Austin bomber Mark Conditt showed ‘no remorse’ on confession tape

The 23-year-old behind the bombing spree in Austin, Texas, earlier this month described himself as a “psychopath” in a confession tape he made before killing himself.

In a video he recorded on his phone, Mark Anthony Conditt, who lived in Pflugerville, Texas, showed “no remorse for his actions,” US congressman Michael McCaul told a news conference on Saturday.

“Why would someone do such a senseless act of random violence? To many of us it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense,” said McCaul, who referred to Conditt as a “sick individual”. “All we really have at this point in time... are his own words from his confession tape where he describes himself as a psychopath, apparently expressing no remorse for the killings that he committed.”

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The 25-minute clip was discovered on a mobile phone recovered after Conditt blew himself up when police officers closed in to arrest him, following a series of bombings across the city that left two people dead and five more injured over 10 days in early March.

Three of the devices were left as parcels outside victims’ homes, two were shipped as FedEx parcels and another was placed on a pavement and attached to a tripwire mechanism.

The two victims killed by the bombs, Anthony Stephan House, 39, and 17-year-old Draylen Mason, are both black, and suspected racial motivation for the attacks is being investigated by police. McCaul said that the confession did not appear to include any suggestion of a racial motive.

Police identified Conditt as the bomber after intercepting a FedEx parcel containing “unusual screws and batteries” which could be traced back to him, The Independent reports. “An investigation is underway to find out whether anyone helped him build or plant the devices and to uncover his motives”.