Austin bomb saga shows law enforcement’s deep new reach

PFLUGERVILLE, TEXAS AND SAVANNAH, GA.—For the past three weeks, Pflugerville, Texas, resident Lee Rocha has endured a fear grown eerily familiar to residents of the Texas Hill Country – a three-week bombing spree that seemed, he says, “to be happening everywhere, to everybody,” making “you afraid to go anywhere.”

After weeks of hypervigilance, Mr. Rocha and others breathed easier Wednesday as authorities closed in on a suspected bombmaker, who blew himself up rather than be captured.

But the relief was only partial. For one, the bomber, whom police identified as Mark Anthony Conditt, lived just a block from Rocha’s house. “I’ve seen him so many times,” says Rocha, who has been a resident of Pflugerville for 28 years.

Confounded at first by the quickly growing string of sophisticated bomb work, police officials say an “army” of investigators ranging from the FBI to local police worked at a frantic pace to gather forensic evidence, build profiles, scour surveillance video, and engage and inform the public – all of which appears to have earned them key breaks that enabled them to triangulate the suspect on Tuesday to a motel parking lot in Round Rock…

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