Bombing Suspect Reportedly Did Not Target NAACP

Federal authorities arrested a financially troubled 44-year-old carpenter last week in connection with an explosion in Colorado Springs, Colo., last month outside a building that housed an office of the NAACP.

But it appears the venerable civil rights organization was not the target of the blast as some initially feared.

The suspect, Thaddeus Murphy of Colorado Springs, reportedly told investigators after he was taken into custody on Feb. 19 that he was targeting a tax preparation business that shared the single-story building with the NAACP at the time of the explosion — around 10:45 in the morning of Jan. 6.

In an affidavit, a federal agent said Murphy confessed to setting off a pipe bomb at the building in a dispute with his accountant over his tax records. “Murphy stated he ‘flipped out,’” the affidavit said, “because of his financial problems.”

On Friday, according to ABC News, a judge ordered Murphy held without bond pending a hearing scheduled for this Wednesday.

The explosion knocked items off the walls of the NAACP office and rattled nerves and churned up imagines and memories of the past. Over the decades, the NAACP has often been a target of violence. In a Tweet hours after the explosion, Cornell Brooks, the president of the NAACP, said, “Thankfully no one was hurt in a suspicious explosion at our Colorado Spring #NAACP office. We remain vigilant.”

Adding to the uncertainty and fear that the NAACP might have been the target immediately following the blast was the description of a suspect seen leaving the scene — a heavyset, middle-aged white man in a white truck.

Murphy told investigators that he placed the small pipe bomb near his accountant’s office as a warning, according to the affidavit. He said his accountant refused to return his tax records from 2006 to the present. He said he had once declared bankruptcy and needed his records “because of his financial issues.”

According to the affidavit, when investigators searched Murphy’s home they discovered a pistol, several rifles, two shotguns, fuse and 3½ pounds of commercially available binary explosives.

This is not Murphy’s first run-in with the law. The affidavit said he has a criminal record that includes felony theft, felony burglary and fraud by check and in 2009 he was sentenced to five years in prison for theft.