A fire, a fascination with explosives and family discord marked path to clinic bombing
Long before Guy Bartkus' personal war against life ended with him the sole suspect in blowing up a fertility clinic, and himself, there was a fascination with pyrotechnics.
In a stream of videos posted to a YouTube site that law enforcement officials say they believe belonged to Bartkus, only a single one fell in the genre of modern male youth: a war games video game clip.
The rest run through solitary experiments in chemistry, physics and explosives: A hydrogen balloon is set on fire. M-80s explode in the desert sand. A bucket of radioactive uranium ore sets a Geiger counter wailing.
In one video, a small tube of a "melt cast" explosive punches a deep socket into a heavy metal bar, detonating so loudly the sound rockets from one bouldered slope to another.
"Holy s—!," a young man laughs in amazed delight.
It is the same voice captured on a 30-minute audio manifesto that investigators tie to Bartkus, in which he attempts to explain his animosity toward those who conceive children and seemingly his decision to attack a Palm Springs fertility clinic.
On Saturday morning, a bomb was detonated at American Reproductive Centers in Palm Springs, destroying much of the building, injuring four people and killing the bomber. Bartkus is the sole suspect in the bombing, which the FBI has labeled as domestic terrorism.
DNA tests of body parts found at the scene show Bartkus was killed in the blast. The FBI case investigators, as well as law enforcement sources, characterize the 25-year-old as having "nihilistic ideations," conclusions drawn from social media postings they link to Bartkus.
In those public postings, Bartkus argued that procreation without consent of the unborn is unethical and unjustifiable in a world struggling with environmental harm, violence and overpopulation. Law enforcement sources told The Times that they are also looking into whether childhood trauma laid the foundation for his beliefs.
Bartkus' father, who has not seen him in over a decade, told The Times he was unaware of his son's extremist views.
"It's like, this is not my son,' said Richard Bartkus, 75. 'I haven't seen him in 10 years, but I still know his heart. His heart was more for helping people, not destroying people."
The full picture of Guy Edward Bartkus is far from complete. But an interview with his father, as well as legal filings in San Bernardino County Superior Court, offer a window into the discord that shadowed Bartkus' upbringing. His childhood was touched by divorce, allegations of abuse and a keen early interest in explosives.
Little has been made public about his adult life — other than he held a string of short-term jobs, working on an electronics assembly line and as a school bus monitor for special needs children. Neither his mother or sister, with whom he reportedly lived in Twentynine Palms, could be reached for comment.
The online trail that authorities are scouring to glean some insight into Bartkus' motives include a website that appears dedicated to the Palm Springs bombing. It features a 30-minute recording that site data indicates was uploaded at the time of the explosion, and promises a video — never posted — of the blast. There are also YouTube videos under a web alias associated with Bartkus, and threads on Reddit and a suicide forum.
In those, Bartkus voiced despondence over the death of a "best friend," Sophie, a woman who lived in Washington who ran multiple social media sites espousing radical feminism, veganism and intentional suicide. She died in April, allegedly shot in the head by her partner. That man told police he was acting at her request.
In the end, grief may have played a part in Bartkus' self-destruction.
"I won't allow my brain to get over you, Sophie," the bomber wrote in the hidden comment code of his website. "There's no reason to anyways..."
Born in Waterbury, Conn., Bartkus moved to California with his family when he was about 1 1/2, according to his father. After settling in North Palm Springs, the family moved to Joshua Tree and Yucca Valley.
He was a curious boy who liked to experiment, the father said.
He told of returning to their Yucca Valley rental home one day and seeing his 9-year-old son hide something under the shed and hurry indoors. He assumed his son was just racing to beat him to the computer.
"But he had a little fire going,' said Richard Bartkus. 'He pushed it under the shed, thinking that the sand would put it out. But it didn't, it caught the shed on fire. And when the shed caught on fire, it spread to the house and burned the house down.'
He said his son took it hard.
'He felt really bad,' said Richard Bartkus. "For a while, he kind of shied away from everybody."
In his teens, Guy Bartkus ramped up his experiments with stink bombs and rockets. His father said he became stricter with his son, worried that the fascination with explosives was getting out of hand.
"First of all, you start building small explosives," he said. "Next thing you know, you want to go a little bigger. You're making those little poppers. Next, you want to get a little louder. You start making these little rockets. But they only go so far. ... Now you're doing more of a homemade gunpowder. Before you know it, you just gone too far."
Richard Bartkus said he and Guy's mother, Dianne Bartkus, disagreed on how to handle their son.
Their family life appeared to become increasingly fractious.
In August 2012, Dianne Bartkus moved out of the family's home with their two children. Soon after, she sought a restraining order against Richard Bartkus. In court documents, she described feeling 'scared of his irrational behavior' and 'threatened' by her husband.
In one instance, she alleged in court filings, Richard Bartkus visited her at the smoke shop where she worked and brought a sniper rifle. 'If I catch you with another man within the next three months, I'll shoot him 10 times in the head or between the eyes,' he allegedly said.
'His random behavior scares me and I am worried for the safety of my children,' she said in court documents.
The court files also include Richard Bartkus' rebuttals of her allegations. He denied mistreating her or the children — 'unless you call my yelling at them for the cuss words they use and nasty shows and music they watch and listen to abuse. I call it being a good parent.'
The court granted Dianne Bartkus' request for a restraining order, but gave the father visitation rights. Guy was 13 at the time, and his sister, Regina, was 14.
In November 2013, Dianne Bartkus filed for divorce.
Richard Bartkus said he had not seen his son since a visit in 2014. He'd had a heart attack, he said, and his ex-wife and children came to feed him and drop off medication.
In a 2015 request to amend the restraining order to include the children, Dianne Bartkus said there had been 'few visitations' between the father and children due to 'emotional/verbal abuse.' She alleged Richard Bartkus had mocked his son's sexuality — a charge he denied to The Times, saying his wife made up stories to make him look bad.
Still, in 2021, an Instagram account with the name Richard Bartkus publicly ridiculed Guy Bartkus for burning down the family home.
"Guy Bartkus decided he was smart enough to play with stick matches outside and burned down the whole house and everything in it, and now he thinks he is so smart and so perfect and never made any mistakes in life.'
Richard Bartkus told The Times he was responding to another post from his son, now deleted, accusing him of being too hard on his son.
"He was trying to come off like everything was my fault," he said. "I tried to explain to him the reasons why I got so strict on him. He burned my house down! Me and my wife, my kids are in the house. You destroy all of our property by burning the whole house down. I'm gonna come down strict on you!"
Ultimately, Richard Bartkus said his son was "a good kid," smart and inquisitive, who built his own computers at an early age. In high school, he said, his son got Cs and Ds, until he switched to the district's independent study program. With one-on-one attention, he said, his son turned into an A and B student.
His son, he said, ended up graduating with honors from Yucca Valley High School. Richard Bartkus did not attend the graduation.
In 2019, at 18, Guy Bartkus began to post videos of his desert explosions on a YouTube channel called "IndictEvolution." The videos have since been taken down, but The Times was able to access them through an archival site. Law enforcement sources confirmed they have been linked to Bartkus.
Early on, the videos fall into the realm of hobbyist experiments: He exploded a small hydrogen balloon; he concocted glass beakers of acids. But by the time Bartkus was 24, his videos show him playing with some of the most dangerous explosives accessible to amateur hobbyists.
He demonstrates detonation of erythritol tetranitrate (ETN), characterized in scientific literature as nearly as powerful as plastic explosives used by the military. That year, the username on a gaming platform tied to Bartkus' email address was "Pyrotechnical."
In that same period, Bartkus' rhetoric on alternative social media sites was dark.
"I would not acknowledge reproduction as a human right, but instead as a form of rape," IndictEvolution wrote on Lemmy.World in July 2023. "I am also not bothered by infanticide as long as it is done humanely..."
In early May, Bartkus engaged with a suicide discussion site, presenting data from his tests on ingesting weak doses of sodium nitrite or seeking to generate carbon monoxide within a car, alongside graphs and charts.
"I'm glad I'm an extremist," he wrote. "Makes me WAY less tethered to this turd of a planet."
He volunteered that he wanted to kill himself by strapping an explosive to his head, setting the timer for one hour and drugging himself to sleep. He said he lacked access to any drug stronger than codeine. Available explosives were not the problem.
Then on Thursday night, he reached out to the forum again. He said he planned to kill himself in his car, with a chemical reaction that would produce carbon monoxide, along with "some extra drama that I probably should not say haha."
Times staff writers Libor Jany and Melody Gutierrez contributed to this report.
Sign up for Essential California for news, features and recommendations from the L.A. Times and beyond in your inbox six days a week.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Cosmopolitan
9 minutes ago
- Cosmopolitan
What it's like dating as a trans woman
Once as a freshman in college, I found myself on a third date with a guy named Matthew*. It was 2017 and we'd met on Bumble — he was a model, which set off my Power Couple radar, something I genuinely cared about back when I was just starting my own modelling journey. At the time, I hadn't officially come out yet, and there was a thrill in not disclosing I was trans on the apps — in dating as a woman without a complicated backstory; in just living the life I believe I was intended to live. I've always had the privilege of 'passing', meaning I look like a cisgender woman, and revealing that I'm trans was something I only got into when a relationship approached physical intimacy. (I fully acknowledge this gave — and continues to give — me a general sense of safety not all trans women have.) My first two dates with Matthew had been fun, and for our third, we hit an upscale Chinese food restaurant in NYC's chic Chelsea neighbourhood with his model colleagues. It felt glamorous to be counted among all the long limbs and symmetrical faces. Matthew was attentive and seemed proud to be with me, and as the night stretched on, the conversation turned to people's greatest fears. Face-altering acid attacks and home invasions came up. I shared that my biggest one was my own demise. Then Matthew announced to the table that his started with the letter 'T'. Shouted-out guesses included tigers, terrorism, and tsunamis. 'Worse,' he replied. 'Transgenders!' In my mind, the entire room expeditiously shunned Matthew for his hateful views. In reality, though, what happened was... nothing. As the blood drained from my face and my heart dropped into my stomach, the rest of our table barely reacted. Some of the male models even nodded in agreement. No one said a word in defence of the community they had no idea I was a part of. I was suddenly terrified that everyone could see right through me. And as a wave of self-doubt washed over me, a growing awareness of my own blind spots felt infuriating. How had I wound up on a third date with a transphobe? I faked an emergency and excused myself, rage-texting every trans friend I had on the way home in search of support and understanding. Back in my dorm, I blocked Matthew's number and made the decision to put a gender marker, 'trans woman', on my dating profiles. Even if I wasn't out publicly, I would be on these apps. Two years later, in a mutually transgender, or T4T, relationship and in love for the first time, I took it a step further. Inspired by my then-boyfriend's openness, I took to my YouTube channel with a new video titled 'I'M TRANSGENDER' for my 100,000+ subscribers. Surely, I thought, the internet would work its magic, serving this truth algorithmically to anyone I might cross paths with in the future. My work was done: I had come out and would never have to come out again. Except that's not at all what happened. As I've continued to date, I've learned that the work of coming out — and protecting yourself while doing so — is never really over. And that no matter what I do, the burden remains almost entirely my own. Thanks in part to this hyper-charged political moment, where hateful voices are so often empowered, I've had to develop an extremely thorough screening process (deep dives on Google, full reads of social media; I will stalk you for any hint of transphobia). But even so — and even with my own gender identity completely searchable on the internet and the apps — I still find myself with dates who haven't put in anywhere near the same effort. Once when I was out with a Disney Channel 'star' (he was actually more of a recurring extra) I met on Raya, he said something that made it obvious he had no idea I was trans. I came out to him then and there... and spent the rest of the date watching him decide if he was down for a doll. These moments can definitely be tough or awkward, but they have also taught me to keep an open mind. I'm not offended when a date is clearly (and respectfully) navigating unexplored-for-them terrain. It can be mutually exciting and a good opportunity for growth. I've also gotten a lot more comfortable discussing my gender. It's no longer something I worry about — it's simply part of who I am. And in a society that wants people like me to be invisible, loudly proclaiming my identity protects me while also forcing everyone else to acknowledge my existence. If a guy seems clueless, I just ask, 'Have you been with a trans woman before? Did you know that I'm one?' Less satisfying is the realisation that there's no one thing I can do to ensure dates understand that I'm trans before we meet. (Unfortunately, many cishet men are too lazy or privileged to take the extra step of looking up a match beforehand.) And that means I need to stay vigilant. Trained by Matthew-like incidents and plenty of other horror stories, my instincts are now constantly on high alert. Before a first date even begins, I've got an escape route planned. I arrive early to connect with restaurant staff so they know who I am and that I'm meeting a guy for dinner. When the conversation veers toward transness, I keep eye contact, locking in on their facial expressions. I'm an expert at clocking any fetish-y, fearful, or hateful vibes. If someone's lips curl down, if they cross their arms or legs, if they physically pull away, I can practically hear sirens. And then I'm out. I've done everything from going to the bathroom, calling a car, and ghosting to lying about explosive diarrhoea. Safety is everything. Is all this ideal? Obviously, no. But I like to think by sharing my story, I'm helping others avoid the hurtful, harmful situations I've been in. Speaking of, Matthew did come around again after my public coming-out. Not with an apology or a change of heart though. He overcame his 'biggest fear' to ask me for advice on growing his social media presence. I blocked him again immediately. *Name has been changed For a list of resources specific to the trans community, visit the LGBT Foundation. Ella Snyder is a model, photographer, and writer living in New York City. When she's not on set, she's in a method acting class or drafting a diaristic entry for her Substack, Esoteric It Girl.
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Yahoo
Armed gunman shot dead after opening fire at Sunday church service
One person was injured at a Wayne, Michigan, church on Sunday morning after a suspect opened fire on the congregation mid-service. "The Wayne Police Department responded to an active shooter at Crosspointe Church in Wayne this morning," the department said. "Upon arrival, officers determined that a security guard for the church shot and killed the suspect. One victim was shot in the leg. Please avoid the area. Officers are still actively investigating." During a news conference, Wayne Police Chief Ryan Strong shared that they did not know the suspect's specific motive or why he chose to target the church, but said he was carrying a "long gun and handgun." "The gunman is a 31-year-old white male from Romulus. His motivations are unknown, but at this point it appears he was suffering from a mental health crisis," Strong said. Pro-choice Vandals In Michigan Caught On Video Spray-painting Church "Our interactions with him in the past were quite limited. Like nothing of note," Strong added. Read On The Fox News App Strong said the gunman was also wearing tactical gear. Chaotic video on social media reportedly shows congregants ducking behind their seats before running toward the back of the church. "Everybody to the back," a woman yells. "Please, everybody, come to the back." Strong said one staff member was shot once in the leg by the suspect, which happened around 11:45 a.m. local time. Fbi Arrests Michigan Man Who Allegedly Called In Phony Bomb Threat After Missing Spirit Airlines Flight The outlet said that the armed suspect was on his way into the Christian church when a person outside the church tried to stop him using a truck. "Several staff members from the church approached the gunman. A parishioner struck the gunman with his vehicle as the gunman shot the vehicle repeatedly," Strong said. He added that at least two staff members shot the gunman, which caused fatal wounds. The church staff members do not wish to be identified at this point, Strong said. Strong shared that he believed the gunman was intending to commit a mass shooting based on the preliminary investigation. Police do not believe that the gunman was affiliated with the church. The FBI is monitoring the attack. At this time, police said they believed that the gunman acted alone and had no accomplice. "Our leadership and support teams are on the ground, at the scene, in Wayne, Michigan providing assistance and investigative support," FBI deputy director Dan Bongino wrote on X. In the wake of Sunday's shooting, Polk County, Florida Sheriff Grady Judd urged those going to places of worship to be cautious and alert for suspicious activity. "This morning's active shooter at a church in Wayne, Michigan reminds us that all of our houses of worship must have a safety and security plan to immediately respond to an active shooter," he said in a post on X. "An active shooter can happen anywhere, and churches, synagogues, and mosques need to take steps to prepare for such a scenario," he continued. Judd added that several other churches in recent years have "facilitated plans" and have "become staffed with individuals who are trained to counter an active-shooter," in response to recent shootings at places of worship. "We urge congregants: If you see something, or hear something suspicious, then say something. Talk to house of worship leadership and security and notify your local law enforcement agency immediately," Judd said. During Sunday's news conference, Strong confirmed that a plan was in place at the church and saved lives. "We are grateful for the heroic actions of the church's staff members, who undoubtedly saved many lives and prevented a large scale mass shooting," Strong said. "I would add that the church parishioners and staff members were trained in responding to emergency situations, which also saved lives."Original article source: Armed gunman shot dead after opening fire at Sunday church service
Los Angeles Times
8 hours ago
- Los Angeles Times
Turkish authorities arrest prominent journalist for allegedly threatening Erdogan
ISTANBUL — Turkish authorities formally arrested a prominent journalist on Sunday for allegedly threatening President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, according to state media. The arrest of Fatih Altayli, whose daily commentaries on YouTube attract hundreds of thousands of viewers, comes amid a widespread crackdown on the opposition. State-run Anadolu Agency said Altayli was questioned after his detention late Saturday over a comment he made following a recent poll that showed more than 70% of the public opposed a lifetime presidency for Erdogan, who has been in power for more than two decades. On his YouTube channel, Altayli said Friday he wasn't surprised by the result of the survey and that the Turkish people preferred checks on authority. 'Look at the history of this nation. ... This is a nation which strangled its sultan when they didn't like him or want him. There are quite a few Ottoman sultans who were assassinated, strangled, or whose deaths were made to look like suicide.' An investigation was immediately launched by the Istanbul Public Prosecutors' Office. During questioning, Altayli denied threatening the president, according to Halk TV's website. Officials from municipalities controlled by the main opposition Republican People's Party have faced waves of arrests this year, including Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, who was detained in March over allegations of corruption. Many consider the cases to be politically motivated, although Erdogan's government contends that the courts are impartial and free of political involvement.
