The Pennsylvania Serial Bomber?

On 4 October 2019, an explosion rocked a home on Market Street in Clearfield, Pennsylvania, a small town of not-quite 6,000 residents.
While looking into that story, we ended up coming upon a far wider-reaching and more terrifying story: a potential serial bomber terrorizing families throughout Pennsylvania...

In the heat of summer, with Independence Day either approaching or falling away, it is neither surprising nor unusual to see and hear stories from your local media about fireworks; what you can use, when you can use them and where. I see ‘em from the local broadcasters in my town every year, in conjunction with the perennial reminders that you can only use store-bought fireworks, or that you have to leave city limits to shoot them… or maybe you live in a place where they’re not allowed at all.

Regardless, the media considers it a public service, it seems, to remind us every year. So, on its face, it doesn’t seem odd that the Philadelphia Inquirer ran a story on July 17th, 2019 that some interpreted as a cautionary statement from the police about fireworks.

The headline, section B, page 2, read: Police Warn About Explosive Devices. From the story:

Powerful illegal explosive devices have severely injured children in Philadelphia in recent incidents, prompting concern and a warning from the Police Department. Police say there's been "a marked increase in the use of illegal explosive devices" this summer, leading to "serious, life-threatening injuries."

The Inquirer story offered details on two particular incidents:

Two children were recently hurt after using illegal explosives. A 12-year-old boy in Summerdale lost a finger and severely injured the palm and knuckles of his other hand after an illegal firework he was holding exploded this week, police said. A preliminary investigation by the Bomb Squad showed that the device had the power of a quarter- or half-stick of dynamite.

Just days earlier, a similar event:

The incident came days after a 9-year-old girl suffered "life-altering" injuries after an "improvised explosive device" exploded in her hands in Kensington, police said. She sustained cuts and burns to her chest, face, torso, eyes, and both hands. Authorities said the girl's father illegally bought two devices from a man on the street. Philadelphia police said it hasn't been determined if the devices in the two cases came from the same source, but noted that similar devices are sometimes made at home with parts that can be purchased legally, including cardboard and cotton.

Honestly, the first time we looked over this story, something about it felt a little odd. It does talk about “fireworks” but there’s also some weirdly ominous language in both the story and quotes from the police — “explosive devices” and “post-blast investigations” — and then there was this bit about the ATF:

Charlene Hennessy, a spokesperson with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), said the agency was assisting with the two investigations, but could not comment further. "We remain committed to keeping the community safe and urge the public if they see these devices on the street or see them being sold to call 911," she said.

Is this just a story about illegal fireworks? We’d be asking ourselves that question again later. At any rate, it was a small story that passed without much notice.

Then, on Friday morning, October 4th, 2019, an explosion rocked a home on Market Street in Clearfield, Pennsylvania, a small town of not-quite 6,000 residents. There are photos taken during the emergency response that leave no doubt, it was already an inferno when firefighters arrived.

A woman, 34-year-old Shanna Carlson, was killed in the blast and ensuing fire.

In the process of looking for stories and cultivating topics for this podcast, people who died in explosions are pretty rare. Perhaps that’s why it piqued my interest. Most people killed in explosions are the result of accidents — natural gas leaks and the like.

What made Shanna Carlson’s case interesting to me was that the authorities went quiet for a while. A report on Shanna Carlson’s cause of death, and the cause of the explosion, should have taken maybe 6 to 8 weeks, but Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year’s came and went with no word from anyone.

Then, in February 2020, a stunning announcement. Clearfield County Coroner Kim Shaffer Snyder said Shanna Carlson was killed by “penetrating wounds to the head and right lung due to an explosive device and the case is being ruled a homicide.”

Someone murdered Shanna Carlson with an explosive device.

That was something I felt Unresolved needed to get to the bottom of and I immediately put my research team to work on what happened to Shanna Carlson.

I cannot tell you what a rabbit hole that sent us down, dear listeners. It was an odyssey that threatened to become an obsession as we discovered event after event after event that could leave us with only one conclusion.

A serial bomber is terrorizing Pennsylvania, and he’s been doing it right under our noses for years.

At the time of this recording, it was Spring of 2022 and Shanna Carlson’s death had been reported 2 ½ years earlier, so, as we do with nearly every case, we started our research by searching for Shanna’s name.

If you search for a person’s name in a good database with the right geographic location and proper time period, there’s a good chance you’ll get dozens of results. That’s how it happens 98-percent of the time.

In Shanna Carlson’s case, our first search only turned up two results.

For 2 ½ years we had known Shanna died in an explosion turned inferno and for almost as long we had known it was a homicide by explosive device — but there were only two stories in more than two years?

Something felt rotten in Dutch Wonderland.

Our researcher checked alternate spellings of Shanna’s name. We searched for the particular street and house address associated with the search terms explosion and explosive device and fire… there were astonishingly few results. Just lots of reprints of the same two stories we’d seen, with vague details occasionally sprinkled in.

Shanna was killed by an explosive device.

It was a homicide.

There’s a reward for information.

We learned the car dealership across the street had security cameras and investigators were able to determine that, of the four people who lived in the apartments in the home, Shanna was the only one who was still inside when the device exploded.

That’s it. That’s all that has been reported for over 2 years.

So, we dug deeper. Our searches kept getting less-and-less productive, with fewer results relevant to Shanna Carlson and more references to other fires, some with explosions.

Many of those search results could be discounted immediately. Some were TV listings for “programs” (as my grandma used to call them) that had the word “explosive” in the description. Some were stories about explosions in war zones by Pennsylvania writers and newspapers. We had to eliminate those.

An explosion at a Pennsylvania refinery happened a few years ago and there were a lot of stories about it that had to be eliminated from our research. In the end, it was disappointing to discover there just wasn’t any more to be gleaned from press coverage of the Shanna Carlson case.

…but all of those search results, they didn’t tell us much about Shanna Carlson. They told us much more.

Just 16 days after her murder, on October 20th, 2019, an explosion rocked a rowhouse in Allentown and destroyed 10 homes. A full month later, on November 20th, the Allentown Morning Call reported the cause of the explosion and fire had still not been determined.

A fire with reported explosions. We looked up Clearfield on a map. It’s a three-hour drive to Allentown.

That’s pretty far apart for these two incidents to be related, isn’t it?

It sparked a question: Are there other fires or “bombings” during this time and place that match the odd circumstances of Shanna Carlson’s murder? We decided to have a look.

Our starting point was January 2019, 10 months before Shanna Carlson was murdered. This is what we found.

On Friday, January 4, 2019, an elderly woman and her son were killed in a house fire accompanied by reported explosions. According to the Allentown Morning Call:

A Palmer Township fire that killed two people early Friday morning is being considered “suspicious” because the homeowner’s car was parked two blocks from the house, police said.

It seems like the police suspected the homeowner right off the bat, that he parked his car far away, so it wouldn't catch fire in the blaze that was about to ensue.

Neighbors on the close-knit Palmer Township block said they were shaken out of bed by explosions. “It sounded like a cherry bomb type thing, just boom, boom, boom,” said Jim Mattes, who lives across from the split-level brick house. Two neighbors tried to enter the house but were turned back by heavy smoke and flames. When firefighters brought the blaze under control and were able to search, it took three sweeps of the wreckage to find the victims.

By August police would charge 37-year-old Drew A. Rose in the double homicide. Rose, the son of a former caretaker, was out of his mind on drugs and needed money for rent. He murdered Roger Hauck, then, using a car the homeowner allowed caretakers to use, came back 12 hours later and burned the house with Virginia still-alive inside. The sound of explosions was attributed to Virginia’s medical oxygen tanks.

The bomber who murdered Shanna Carlson in October wasn’t Drew Rose, because he was already in jail.

On January 22, 2019 a man, Bruce Miller Jr., known as “Buddy,” and his son, 10-year old Bruce Alan Miller. were killed in a house rocked by explosions and fire. The home, at 1132 Blue Mountain Road on the outskirts of Danielsville, Pennsylvania was mostly leveled by powerful blasts. From the Morning Call:

The frigid weather hampered both their search and efforts to determine what sparked the explosion and fire that roared through the two-story home in the 1100 block of Blue Mountain [Road] early Monday, reducing it to a pile of charred wood and twisted metal.

The fire was so intense that the second body wasn’t recovered for more than a month. The police dug up sections of rubble and transported them to facilities for examination and reminded the public that answers would be slow coming. They also wanted to hear from anyone who may have been driving by the Miller property around 12:50 AM on January 22nd, 2019.

Toxicology results from Buddy Miller’s autopsy revealed he had meth in his system when he died and the coroner went as far as listing acute methamphetamine intoxication as a secondary cause of death, after smoke inhalation.

There’s a very subtle implication in that bit of information.

If he had meth in his system, maybe he was cooking meth, too, and had one of the all-too commonplace meth fire explosions that accompany such things.

The problem with the theory is, it’s likely not true. Meth labs are obvious in fire investigations. Fire investigators know what they look like and recognize them when they see them. The Miller property was searched extensively. He might have been a meth user but no lab was ever found. At the end of 2019, the official cause of the fire was still listed as “undetermined,” after which, the questions about the explosions, and what exactly killed Buddy Miller and his son, disappeared from the news cycle.

The location of this explosion is in the Allentown area, and about 3 hours’ drive from Clearfield and the site of the Shanna Carlson murder.

On February 21st, 2019, six houses were destroyed and four damaged, in a fire with reported explosions, on Brock Street in Ashland, PA. According to the Hazelton Standard-Speaker:

Within minutes after getting the call around 2:45 p.m., firefighters knew they had their work cut out for them, not only to extinguish the flames but also stop the fire from spreading to additional homes.

It was a big, raging fire right from the jump.

Assistant Fire Chief Charles Orth was at his fire company station a short distance away when the fire sirens began to blow. Orth said he immediately knew the magnitude of the fire before he even got there. “I saw the smoke and knew it wasn’t good,” he said. “I immediately called in a second alarm.”

Again, there were reported explosions:

Orth said the fire was fueled by several explosions, one of which sent a front window of one of the homes across the street and into a yard. The source of those explosions was not determined as of Thursday night, but propane is suspected as a possible cause.

The site of this explosion and fire is 52 miles from Danielsville, where Buddy Miller and his son met their end.

Just a month later and 9 blocks from the Brock Street fire, on March 24th, 2019, most of a city block on West Centre Street in Ashland was destroyed by an early morning fire.

Firefighters immediately called it in as a three-alarm fire because they could see it from blocks away. It was huge. Nearly an entire city block was destroyed.

Unless we’ve missed it, an official cause has never been determined for either of the Ashland fires in the spring of 2019.

On May 17th, 2019 a man and woman died and their son was hospitalized after their house exploded at 1:40 AM in Dorrance Township, south of Scranton. The Scranton Standard-Speaker said the fire was, again, preceded by a series of booms.

Neighbors reported multiple explosions, [Dorrance Deputy Fire Chief Jeff] Kotarsky said. State police Fire Marshal Jamison Sgarlot noted that there were multiple tanks around the property, which was littered with debris. The cause of the explosion and fire are still under investigation but investigators are looking into the possibility of propane causing it.

Eugene and Ester Hedgepeth died in the inferno and their son, 20-year-old Nathan, escaped with burns to the nearby road and was later hospitalized. Investigators would later unofficially blame a propane leak but the official cause was left as undetermined because, well, they don’t know.

That brings us back full-circle to Shanna Carlson.

As a matter of fact, if we take a look at what we have so far, Shanna Carlson’s murder seems to be the only bombing-related homicide in the Clearfield area, and the rest are further east in a cluster of their own.

Between January 2019 and Shanna’s murder-by-explosive-device in October, there were 6 fires with reported explosions. One was explained when a man was later convicted of homicide.

If we exclude Shanna Carlson’s murder for the moment, the four remaining fire cases — The Hedgepeth Family, the two Ashland Fires, and Buddy and Bruce Miller — happened within 50 miles and 5 months of each other. Four people were killed. Add Shanna Carlson and it’s 5.

At this point in our research, it started to look a lot like Shanna Carlson might be the outlier, though, and when it came to unexplained fires and/or bombings, Dutch and Coal country areas were worthy of attention.

If we keep moving forward in October of 2019, we eventually get to the explosion that rocked the rowhouse in Allentown on October 20th, where 10 homes were destroyed and dozens were displaced. It’s the fire we accidentally discovered when we were looking for information about Shanna Carlson.

[T]enant, Cindy Heuko, had escaped, as did residents of the other homes in the row when a fire — preceded, many said, by one or more explosions — erupted around 3 a.m.

Like so many other fires erupting in Eastern Pennsylvania, the Allentown Fountain Street Fire was an inferno from the moment it was reported.

It was around this time in our research that alarm bells started going off in our heads. Confirmation bias alert.

At some point in the research process, we’re not exactly sure when, we became convinced that a serial firebomber was at work in Pennsylvania. But with each successive find, some doubt crept in.

Are home explosions from gas leaks just much more common than we ever knew?

Are we just finding mysterious home explosions and fires everywhere we look because that’s what we want to find?

We went back and examined our work.

Our database searches to this point were key-word focused on things like “explosion” and “fire,” and date restricted to the year 2019. However, they were statewide searches of Pennsylvania, not restricted to the area where we found them.

So, if mysterious home and building explosions are this common, why didn’t we find them everywhere, in cities like Pittsburgh and Harrisburg and York and Altoona and State College? Those are all populous cities. They should have had a few of their own unexplained explosion-and-fire events in that time, right?

With very few exceptions, no. They didn’t.

We found them mostly, in this area of Pennsylvania, with a few exceptions, which we’ll get to.

 Keeping confirmation bias in mind, let’s move forward and see exactly how many more events we can find that fit these circumstances.

Picking up right where we left off, there was another fire and explosion the same day as the October 20th, 2019 Allentown Fountain Street Fire. An explosion and fire in Nanticoke, Pennsylvania.

An explosion and fire severely damaged a house on West Church Street in Nanticoke on Sunday night. Officials differed on whether a natural gas leak might have caused the explosion. No one was seriously hurt, though one man was in the basement of the house when the explosion happened, according to Nanticoke fire Capt.Mark Boncal. That man got out safely and declined medical treatment, Boncal said.

Erik Mark of the Wilkes-Barre Citizens’ Voice described the fire in terms that are starting to sound familiar:

Firefighters responded to 123 W. Church Street, at about 6:20 p.m. Sunday, according to Boncal. Fire crews found heavy damage to the building, apparently from an explosion, and fire on the first and second floors, Boncal said. “The whole rear wall was blown out,” he said.

Could it have been a gas explosion?

There was a strong odor of natural gas in the area when firefighters arrived, Boncal said. However, UGI Utilities Inc. spokesman Don Brominski said company investigators did not detect any gas leaks on the UGI distribution system. [...] The gas company will likely defer further investigation to police or other agencies, since it did not detect a leak, Brominski said. A state police fire marshal is investigating, according to Boncal.

The last two lines of that story illustrate one of the challenges of fire investigations when it involves power companies and gas companies — whose job is it to investigate this fire? The gas company didn’t detect a leak, so they left it up to the police. And you’d have to imagine, there are times when the police would rather be able to blame it on a gas leak, because that’s the easy answer.

In this case, the fire was so severe, neighborhood residents were briefly evacuated, but nobody was injured. The site of this explosion and fire is six miles from where 2 members of the Hedgepeth family died in May.

On December 19, 2019 five homes in a Philadelphia rowhouse were destroyed and two people killed in an explosion and collapse. On first look, it seemed like a story similar to the other firebombings we discovered.

However, it would be one of very few we found in Philadelphia-proper. Furthermore, infrastructure woes are well-known in many of Philadelphia’s older neighborhoods, and this particular explosion and collapse was later ruled to be caused by a cracked gas main and the gas company withstood substantial criticism.

An instance or two of gas leak explosions in Philadelphia were found in this time period in the course of our research.

In January of 2020 the Chambersburg Public Opinion reported a 32 year old man, David Surman Jr., pleaded guilty to bombing several sites around Philadelphia. Apparently a Milford Township worker ran over one of his devices with a lawnmower and it detonated.

The immediate question we had: Was he in custody when the bombings happened?

Any suspicion of David Surman Jr. is rendered less urgent when we understand, he went to jail, but these mysterious bombings kept happening.

Let’s keep going.

February 15th, 2020: A house fire is preceded by reported explosions in New Ringgold, Pennsylvania. The Pottsville Republican and Herald wrote:

Firefighters were called to 389 Mountain Road just around 4 p.m. and found heavy fire from both the garage and house.

It was another rager and by the time firefighters arrived, their efforts were mostly defensive. The structure was beyond hope.

There were also reports of a possible explosion but neither [Orwigsburg Fire Chief Jesse] Zimmerman or [New Ringgold Fire Chief Joseph] Caracappa could confirm that.

This explosion and fire happened 15 miles from the two fires in Ashland — on Brock Street and West Centre — in 2019.

On February 25th, 2020 an explosion and fire destroyed a home and garage in Quarryville, Pennsylvania, which is somewhat further south than most of the most recent bombing events in Lehigh and Schuylkill counties. From LNP Always Lancaster:

A house fire in Quarryville Borough on Tuesday afternoon has displaced two people, fire officials said. No people were in the home, located in the 100 block of Wheatfield Court, when the fire started around 3 p.m. [...] Don Schultz, the owner of the house, said that he was in the backyard when he heard an “explosion” from the garage. [...] The fire began in the garage and moved into the second story, Quarryville Fire Company Assistant Chief Joel Neff said. Seven fire companies helped put out the fire.

It was a huge fire. The homeowner’s description of the beginning of the fire, we believe, sheds light on the nature of these firebombing attacks..

He was in the back yard when he heard an explosion from the garage around the front and the house was quickly on-fire. The press coverage included pictures of the home that revealed the garage was underneath the second floor living space. The arsonist, who wanted to inflict maximum damage to the structure chose wisely in setting the fire in the garage.

At risk of going completely down the conspiratorial rabbit hole, allow me to offer our opinion.

So far we’ve discussed 11 firebombing events that took place over 13 months, between January 2019 and February 2020. Of those 11, one was due to an unrelated homicide and a second one was due to a cracked gas main. Shanna Carlson’s death in Clearfield was classified as homicide by explosive device. The remaining 8 events are all classified as “undetermined.”

If we take out the murder of Shanna Carlson for the moment, which now seems to be, geographically at least, set apart from from the rest of these firebombing events, the remaining 7 events happened within 90 miles of each other.

If we take out the latest Quarryville bombing and fire, which was further south, in Lancaster County, the remaining 6 bombings happened within 45 miles of each other.

Furthermore, if a significant number of these 8 undetermined events are due to an unspecified explosive or incendiary device, it’s a strong indicator that they are the work of the same firebug. The question is, what kind of device could it be?

A run-of-the-mill arsonist is typically careless and easily caught… the kind of perpetrator you see in the news who gets caught setting dumpsters alight in a particular neighborhood out of sheer malice, or a property owner of an unprofitable business, looking for a way out. Only an educated pyro uses a device, and it’s a very skilled firebomber who can do it while rarely leaving any evidence behind. Fire investigators are very skilled, too, and just like they know a meth lab when they see it, they also recognize signs of a bombing and arson that would escape notice of the typical layperson.

The story of John Leonard Orr comes to mind — a California fire investigator who was later found to be a serial arsonist who killed four people. Through his job he had become a skilled-firebug and knew how to set fires in a way that they spread quickly and left no evidence behind. He was an educated pyro.

In some of these events, we’ve heard reports of oxygen tanks popping off and we’ve read allegations by fire officials about propane tanks. To be clear, the explosions heard by witnesses in these cases are far too powerful to be a medical grade oxygen tank used by homebound elderly patients, or the kind of propane tank used in a barbecue grill.

In Allentown, one witness said the explosion shook her whole house. Other witnesses, in multiple instances, marveled at the power of the explosions they heard and felt, sometimes from blocks away. And we can’t ignore that many of these homes or buildings were devastated by the blast.

So then the next question is: has the bomber in these 9 events been so skilled, so educated, that he has figured out a way to set these fires in a manner that is lightning fast, devastating to the structures, and many times, deadly to anyone inside, like the crimes of John Leonard Orr?

At this point in our research, not only had we determined these events seem to indicate a serial bomber at work, an MO seems to have developed.

The Pennsylvania Pyro typically chooses from two types of structures — secluded, rural or semi-rural homes, and apartments or rowhouses where units are in close proximity to one another, presumably to ensure maximum damage. He seems to have no regard for whether people are in the structure.

The Pyro mostly attacks at night or in the early morning hours, although there have been daylight events. Several of the firebombings reportedly started in vacant rental units where gas service was turned off.

Maybe it was only a coincidence that investigators chose the same day as the Quarryville explosion, February 25, 2020, to announce the findings of their investigation into Shanna Carlson’s death in Clearfield. Homicide by explosive device. A reward was offered.

But maybe it wasn’t a coincidence. Stay with me here.

We started to investigate this case because there was so little information available on Shanna Carlson’s murder. Why?

We believe it’s because, even though the public was completely unaware, investigators were already hunting the Pennsylvania Pyro at the time Shanna was killed. Months later, they announced Shanna Carlson was murdered by explosive device, they offered a reward and issued a plea for tips.

Why announce that?

Because it allows them to request information from the public without acknowledging any of the other events that might be the work of the Pyro.

I told you we were going down the rabbit hole. But hold up, we’re not done yet.

After a quiet summer, the Pennsylvania Pyro apparently got back to work that fall. On October 25th, 2020 a suspicious fire was reported in Deturksville, Pennsylvania, at 2:36 AM. It was a big fire, again. From the Pottsville Republican and Herald:

In order to get additional water to the scene, [Assistant Chief Ben] Readinger said a tanker task force was activated, bringing firefighters from Suedberg, Landingville and Bethel in Berks County to the scene to shuttle water from a nearby pond.

The detail in the story that makes us stand up and take notice however, is that a man was arrested at the scene:

Radio reports in the early stages of the fire had firefighters asking for state police to respond to the scene to help with a man who was acting suspicious and carrying a gasoline can. Readinger said police arrived and took the man into custody, but that he had no information as to why. Troopers from the Schuylkill Haven station did not have any information available Sunday as to who the man was or why he was taken into custody.

Further research reveals the man’s name was Mark Krause of 374 Deturksville Road, Pine Grove, Pennsylvania. He was later charged with one count of arson and felony reckless endangerment. The fire in both the home and the vehicle were the result of a domestic dispute.

False alarm. Let’s move along.

An explosion and fire at a Scranton, Pennsylvania home on December 2nd, 2021 would appear to be a fit for the MO of our bomber, however, investigators later arrested Jonathon R. Melucci for a failed-attempt at witness intimidation related to a court case.

Another false alarm.

On January 9th, 2021 an unexplained fire at 159 Waller Street destroyed several homes in the rowhouse development in Wilkes-Barre. Witnesses reported explosions.

Fire Chief Jay Delaney told the Wilkes-Barre Citizen’s Voice that there wasn’t an explosion because the home did not have gas service. Acting Assistant Chief Robert Smith said it was probably just flashover:

“Sometimes when a building reaches what we call flashover and the windows blow out, it does with some force that would, to a bystander, indicate an explosion. But we don’t think there was an explosion based on the damage.”

The fire was, again, devastating and left the ruins teetering in a condition that was dangerous to investigate.

There are other instances among the firebombing events we’ve discussed thus far in which the fire apparently started in an unoccupied unit where there was no gas service. Isn’t it interesting that a lack of gas service, in this case, actually discouraged a local investigator from digging deeper?

In our mind, it makes us more curious about this fire.

Gas leaks are not the only thing that causes fires. Sometimes it’s the work of someone malicious and evil.

In the end, despite the protestations about explosions from fire investigators, the official cause of the Wilkes-Barre Waller Street fire is “undetermined.”

Helena and David Staats, a mother and son, were found dead in a house at 1666 State Route 819 in Greensburg, Pennsylvania after a raging fire at 12:50 AM, April 4th, 2021. There were no reports of explosions that we found, however, it was again a fire that first responders reported as fully involved by the time they even arrived.

Although an investigation was conducted and an autopsy was commissioned by the world-renowned forensic and medical examiner Cyril Wecht, we have been unable to dig up any official results for cause of death or the cause of the fire. Officially “undetermined.”

At the time we were researching this case, the Google Earth view of the home showed it in ruins.

It also does not escape our notice that, for the first time since Shanna Carlson’s murder in the fall of 2019, the Pyro again headed out west. The site of the fire that killed Helena and David Staats was on the outskirts of Pittsburgh, approximately 70 miles southwest of Clearfield, where Shanna was killed.

About 30 hours later and back in eastern PA, first responders fought a house fire on April 5th, 2021 in the 800-block of Maple Street, Clay Township. LNP reported:

The family woke up after hearing a “small explosion,” Brickerville Fire Chief Dennis Strauss said. The fire began on the porch of the second level and spread to the kitchen and bedrooms on the first and second floors, Strauss said. The fire burned through walls and windows but did not advance into the rest of the home. Firefighters had the fire under control in less than 15 minutes.

This sounds to us like a failed attempt to bomb a communal housing development by the Pyro; failed for reasons we don’t understand. For some reason, only the outside of the building burned and firefighters put it out quickly.

Source of the explosion and fire “undetermined.”

The same day, April 6th, 2021, a house blast injured 2 and sent 1 to the hospital in Philadelphia. Witnesses described a blast. The front brick facade collapsed and there was heavy fire by the time the Fire Department arrived. We were unable to find further information on this blast, so we will exclude it, for now.

On June 1st, 2021, two people were found dead after their home exploded in Mount Joy Township, just northeast of Elizabethtown. It was big news, a big headline, with no immediate cause.

A little more than a month later, however, police concluded the case was a murder-suicide. David Preston allegedly killed his wife, Victoria Preston, with prescription drugs then set the home on fire, where he also died. From LNP:

Preston died before the fire from toxic levels of fentanyl and other medications that her husband gave her. After his wife was dead, David Preston ignited a flammable substance “on and around his body and throughout the residence,” starting the fire that caused his own death from “extensive smoke and thermal injuries, both internal and external,” Northwest Lancaster County Regional Police Department said in a news release Thursday. Detective Frank Ember Jr. confirmed that the investigation determined David Preston killed his wife with prescription drugs before setting the fire.

Explosions were reported and the fire was hellish, again.

Just before 6 pm, June 1, neighbors reported hearing one large explosion, followed by several other smaller explosions. They also reported hearing what appeared to be ammunition exploding after the initial explosions rang out. The home collapsed just as firefighters arrived at the scene, said Elizabethtown Fire Department deputy fire chief Jeremy Shaffner.

This one strikes us kinda funny, because it seems to fit every point of other fires and/or bombings we’ve attributed to our suspect. If the authorities have the evidence to conclusively say this was a murder suicide, I won’t question it, but it is worth noting, this explosion and fire happened 17 miles from the failed Maple Street explosion that woke the residents but didn’t penetrate the building.

In the days we’re living in, it’s easy to think that the interconnected world makes everyone aware of everything at all times. Our news comes to us instantly from afar. In that kind of 24-hour news environment, you would think people would start asking the right questions if they put in the work.

On June 5th, 2021, Ty Lohr, writing for LNP News, posed a few interesting questions. The latest “house explosion” brought to mind three other major home explosions they had covered in the previous 17 years. The story concluded with the official position, that all three were the result of gas leaks. Nothing groundbreaking.

Another story was in the news a week later that could have been relevant. An Eagleville man known for making his own fireworks, Thomas Razzi, 66, died in a violent confrontation with officers with explosions and shots fired. The newspaper headline was Man Dies in Intentionally Set Blaze. Razzi was the kind of man known to police, had a problem with their authority, and clashed with code enforcement officers who arrived to address hoarding complaints at his home. He burned his own home to the ground while he was still in it.

You could have easily wondered, could this be the end? Will the unexplained firebombings stop?

They did not.

The York Daily Record reported another mystery explosion in August, this time in Myerstown, Pennsylvania at the Amish-owned Lapp Carriage Shop. Date: August 25, 2021.

Melinda Esh said it “kind of thundered” as an explosion and fire claimed an Amish business Wednesday morning near Myerstown. Esh, who lives not far from the site in the 300 block of King Street, said it “sounded like a big dumpster falling on the ground.”

The story continues:

Calls went out just after 7 a.m. on Wednesday for a “building explosion” in what Pennsylvania State Police identified as Lapp Carriage Shop. It appeared at least half of the building collapsed in the incident. PSP said in a release that one male was “transported to Lehigh Valley Medical Center for treatment with unknown injuries.”

No immediate cause was announced. This explosion and fire took place 9 miles from the site of the failed firebombing on Maple Street in Clay Township.

On December 21st, 2021, an explosion from an unknown device rocked downtown Kelayres, Pennsylvania, just outside Hazleton. The Hazleton Standard-Speaker wrote:

Shattered glass spilled onto sidewalks and buildings shook during a loud explosion in Kelayres early Tuesday. Many residents in the township and surrounding areas were awoken by the blast. McAdoo firefighters were among those startled from their sleep. They were also among the initial first responders to arrive at the scene of the explosion— an apartment building at 3 Center St., behind the Kelayres post office.

A man was reported taken to the hospital with injuries, and there was some confusion about events of the morning initially, but Reading Trooper David Boehm clarified the situation later in the day.

One man had been taken to the hospital because the explosive device had exploded outside the building, injuring him. Very little detail from the police.

Did he find it on the sidewalk or on somebody’s step?

The authorities have been mum since the event and the perpetrator of this bombing has never been identified.

This is not an alleged bombing, it is another actual bombing, where someone was injured with an explosive device.

It happened 14 miles south of the place in Dorrance Township where Nathan Hedgepeth escaped with his life from the explosion and fire that killed his parents. It happened 14 miles north of 389 Mountain Road, the home in New Ringgold destroyed in an explosion and fire. 19 miles from the two fires in Ashland — Brock Street and West Centre Street — in 2019. And 26 miles from the explosion and fire that killed Buddy and Bruce Miller that same year.

NOTE: In the time since this episode was put together, an arrest in this one incident has taken place. 31-year-old Ladell Emery Hannon, a police officer in Hazleton City, was charged with attempted homicide and is awaiting trial at the time of this publishing.

If you thought there would be an end to this at some point, you’re not alone. In researching this case, it seemed to go on and on and on. We thought there might be a point when we encountered an empty search result with nothing else to report.

Ok, here we go… it looks like the Pennyslvania Pyro’s firebomb attacks stopped sometime around…

No, we’ve never been able to say that, because they continue, right into 2022.

A massive fire raged through a home on Furnace Street in Shickshinny, Pennsylvania, killing 4, on February 2nd, 2022. Eight people were in the house, but four managed to escape. The remaining four deaths — Jean Jones, 68, Georgette Shoemaker, 40, Harley Jones, 18, and Michael Shoemaker Jr., 15 — were caused by smoke inhalation and within two days, had been ruled accidental.

It was a raging two-alarm fire and spread so quickly the survivors had to jump out windows. Explosions were heard in the fire but the homeowner and survivor Michael Shoemaker Sr. told a reporter himself that it was likely the sound of his mother-in-law’s oxygen tanks. A cause for the fire was supposedly forthcoming, but never announced.

This was 9 miles from the site where the Hedgepeths died in Dorrance Township and 8 miles from the explosion and fire in Nanticoke.

What we’ve just discussed amounts to this. From beginning to end, we have covered 21 different bombing and/or fire-related events over three years, from January 2019 to February 2022. Subtracting the unknown blast in Philadelphia event about which we couldn’t find any information, that leaves us with 20.

Of those events:

●       One was an unrelated homicide, Virginia and Roger Hauck.

●       One was a cracked gas main, the Philadelphia rowhouse.

●       One was a domestic-related arson, in Deturksville.

●       One was an instance of witness intimidation by arson, in Scranton.

●       According to the police, one was a murder-suicide, in Mount Joy.

            That leaves us with 15. Of those:

●       One was an actual bombing with a verified explosive device that injured a man in Kelayres in 2021.

●       One was the murder of Shanna Carlson with an unidentified explosive device by an unknown attacker in October 2019.

That leaves us with 13 firebombing events which all share similar characteristics and are all still officially classified as of “undetermined” origin. Two of those events — the murder of Shanna Carlson and and deaths of Helena and David Staats — happened in Western Pennsylvania. The remaining 11 happened within a 90-mile circle encompassing parts of Pennsylvania Dutch and Coal country.

Is there any place in the United States where 13 unexplained firebombing events like these actually happen within three years of each other for completely innocuous reasons?

13 totally explainable events. Oxygen canisters. Propane tanks. Gas explosions.

All of them.

That’s what skeptics would tell us, right?

C’mon man, you’re just attributing every gas explosion in the area to this made-up firebomber you invented for your podcast.

We’d encourage you to check our work. Of the 13 undetermined firebombing cases, 10 people are dead. Add Shanna Carlson, that makes 11.

If you’re still not convinced, we have a visual aid. As with previous episodes, we’ve created a Google Earth map with relevant locations in the story of the Pennsylvania Pyro marked. Look for the link in the show notes.

https://earth.google.com/earth/d/1ZdbTGRpBogQqrUfYeoBdfsI2PTadWLmd?usp=sharing

 We think what we’ve gathered there so far is a pretty convincing visual that our research team believes represents the work of a serial bomber.

The idea that a serial bomber is at work in Pennsylvania might also be the answer to why information seems so hard to come by, and why some things are hard to explain.

Consider this: it’s possible law enforcement has been hunting the Pyro for a long time with the public blissfully unaware.

Remember at the beginning when I told you about the piece that appeared in July of 2019, about fireworks, but with the kinda ominous language from the authorities about “explosive devices” and “post-blast investigations?” Charlene Hennessy, a spokesperson with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) said:

"We remain committed to keeping the community safe and urge the public if they see these devices on the street or see them being sold to call 911," she said.

The Philly ATF wanted people to call 911 if they saw people selling illegal fireworks on the street. In light of everything we’ve just discussed, these statements from the ATF seem to take on a different significance.

Although there have been two confirmed explosive devices used — in Clearfield and Kelayres — investigators have had nothing more to say.

What??

A bomber is on the loose. Unless our theory is wrong and these two events are the work of two different perpetrators, in which case two bombers are on the loose, because nobody has been arrested.

Investigators have had nothing to say about this? No acknowledgement that a bomber is on the loose, no description of the devices.

We believe the silence is because investigators have been hunting the Pyro for years. They already know he’s on the loose and saying anything about it could only jeopardize their investigation. It’s not their fault that nobody else has picked up on it yet.

Only in the case of Shanna Carlson did they speak publicly, and that might have been partly to silence rumblings on social media. Unsourced local rumors state the device that killed Shanna Carlson was delivered to her by a neighbor who said they’d received it by mistake. It later exploded with such force Shanna Carlson had to be identified by a tattoo on her leg. Another claims she was shot and then the apartment was set on fire. Yet another anonymous allegation claims five people associated with Shanna Carlson’s case have turned up dead. In a social media firestorm like that, investigators may have felt the need to speak out, but have been mum in every other instance.

One alternate theory would be that the police haven’t figured out any of this and we’re just the smartest podcast research crew in the world.

That seems like a less-likely theory to me.

One other thing.

If you think back to the beginning, Shanna Carlson’s murder in October of 2019 originally launched us on this quest, and when we decided to see if there were other unexplained firebombings that matched the characteristics of her death, we started our search at January 1st, 2019.

For all we know, there could be a dozen more in 2018 or the years prior. We should investigate all of that, too. Help us out. Keep in touch with us on your socials and let us know what you find.

The American humorist and cartoonist James Thurber said, in the introduction to Lanterns & Lances, “Let's not look back in anger or forward in fear, but around in awareness,” and I find that very fitting.

The first step in catching this firebomber is awareness that he exists. Next comes the hard work. Until the right tip comes in, or he makes a mistake when he strikes again, the identity of this alleged serial bomber will remain Unresolved.

Episode Information

Episode Information

Research and writing by Troy Larson

Hosting and production by Micheal Whelan

Published on May 14th, 2022

Music Credits

Original music created by Micheal Whelan through Amper Music

Theme music created and composed by Ailsa Traves

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