Waco, Oklahoma City, Columbine: April again proving a cruel month in U.S.

WASHINGTON – Bombings. Apparent terrorists on the loose. A monstrous explosion in rural Texas just up the road from infamous Waco. A poison scare.

The United States is in the iron grip of a miserable week in what has often been a cruel month for Americans: April, during which several similarly traumatic events have shaken the nation to its core over the past 20 years.

As U.S. President Barack Obama delivered a rousing address Thursday at an interfaith service in Boston to honour the victims of the marathon bombings, federal investigators revealed they have two male suspects in their sights in the attack.

They were reportedly poised to release photos taken of the men as they mingled among spectators near the race’s finish line before two bombs were detonated. Investigators hope the images will prompt citizens to come forward with information about their identities.

Surveillance video from a Lord and Taylor department store across the street from one of the bomb sites showed a man dropping off a bag near the marathon’s finish line and dashing off just before the blasts, Stephen Murphy, Boston’s city council president, told The Associated Press.

Murphy said he was briefed on the development by Boston police.

In Texas, meantime, investigators were trying to determine whether a fire and subsequent mammoth explosion at a fertilizer company on Wednesday night was accidental or criminal in nature.

The tiny town of West, just up the road from Waco, has been devastated by the blast, with the death toll expected to climb dramatically at a scene likened by some officials to a nuclear fallout zone.

The blast all but levelled a five- to six-block radius surrounding the plant, where two massive tanks contained highly pressurized anhydrous ammonia. As many as five firefighters are among those missing.

The explosion occurred almost exactly 20 years after the 50-day siege in Waco ended disastrously in 1993 with the deaths of 83 cult members. Federal agents, suspecting firearms violations, were trying to force them out of their Branch Davidian compound when a fire broke out.

Indeed, this week marks the anniversaries of Waco (April 19, 1993), the Oklahoma City bombing (April 19, 1995), the Columbine high school massacre (April 20, 1999) and the Virginia Tech mass shootings (April 17, 2007).

Timothy McVeigh, the right-wing extremist behind the Oklahoma City blast, timed his deadly attack to coincide with the second anniversary of Waco. Until Sept. 11, 2001, it was the most destructive act of terrorism on American soil in U.S. history, killing 168 people, including 19 children under six.

In Texas on Thursday, rescue crews were trudging through the smouldering ruins of West, looking for survivors. More than 160 were injured in the explosion that destroyed dozens of houses, businesses, at least one apartment complex and a nursing home.

“I don’t know how many folks may still be trapped in rubble,” Waco police Sgt. William Patrick Swanton told reporters on the scene. “Homes have been destroyed. There are homes flattened. Part of that community is gone.”

Initial evidence suggested the explosion might have been an industrial accident. The Associated Press reported Thursday that federal regulators fined the West Fertilizer Co. $10,000 last summer for safety violations. The company paid $5,250 after taking what it described as corrective actions.

A Mississippi man, meantime, appeared in court charged with mailing poison-laced letters to U.S. President Barack Obama, a Republican senator and a Mississippi judge. Paul Kevin Curtis, 45, clad in a Johnny Cash T-shirt, made an appearance in a federal courtroom in Oxford, Miss., on Thursday morning.

The Elvis impersonator’s lawyer says her client insists he’s innocent of the charges.

“I know Kevin, I know his family,” she Christi McCoy. “This is a huge shock.”

The FBI says the letters, laced with ricin, read:

“No one wanted to listen to me before. There are still ‘Missing Pieces.’ Maybe I have your attention now even if that means someone must die. This must stop. To see a wrong and not expose it, is to become a silent partner to its continuance. I am KC and I approve this message.”

The FBI’s affidavit says Curtis had sent letters to Wicker’s office several times previously with the message: “This is Kevin Curtis and I approve this message.” He also wrote of a novel he was working on about the sale of human body parts entitled “Missing Pieces.”

In a rare moment of levity this week, Wicker said not only had he met Curtis, but he’d once hired him to perform as Elvis at a party.

“I have indeed met him,” he said. “He was very entertaining. He was more stable then.”

As he’s done so many times during his five years in office, Obama once again took on the role of comforter-in-chief on Thursday in Boston.

“We may be momentarily knocked off our feet,” the president said during the service at a downtown cathedral.

“But we’ll pick ourselves up. We’ll keep going. We will finish the race.”