The Cookbook Bomber

     May 7th, 1982 was a beautiful day. It was a Friday, so the weekend was coming. The skies were clear and blue and the temperatures were in the 70’s. It would have been the perfect day if not for all the damn bombs.

     The explosions began in Manhattan early that morning at 2:00. A florist's shop windows were blown out when a pipe bomb detonated. A display was destroyed but nobody was injured. Minutes later, before police had even had a chance to respond to the first explosion, a second bomb was detonated. This time it had been placed in a vacant building in Times Square. Minimal damage was done and again, fortunately, no one was injured. Something that must have been intended since both bombs were set off in the middle of the night when there would have been minimal chance of there being anybody there.

     The same thing couldn’t be said about the third bomb that went off at about 8:35 am. It was placed in a row of lockers outside of classrooms at Bergen Community College in Paramus, New Jersey which is a town just right over the Hudson river from New York. A row of lockers was exploded sending shards of metal flying. This time it was only luck that kept anybody from getting hurt.

     Things were about to turn deadly though. As the day went on quietly the police probably began to think all the excitement was over. They couldn’t know the real excitement was yet to come. 

     Joan Kipp was a fifty-four year old mother of two grown children. She lived in Brooklyn with her husband, Howard, and worked for the public school system as a guidance counselor. This day was like any other for Joan. She spent her day working at the school and arrived home at around 4:00 ready to have dinner with her husband. 

     Things wouldn’t veer from the normal until she arrived at her doorstep. There, wrapped in brown Sears and Roebuck paper was a package addressed to her. She picked it up and carried it into her kitchen not knowing what to expect. She unwrapped the package and saw what would appear to be a cookbook from Sears. 

     She may have believed this was a gift from one of her kids. It was just two days away from Mother’s Day after all. It wasn’t until she opened it that she realized this was no gift. It detonated in her hands with a deafening blast but unlike the pipe bombs from earlier, this bomb contained bullets. It wasn’t meant to do a little property damage and annoy a bit. No, it was meant to kill. It didn’t explode like a bomb, it fired, like a gun. 

     Two .22 caliber bullets struck Joan in the chest and one went into the wall. Joan fell to the floor, still alive, but gravely injured. Howard had just arrived home as well but was still in the driveway of their home. He heard the blast and ran inside to investigate. The device had done what it was intended to do, severely harm its victim. Howard ran to Joan’s side. With her dying breath she said… “look what they’ve done to me”. She would pass away from her wounds a short time later. 

      The bomb components were simply a copper wire attached to a 6-volt battery and three bullets rigged to detonate when the cover of the hollowed out book was opened. The fragments of the book were pieced together and it was found that the perpetrator had scrawled a note in child-like handwriting. It said “DEAR HOWARD YOUR (sp) DEAD BUT FIRST JOAN CRAIG NEXT DOREEN TOO NO MORE GAMES". Craig and Doreen were Joan and Howard's children.

     I find it interesting that the person who wrote the note spelled the contraction of you and are y-o-u-r but spelled “too” correctly. T-o-o. Just an observation. I don’t know if it means anything.

     The investigators were perplexed. Why would anybody want to harm Joan Kipp? She was beloved by her family and a valuable member of her neighborhood. In addition to her work with the public school system she was also very active in her community. She seemed to be the last person anyone would want to harm. 

     Of course, as true crime fans know, the family had to be cleared first. Suspicion was immediately thrown on both Howard and Craig due to the fact that they got a lawyer and both refused to take a lie detector test. Was there reason to suspect them for this or was this smart advice from their lawyer?

     Soon Craig was singled out. According to police, people who knew them claimed Craig hated his mother. This led them to look deeper into Craig at what other possible connections he may have had to this bombing.

     But, curiously, as police were investigating Craig, the bombs kept coming. Two days after the first set of bombs, another bomb was placed in the doorway of a bakery in Brooklyn. This bomb was found before it had a chance to denote as an employee arriving early to start his shift smelled gasoline and went to investigate. As he stepped outside the front door he found the bomb and was able to stop it before it exploded. And this time he saw someone in the distance running to a car driven by another person. This means that at least two people were responsible for this bomb.

     But the bombing wasn't done and this time there would be more human collateral. Lawrence Starr, a 70- year old man from Manhattan, found what he thought was a brand new clock laying on the top of a pile of trash in a bin near his apartment. Lawrence was known for taking things from the trash he thought might be worth saving. He took the clock to his home and plugged it in. This is what triggered the bomb to explode in his hand, ripping his arm off and damaging his face. It would take several hours of surgery but he would survive. This bomb was comprised of two super M-80 firecrackers combined with metal fragments to make the explosion even more powerful.

     The bombs still were not done coming. The next day authorities received an anonymous tip that there was a bomb in a detergent box left in a vacant lot. Sure enough, the bomb squad found two pipe bombs. The pipes were filled with black powder and topped with M-80 firecrackers for detonators. Just so you know, three M-80’s are equivalent to one stick of dynamite. They were exploded safely in a controlled environment and no one was injured.

     Not done yet! Then there was a bomb placed in a gumball machine in Chinta Town. This one did explode just narrowly missing a group of school children passing by. No one was injured.

     So, if you’re counting, that makes bombs placed at: the florist, a vacant building, a college, Joan’s, the bakery, Lawrence Starr’s, the detergent box and the gumball machine. That's eight bombs in six days! 

     But police were going off the theory that Joan’s bombing was unrelated to the others. In addition to the other bombs being so differently made, they believed that this was a very personal, targeted attack. Police felt Craig was their man. In August of 1982, he was arrested. In addition to the alleged hatred he had towards his mother, the police also claimed that a bomb sniffing dog found explosive material similar to the cookbook bomb on Craigs clothes. They also claimed a handwriting expert matched the note written in the cookbook to Craig’s handwriting. 

     He was arrested but proclaimed his innocence as did his family. His father believed in his son so much he put his house up for bond. He wasn’t going to let his son sit in jail for something he thought he didn’t do.

     But as quickly as it came together,  the case fell apart. The bomb sniffing dog was embarrassingly discredited in another case, two handwriting experts to the states one claimed the handwriting in the cookbook wasn’t the same and none of the Kipp’s friends or family would admit they ever said Craig hated his mother.

     Craig was released and the police were back to square one. And square one is exactly where they would stay. Craig moved to Connecticut for a fresh start and the bombings did NOT stop.  

     In June an eleven year old boy was playing in a Brooklyn park when a pipe bomb packed with m-80 firecrackers exploded leaving him severely injured but alive.

     In July three phone booths in Manhattan were blown up by firecracker bombs planted by what police called a prankster. Glass was blown out slightly wounding passers by but no one was seriously injured. 

     In September police were alerted to a suspicious package placed in front of an abandoned school. There they found another pipe bomb but were able to dismantle it before it exploded.

     The chaos clearly had not stopped after the attack on Joan but maybe the investigators were correct in their belief that Joans bombing was not connected to the others. Let's look at the difference between the cookbook bomb and all the rest. The most obvious difference is the fact that all the bombs with the exception of Joan’s were pipe bombs of some sorts. They were all created using galvanized pipes and fireworks or possibly gasoline whereas Joan’s was made with bullets, copper wires and a battery. And the mechanism that ignited Joan’s bomb clearly showed the focus to be on a particular victim. And, if you’ll recall, it was addressed directly to her. So maybe the fact that Joan was attacked in the same time period many other bombs exploded was just a coincidence.

     If Joan was the only intended victim then you would expect the attacks to stop after she was killed, right? And for many years this was true because although pipe bombs or others of that nature continued to cause havoc around the city, none were reminiscent of the cookbook bomb. That was until eleven years later when the bombings would begin again.

     In October of 1993, Frank Lenza, a resident of Staten Island was on vacation with his family in Pennsylvania. A relative retrieved his mail and brought it to Pennsylvania for him. And the nightmare began again. Robert had received a velvet box similar to what a medal would be given in. Although he did not know who it was from, he opened it. Of course he did. Why would he think it would be anything harmful? As he opened the box, it exploded with a deafening boom and three .22 caliber bullets were expelled in different directions. It was a miracle, but no one in the room was struck. The fragments of the box were propelled outwards causing minor injuries but they all escaped with their lives. 

     There was no note accompanying the bomb. And again, there was no known motivation. Just like Joan’s bomb this bomb was powered by a 6 volt battery. Joan’s attack was still unsolved but Craig remained the primary suspect in investigators minds. He was immediately questioned and cleared in this attack.

     The next attack came a little less than a year later on April 5th, 1994. Alice Caswell, a 75- year old woman, received a package in the mail addressed to her brother, Robert. Robert had not lived at this address for many years. The container was just like the container for Frank Lenza’s bomb the previous year, a velvet medal box. She opened the package and, just like Frank, was bombarded with an explosion of .22 caliber bullets. Unlike Frank, she would be severely injured. She would spend weeks in the hospital recovering but would survive.

     There was no note accompanying the bomb. And again, there was no known motivation. Joan and Frank’s attacks were still unsolved so this attack would be added to the roster.  

     Fourteen months would pass with no attacks but it seems after a long hiatus the same bomber was at work again in June of 1995. Stephanie Gaffney was an 18 -year old woman who was 8 ½ months pregnant. She lived in the home with her mother and grandfather. Her grandfather was a retired NYPD detective but had no dealings with any of the previous cases. Stephanie innocently sat down with the package placed on her lap next to her belly. She then opened the package that was addressed to Gilmore, her grandfather's surname, or occupant. Inside was a book. She opened the book, triggering the mechanism, a 6 volt battery attached to three .22 caliber bullets. The projectiles flew in every direction. Every direction, that is, except into Stephanie. Again, it was only a miracle of fate that kept this woman and her baby protected.

     And again there was no note explaining why, Stephanie had no known enemies and there was no apparent link between her and the other victims. The fact that her grandfather, and her uncle by the way, were officers with the NYPD provided an interesting lead but in the end investigators found no connection between their work and the anonymous bomb.

     But the bomber wasn’t done. One year later it happened again! Richard Basile and his wife were at home when Richard received a package that appeared to be a VCR tape. When opened, it exploded with .22 caliber bullets. Richard and his wife were only slightly injured from the flying debris but recovered. 

     And there you have it. Five bombs over fourteen years then, just as quickly and seemingly unprovoked as it started, it was done. There were no more bombs mailed after 1996. 

     It would take another six years before there would be any new news on the case.

     According to reporting done by Richard Weir and Patrice O’Shaughnessy for the New York Daily News a serious suspect was finally being investigated. His name was Steven Wavra and he jumped to the top of  investigators lists after he authored a, get this, 250 page manifesto he sent to federal courthouses. What he said wasn’t stated in the article but just as interesting is the fact that this was not the first time he had come across investigators' radars. It was actually the third time.

     The first time was in 1983, a year after Joan Kipp was killed. Investigators were called to Wavra’s apartment where they found a hollowed out book and bomb making materials on his kitchen table. Then again in 1995 he was found in a Brooklyn library in possession of a hollowed out book and .22 caliber bullets. This was around the time Stephanie Gaffeney was attacked by the bomb in a hollowed out book. 

     There are other things that connect him as well and one is a big one. Joan Kipp was Steven Wavra’s guidance counselor in junior high. 

     But there is more. While investigating each case detectives left no stone unturned. This included compiling lists of places the victims frequented to study who they had come into contact with and any commonalities they might have had: gyms, jobs, grocery stores. It sounds like a very tedious task but it paid off. Eventually every victim was linked to one man through their pharmacy of all things. But, strangely, the person that linked them wasn’t Steven Wavra…it was his roommate!

    In spite of all the circumstances, there was nothing that definitively proved that Steven Wavra committed these crimes. No one saw him send a bomb. There wasn’t CCTV then like there is now. No fingerprints were found. DNA was in use in the 90’s but they needed a much larger specimen than they do now. And of course, he never confessed. So what was left? Just…circumstances. 

     It’s been 43 years since Joan Kipp was killed and still no one has been charged. Actually, no charges have been brought against anybody for any of the bombings, including Lawrence Starr, the man who lost an arm. 

    I know it must be frustrating to become invested in a story only to find out at the end that there is no ending. Unfortunately and all too often crimes don’t end wrapped in a neat package. 

     What do you think?

1. Were the police too quick to decide all the bombs exploding in one day were not related?

2. Do you think Joan’s bombing in 1982 is even related to the ones in the 90s? 

3. Do you think since Lawrence Starrs bomb was so different from the rest that it was unrelated to Joan’s. Even though they were only a few days apart?

Let me know in the comments.