told the police that he was acting as she asked.

Finally, grief may have played a role in Bartkus’ self-destruction.

“I don't allow my brain to overcome you,” the bomber wrote in his website's hidden comment code. ” “No reason…”

According to his father, Bartkus was born in Waterbury, Connecticut, when he moved to California with his family at about 11/2 hours. After settling in North Palm Springs, the family moved to the Joshua Tree and Yucca Valley.

His father said he was a curious boy who liked to experiment.

He said one day he returned to his rented house in Yucca Valley and saw his 9-year-old son hiding in the shed and hurriedly hid indoors. He thought his son was just beating him on the computer.

“But he's a little bit hot,” Richard Bartkus said. “He pushed it off the shed, thinking the sand would throw it away. But, it didn’t, it caught fire.

He said his son was hard.

“He felt very sad,” said Richard Bartkus. “For a while, he was a little far away from everyone.”

As a teenager, Guy Bartkus increased his experiment with stinky bombs and rockets. His father said he and his son became more strict, fearing that his obsession with explosives had gone out of control.

“First, you start building small explosives,” he said. “The next thing you know is, you want to go bigger.”

Richard Bartkus said he and Guy's mother, Dianne Bartkus, disagreed with how to deal with his son.

Their family life seems to be becoming increasingly fragile.

In August 2012, Dianne Bartkus moved out of the family with his two children. Soon after, she sought restraining orders against Richard Bartkus. In court documents, she described her husband as “fearing his irrational behavior” and “threat.”

In one example, she alleged in court documents that Richard Bartkus visited her at the tobacco shop where she worked and brought a sniper rifle. “If I catch you with another man in the next three months, I will shoot 10 times between the head or the eyes,” he said.

“His random behavior scares me and I worry about the safety of my child,” she said in court documents.

The court file also includes Richard Bartkus’ rebuttal of her allegations. He denies abuse of her or the children – “Unless you call me yelling for them because of the words they use and the annoying performances and music, they watch and listen to abused music. I call it a good parent.”

The court approved the requirement of Dianne Bartkus for a restrictive order, but granted the father the right to visit. Guy was only 13 years old at the time and his sister Regina was 14 years old.

In November 2013, Dianne Bartkus filed for divorce.

Richard Bartkus said he had never seen his son since his visit in 2014.

In a request to amend the 2015 restriction order, Dianne Bartkus said there were few “visits” between fathers and children due to “emotional/verbal abuse.” She claimed Richard Bartkus laughed at his son's sexual behavior – a Times he denied, saying his wife made up stories to make him look bad.

Still, in 2021, an Instagram account, with Richard Bartkus’ name, publicly mocking Guy Bartkus for burning down a family home.

“Guy Bartkus thinks he’s smart enough to play stick games outside and burn the whole house and everything in it, and now he thinks he’s so smart, so perfect, never made any mistakes in life.”

Richard Bartkus told The Times that he was responding to another post from his son, which has now been deleted, accusing him of working too hard on his son.

“He tried to get out like my fault,” he said. “I tried to explain to him why I was so strict with him. He burned my house! My wife and I were in the house. You, you would destroy all our property by burning the whole house. I would fall strictly against you!”

Eventually, Richard Bartkus said his son was a “good kid”, smart and curious, and he built his own computer at a young age. He said his son received CS and DS in high school until he turned to the independent learning program in the area. He said his son's one-on-one attention turned into an A and B student.

He said his son ended up receiving honors from Yucca Valley High School. Richard Bartkus did not graduate.

Screenshot of YouTube page tied with Guy Edward Bartkus.

(Youtube)

In 2019, at the age of 18, Guy Bartkus began posting videos about his desert explosion on YouTube, known as “Invictevolution.” The videos have since been deleted, but The Times was able to access them through the archives website. Law enforcement sources confirmed that they have connections with Bartkus.

Early on, the videos fell into the field of amateur experiments: he exploded a small hydrogen balloon. He made the sour glass beaker. But by the time Bartkus was 24, his video showed him playing with some of the most dangerous explosives amateurs could use.

He demonstrated the explosion of erythiol tetranitrate (ETN), which is characterized by almost as powerful in scientific literature as plastic explosives used by the military. That year, the username on the gaming platform related to Bartkus' email address was “Fireworks Technology”.

During the same period, Bartkus' remarks on alternative social media sites were dark.

“I will not admit that reproduction is a human right, but a form of rape,” the litigation article on the Covering Road wrote in July 2023 on Lemmy.World. “As long as it is done humanely, I will not be bothered by infanticide…”

Screenshot of YouTube page tied with Guy Edward Bartkus.

(Youtube)

In early May, Bartkus participated in the suicide discussion site, introducing data from his tests about intake of weak doses of sodium nitrate or attempting to generate carbon monoxide in a car, as well as graphs and charts.

“I’m glad I’m an extremist,” he wrote. “Make me less tied to the orchard of the earth.”

He volunteered and wanted to kill himself by tying the explosives to his head, setting the timer to an hour, and letting himself fall asleep. He said he was unable to get a better drug than codeine. The available explosives are not a problem.

Then on Thursday night, he contacted the forum again. He said he planned to kill himself in a car with chemistry, which would produce carbon monoxide, and “I probably shouldn't say some extra drama of haha.”

Time worker Libor Jany and Melody Gutierrez contributed to the report.