AUSTIN, Texas _ Police Chief Brian Manley was clearing the early morning wave of administrative emails when his cellphone buzzed on March 2, 2018. Dispatch had just sent officers to a house in Northeast Austin on a possible fatality call: A 39-year-old father of one had just been found outside his front door with injuries that appeared to have come from an explosion.
The initial radio chatter from the first patrol officers on the scene was sketchy. Manley, a former Austin homicide detective who had risen through the ranks of the Austin police administration, mulled for a moment: Some kind of freak early morning accident? A blown water heater? Some poor guy welding too close to a gas tank?
He asked the watch commander to keep him posted and turned back to his computer.
Across town, Detective Rolando Ramirez was wrapping up errands on what was supposed to be his day off. But as the new guy on the homicide squad, he was due to catch the city's next murder case. Ramirez had learned not to prejudge anything in his previous assignment as a child abuse unit investigator, but what his boss had just told him _ a deadly explosion rocking a subdivision lined with 1980s-era starter homes just before 7 a.m. _ sounded strange.
In the 20 minutes it took Ramirez to reach the red-brick house midway down Haverford Drive, a crime-scene team had strung yellow police tape across the wide driveway, the brick-arched entryway and the manicured yard.
Even from the curb, Ramirez could see pockmarks dotting the home's front door. The first officers at the scene recounted how the dead man's bloodied chest was so damaged that the neighbor who heard the blast and rushed to help couldn't figure out where to start CPR. Though this didn't look like an accident, it wasn't clear what it was. Ramirez quizzed each of his fellow homicide detectives: "Anybody worked a case like this?"
Back at police headquarters, more people appeared in Manley's doorway. Each update was more worrisome than the last. The then-interim chief canceled his morning appointments, hustled into a Ford Explorer with an assistant and swung north toward Interstate 35.
The quiet street at the center of the Harris Ridge neighborhood was soon jammed with idling Austin Police Department squad cars and, by midafternoon, a long row of federal sedans. Agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives regional office combed the grass for tiny bomb fragments. Putting all those pieces back together might be their only way to track down whoever had just blown up Anthony Stephan House.
What happened that day sparked a manhunt unlike anything Austin had ever seen. Over the next 19 days, more than 500 federal and local police joined in a deadly race to figure out who was planting bombs across a city that grew more afraid with each explosion.
The trail ultimately led to a 23-year-old with no previous bomb-making experience or training.
The bomber's reign of terror overshadowed what is generally an upbeat time in Austin as the city takes the world stage with South by Southwest. Instead of the usual glowing festival coverage, national media headlines described a city gripped by fear.
A year later, officials have shared the fullest account so far about an investigation that was equal parts old-fashioned police work and high-tech surveillance. They also acknowledged the anxiety that stalked their bustling command post in East Austin, even as they urged residents to be vigilant but calm.
"It was a terror that held over a long period," Manley said.
In the end, what solved the case was classic law enforcement teamwork: Armed with Texas motor vehicle records, ATF explosives expertise and the results of dogged legwork across Central Texas, a midlevel civilian FBI analyst would ultimately put together the key puzzle pieces that led authorities to the Austin bomber.
