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Lucas John Helder (born May 5 1981) was a University of Wisconsin-Stout college student and Pine Island, Minnesota resident who earned notoriety as the Midwestern pipe bomber of May, 2002. Helder tried to create a smiley face shape on the U.S. map in a pattern of pipe bombs which he placed in mailboxes and rigged to explode upon the boxes being opened. Bombs of his were found in Nebraska, Colorado, Texas, Illinois, and Iowa where six people were injured including four mail carriers. Helder was captured in rural Nevada before he completed the full smile. When arrested he was wearing a Nirvana tee-shirt and had a smile on his face.

Prior to his bombing spree, Helder was a member of a local three-piece Grunge band named Apathy. Even though the band was only locally successful, they recorded a CD named Sacks of People at the end of their first summer together which they funded and released themselves.

The bombings were heavily covered by the United States media and caused perhaps more of a public scare than they otherwise would have due to their occurring so recently after the September 11 terrorist attacks. Upon the news breaking that Helder was the pipe bomber much emphasis was placed in the media on his being a musician and many music critics scrambled to acquire copies of Apathy's CD, some of which were auctioned on Ebay for as much as $200. Material from an interview with Apathy bassist Eric Hielscher was even included in a Rolling Stone article on Helder. Reviews of the CD were generally rather negative.

While Helder wasn't at the top of his college class, his teachers described him as a reasonably good, quiet, and polite student and at first there was confusion as to what the motivation for the bombings could be. Within the year prior to his arrest, Helder had become passionate about astral projection techniques. He seems to have come to believe that death of the flesh and body is not the end of existence. In an essay sent to The Badger Herald of the University of Wisconsin at the beginning of the bombing spree he wrote "There is no such thing as death". It later came to light that his actions were an attempt to garner media attention so that he could spread a message denouncing government control over daily lives and the illegality of marijuana as well as promoting astral projection as a method to reach a higher level of consciousness.

In April 2004 a federal judge found Helder incompetent to stand trial. While the judge could free Helder if doctors find he is not a threat to society, legal experts doubt this possibility due to the violent nature of his crimes. Luke Helder, inmate #36460-048, remains in the Federal Medical Center in Rochester, Minnesota.

At the time of the bombings, Helder was the owner of Pipebomb.org, which had been owned previously by Herbert Elwood Gilliland III, creator of NiMUD, who also had a band called Pipebomb in the early 1990s. The site had featured a smiley-face bomb icon, which may have inspired the younger Helder to attempt to create a smoke signal to contact the previous site owner, who had let the domain's registration expire. It was registered at one time by "Chuck Bronson", but was later changed to the actual registrant's name.

External links

• Leader-Telegram about Helder's mailbox bombings
• Timeline of Helder's news
• Essay Sent to the Badger Herald
• TIME.com: Person of the Week: Lucas Helder
• Apathy's website

• 1981 births
• Adoptees
• American terrorists
• Living people
• Musicians