Original subtitles

- A bomb plot at The Home Depot in Long Island.

- Well, that's pretty serious stuff.

- Why that Home Depot? Why is this happening?

- What's wrong with this guy?

Why is he putting so many people in danger?

[sirens wailing]

We had dispatched hundreds of detectives and agents.

- This is a callous, calculating,

horrible individual.

But we didn't have a lead on this guy.

And then at the same time as this investigation,

there's gonna be a storm.

[tense music]

- Sandy is expected to head up the coast,

then turn west,

making landfall near New Jersey

on Tuesday.

♪ ♪

- Hurricane Sandy is threatening

to wipe out our entire investigation.

- You guys gotta keep the case going, right?

- We're doing everything you can possibly do.

And there's not a lot of time.

[explosion]

[dramatic music]

- In the FBI, we make a lot of headlines.

♪ ♪

Drug busts,

mob stings,

terrorist takedowns.

- Get down! Get down!

- We understand why people want to tell stories about us.

- Mark it.

- Freeze! - FBI.

- FBI! - Action!

- But they don't know the half of it.

[indistinct radio chatter]

What really goes down,

we save that for each other

when we're talking agent to agent.

♪ ♪

This is "FBI True."

[tense music]

♪ ♪

- Cindy Coppola is a 23-year veteran of the FBI.

She worked on cases that included

organized crime and terrorism

and took part in multinational investigations

into drug trafficking and money laundering.

Coppola finished her career with the Los Angeles division

running two offices, supervising investigations,

and providing undercover security for special events.

- Steve, I'm so glad we could grab a beer today.

Remind me, when did you come in?

What year was it? - I actually started

in the Bureau back in 1988.

- Steve Troyd was an agent with the FBI for 28 years.

He was an investigator on the terrorist attacks

of September 11th.

Troyd was also a supervisor

in the FBI's New York Metro Gang Task Force.

♪ ♪

- How did you end up getting to LIRA?

- Certain areas, like Long Island,

had actually developed quite a gang problem.

- But as things happen,

you get there and you get other cases.

And, you know, we had a bomb-- an extortionate bomb--case

targeting Home Depot around that time.

- I want to hear about the case now.

A Home Depot case? - Sure.

- What was that? - Yeah.

It was a very successful store.

It was in Huntington, up Rogues and 10th.

Around the middle of October,

a manager, Andy, got a letter in the mail.

- What was exactly in the letter?

- Well, the letter starts off as:

"To the store manager..."

"I want 2 million,

"or I will shut down all your Long Island stores

on Black Friday."

"And pay me this one time,

"and you will have my word you will never hear from me again.

"I will call your store at noon on October 17th

to see what you decide."

- Well, that's pretty serious stuff.

- Yeah.

- Obviously, the manager's thinking,

"Holy shit, there's a bomb in one of my stores."

Home Depot, what did they want to do?

- They evacuate The Home Depot.

And the bomb squad go to the lighting department area,

which was indicated in the ransom letter.

They look through the lighting department,

and they find the bomb.

- A bomb plot at The Home Depot in Long Island.

The FBI confirming a pipe bomb

planted inside on or near a shelf

where innocent people could find it and get hurt.

- This person had rigged it

so that there was a string attached to the shelving.

And if they pulled the box off the shelf,

that would trigger the explosion.

Using one of those robots...

They move the bomb into an area

where no one's gonna be hurt if it goes off.

They X-ray it. They see there's a pip in there.

They decide they're gonna shoot the bomb with a round

that's supposed to knock off the endcap on the pipe

'cause the pipe has two endcaps on it.

And when they're in the process of doing that,

the thing explodes.

[explosion]

So it was a real bomb.

Nobody got hurt, thank God,

but it was pretty damaging for a small pipe bomb.

You know, it shot into a steel door,

and it left a lot of damage on the door.

It shot through the ceiling.

And the walls had debris.

And I was just, like, thinking,

my God, what's wrong with this guy?

Why is he putting so many people in danger?

This is a person who doesn't care

about, you know, your regular guy going into Home Depot

to buy a light for his bathroom.

The question in my mind was, like, who's doing this?

- Going back to the letter, did you send it to the lab?

I mean, 'cause the lab can detect prints, anything.

- So the letter was sent for prints and DNA analysis.

- Anything off of the bomb? No?

- We didn't get any clues from that.

But they did find cat hair in the letter.

- You guys find cat hair?

- There's cat hairs in the letter, yeah.

- That's a little strange,

but at the same token, he's a little crazy.

So what did you do then?

- We look at the most likely suspect--

in this case, the manager--

you know, 'cause he's the guy that brings the letter

to our attention, so right away, it's like,

hmm, is he doing something wrong?

We went into Home Depot, and we met with the manager.

But he was a good guy. He cooperated completely.

He loved working there. He was happy to be there.

He was bragging about the company.

He thought that the corporation was good to the people.

And I ruled him out as a suspect pretty quickly.

The bomber said in his letter

he was gonna call back the manager on October 17th.

We had agents standing by at the location

waiting for that one phone call.

And we were going to try and trace him.

[phone ringing]

- So the manager gets the call.

- Yeah, he gets the ransom call at noon,

and we were listening to every word.

- The phone call was kind of brief.

- What did you learn from that phone call?

- The fact that they knew what number to call.

We're suspicious that it's an employee.

- So it wasn't the general number for Home Depot.

It was a specific extension. - Yeah, it was

a specific extension that he had chosen.

And he showed that he had

at least done some surveillance work.

And he knew where he had a internal phone list,

so it made us think that this is somebody

that is working there.

So we were looking through lists of employees

who had been disciplinary problems,

had quit under bad circumstances,

but nobody stood out.

And then the first phone call, we were able to identify

through the computer system at Home Depot.

And it came back to a phone

that was one of those pay-as-you-go phones.

So that's our one solid link.

But it was hard to kind of track who the buyer was

because it was purchased with cash from a 7-Eleven.

And I have two agents.

And they look at the history of the phone.

So we were able to identify that phone number.

So then we check some of the numbers.

I saw that there was, like, these calls months before.

Calls out to Craigslist ads.

When we had, like, a team of analysts,

they followed up on the phone numbers.

And they looked at the Craigslist ads.

They kind of subpoena it backwards.

- Right, to find out who was buying this stuff

or potentially looking at the ads.

- Exactly. Exactly. - Yeah.

- And they found that this target is buying

a jet ski, scuba gear,

some oxygen bottles.

- So that number that called The Home Depot...

- Right. - Had called these Craigslist--

- Yeah, and they were getting descriptions

from the people that were selling stuff to the subject,

like he's in a green van--

in a Ford van, I believe.

White male. - Oh, well, that helps.

- Yeah. - That helps, right?

'Cause you didn't have anything.

- You're developing some information--

some identifying information.

But we still don't know who he is.

And then a few days later,

a second ransom letter arrives at Home Depot.

Four days before Black Friday,

the biggest shopping day of the year.

[cheering]

The letter reads...

"To keep from being shot from a distance,

I am going to be wired up like a Christmas tree."

"I'm going to deposit in one of your stores

"the morning of the drop

"a new device I designed.

"If you drop off anything

"besides U.S.-circulated currency,

I will end Black Friday."

This letter caused a lot of activity on our part

because it basically shows us how callous this individual is.

- And who knows if there was another bomb somewhere else?

Right? - Absolutely.

And at the same time of this investigation,

we were hearing on the news that there was gonna be

this incredible storm coming, you know?

- Hurricane Sandy is churning its way

up the east coast this evening,

heading for landfall in the mid-Atlantic region

early next week.

- I said, you know, these weather guys are always wrong.

You know? - Yeah.

- So I don't think there's gonna be a storm, you know?

But if a storm does hit the east coast,

the investigation could be turned on its head.

- So what do you guys do next?

- The concern was that it was somebody

who was, you know, working at Home Depot,

was querying this list of Craigslist sites.

We did have people that we interviewed

and questioned for long periods of time

because they were electricians

and they had basic skills to create a bomb.

- Yeah, I mean, well, if you think about it,

people that work at Home Depot have some handyman skills.

- But they were not panning out.

- So were you able to finally track them down?

- There's an IP address.

By stepping out into the modern world

and using a phone, he kind of revealed himself.

And then we were able to subpoena some information--

- Sure, you can do ping order.

Or everything. - Yeah, you can do everything.

And we start getting some specialists involved

who track cell towers.

And we found him.

- This guy matches the description

of the guy who was buying stuff off of Craigslist.

And it turns out that he has a green van,

just like the target that we were looking for.

And he's an employee of Huntington Home Depot.

- What's his name? - Daniel Patrick Sheehan.

And it's a relief to think that,

okay, we have a viable subject here

because, you know, he's saying

that he's gonna plant more devices in the Home Depots

and, you know, we're hoping to stop that if we can.

- You know where he lives now, right?

- Yeah, he lives in a nice little home--

a tudor home-- in Deer Park.

And he's got a wife and a child.

And they have two cars.

- So you know the guy's name now,

you know where he lives, all that stuff.

So what do you guys do next?

- The next thing we're gonna do is we're gonna put,

you know, a tracking device on him to keep tabs on him

to have him under surveillance--

technical surveillance, physical surveillance,

phone surveillance.

We had all these different parts,

and it all came together very quickly.

But we don't want to scare him off

because we still need more evidence.

And to make matters worse,

Superstorm Sandy was about to hit.

- Businesses are bracing for Hurricane Sandy.

And residents are hoping walls of sandbags will hold.

- There were thing happening around me that I saw--

that, like, people were, you know, boarding up windows.

Nobody had a second to do anything for their families.

- Right. And you guys got to keep the case going, right,

in spite of this storm?

- Yeah, and this storm is bringing even more people

to Home Depot who are desperate for supplies.

We got to catch this guy.

He was threatening something

that could have terrible consequences.

- The entire eastern seaboard of the United States

has been put on alert.

- This thing hits, and I'm sitting in my living room,

thinking, oh, man.

- Welcome to "CBS This Morning."

As daylight arrives, much of the east coast

is waking up to see the full devastation

of Superstorm Sandy.

- The storm was pretty bad.

There were some trees down.

There were power outages all over the place.

- Did you lose power? - I lost power.

- Your whole life's disrupted, you know?

- Oh, yeah, terrible disruption.

You know, you're sleeping in the cold, dark.

I'm charging my phone in the car.

You know, you're showering in the gym, at the office,

'cause they have power there.

- And your suspect is still at large, right?

- We had sent a detective to his house

on some other ruse call

just to see what was going on at the house.

- Don't you have enough evidence to arrest him?

- No, we needed to catch him with the phone,

but it had been turned off for a while.

So I figured I'd walk into Home Depot

and try to find him myself.

He's in the window and doors department.

I found him.

When I met him face-to-face,

it was strange to see how normal he was.

And I said, "Hey, are there any generators?"

And then, you know, he said, like,

"Home Depot was unprepared."

You know, and I thought to myself, oh, that's interesting.

You know, he's critical... both: Of Home Depot.

- He's obviously angry with the corporate structure, you know?

Even if it was just a passing comment,

that was just his gut reaction.

And I said, "Okay, thank you," and I just moved along.

You know, it kind of clicked with me

what kind of person he was.

- Disgruntled. - Disgruntled.

Cynical, right?

Everybody's out for themselves.

- When did you guys get enough evidence

to arrest this guy?

- We're doing everything you can possibly do.

We're waiting for his burner phone to be turned back on

so we can see what he's up to.

And I get a call from the surveillance operation guys.

And they're like,

"The phone just went on for, like, ten seconds."

- Oh, my gosh, finally.

- And this guy is in a Home Depot parking lot.

It's not the one he works in.

He worked in the Huntington one,

and he went to the Commack one.

And he basically turned the phone on.

And he's sitting in his van

in the Commack Home Depot parking lot.

We're like, okay. We told the SO guys,

"Keep on him. We'll be right there."

A bunch of us jumped in the car.

So we're driving up there now and find out

he's driving around the mall slowly.

- But you don't know what he's doing.

- We had no clue.

For all we knew, he could be using the phone

to detonate a bomb.

So we had to act fast.

So we tell SO to stop him.

And we're gonna engage this guy.

So they stop his van.

SO goes over to him.

It's a very tense situation.

And he says, "Hey, listen,

"you know, we're getting a report about some stolen iPads

from a location," an Apple Store, something,

"and your van matches the description

"of the van that was observed in the area

"during one of the robberies.

"And would you mind giving us consent

so we can just eliminate you?"

And, you know, he's like, "Yeah.

No, I didn't steal no laptops."

You know, he's completely oblivious to it.

And then SO looks in the van, and he sees the Tracfone.

And the battery's out of it.

And he puts the phone together and calls me.

- Oh, with the phone?

Oh, that's awesome. - Yeah.

So I'm like, it's the phone.

And then we decided we're gonna arrest him.

- Awesome, right away. - Yeah, which is great.

- That's great, yeah. - Great collaborative effort.

- What was his reaction?

- He's basically in denial.

Well, we get him back to the office.

We had some guys there that were ready to interview him.

And he's making up stories like,

"That phone is one of the guys'--

"the day laborers'.

"I let them use that phone.

You know, rather than my phone--"

- So he's bullshitting. - He's bullshitting.

So we caught him with the burner phone.

It's a pretty damning piece of evidence.

And we had the two letters he wrote.

Then he's in a position where, "Okay, you got me."

But now he wants to talk about what he did,

you know, like, how it's a ego thing,

like how smart he was,

like how he put cat hair in one of the letters

to throw us off.

And he doesn't have one. He took a cat off the street.

Put hairs... [laughs]

- Jesus, that's weird.

- Just think of the time that this guy spent on this.

You know, and then the Craigslist stuff

was all a part of his plan to get the money.

The wetsuit, the air bottles, the jet ski--

he was gonna set up a scenario

where he had this jet ski in Huntington Harbor.

And he went out and he bought a cooler

that he attached to the jet ski.

And then, with his wetsuit

and his basically reserve bottles of oxygen,

he was gonna be under the jet ski in the water,

and we were gonna place the money

in the cooler on the jet ski.

And then he was gonna take the money out

from underneath the jet ski.

- Get out. - I swear.

- It's like he's watching too many James Bond movies.

- If you know what a million dollars looks like

when it's a pile of money on a table, it's a giant brick.

- Yeah, he's not gonna be able to, like--

- And these little bottles?

'Cause we had them in evidence.

And he's like, "Yeah, they have 60 breaths each."

And I'm like, "You know how quickly

you can go through 60 breaths?" - 60 breaths?

- You know, and you're underwater,

and you're exerting yourself,

and you're trying to move this money.

And, you know, the whole scheme

depends on whether we're gonna cooperate.

- So did you finally find out

the reason why he wanted to bomb Home Depot?

- He has these ridiculous reasons.

One, he's like, "Well, they only gave me

"nine hours a week to work.

And they made me work on my birthday."

And I'm like, "Okay."

- Oh, I worked many of my birthdays.

- I can't remember the last time I had--

I used to go out and arrest people on my birthday

'cause that was, like, a great thing.

And then he goes, "And they took my Homer Award away."

- Homer Award? What is that?

- He goes, "It was a $100 gift card."

And then... - Oh, my.

- All right, so you want $2 million

because you lost your $100 gift card?

- So did you guys proffer him?

And did they offer a plea? - Yeah.

So, you know, he's looking at 30 years for what he did.

But he's insisting, you know, the bomb wasn't active,

the fuse was not attached.

But it doesn't matter. He's gonna go to trial.

His wife is in the back of the courtroom.

And I looked at her face.

And you could just see she was so angry that he did this.

- Yeah, a shame. - And, you know, he's like,

"Honey, I did this for us." - Yeah, I know.

- It was just like, oh, my God, what happened to this guy?

He was like a stone cold killer blowing things up,

and now he's worried his wife is gonna,

you know, kick his ass.

- His attorney says he was depressed

over losing work hours.

- The ignition system that he created,

he deliberately left incomplete and left out key components

so that it could not ignite.

So that's the defense.

- He's trying to say, "Oh, I did an extortion,

"but I didn't use a bomb 'cause a bomb would've been reckless.

A bomb would've hurt people, and that's not me."

- But it was explodable, right?

[explosion]

- It blew up when we tried to deactivate it.

- He's trying to minimize.

He was trying to minimize basically.

- Yeah, he's finagling a lesser sentence.

- Sure. - And I said,

"You go to trial and you blow trial,

"you got 30 years you're looking at.

"You're a 50-year-old man.

Like, your life is over essentially."

"No, no." I said,

"If you get a plea for ten years,

you'll still be able to go back and be with your son."

And he said to me, "No, in my opinion,

ten years is as much as 30."

And I'm like, "You're quitting.

"You're quitting on your kid. You're quitting on your wife.

You're quitting on your life." - Yeah, himself.

- "And, you know, you're looking

to blame other people for your failure."

But, I mean, I was of the opinion, like,

how hard am I gonna try to convince this guy?

We had him dead to rights.

The case was solid. - Sure.

- A seasoned prosecutor is gonna destroy this guy.

And-- - You guys are gonna win.

- We were gonna win. - Yeah.

[dramatic music]

I'm so glad we got a chance to get to know each other.

- Yeah. No, it was nice. - And have a beer, you know?

- Yeah. - Congrats.

Good job on the case. - Thank you. Thank you.

- I'm glad you're retired, but I've got one question.

- Uh-oh.

- Do you still shop at Home Depot?

[laughter]

- All the time. - Awesome.

[dramatic music]

♪ ♪