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by evan_ 1993 days ago
I don’t think they would have gone to his house or received a search warrant based solely on those two details.

They have the wreckage of RV, so they should have been able to find its VIN. That would have led to identifying the owner. It’s pretty likely at this point that it was the same RV regardless of whether the owner actually set the bomb.
1 comments
notacoward 1993 days ago
> they should have been able to find its VIN

I don't think that's as certain as "should" suggests. Some vehicles have the VIN on the engine block or various highly recognizable part of the frame. Did this one? I don't know what's normal for an RV. If it was like a lot of vehicles and only had it on the front corner of the dash, it might be hard to find among that many pieces over that large an area. And that's not even counting the possibility that the perpetrator deliberately removed it.

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evan_ 1993 days ago
That style of RV is literally just a production van with a new body dropped on, so I’d assume it has the VIN in the usual places.

They have now confirmed that they used tips as well as the VIN to idwntify the owner:

> Tips from the public helped authorities initially identify Warner as a suspect. The Tennessee Highway Patrol discovered a vehicle part with the VIN that linked the RV to him.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.tennessean.com/amp/40504880...

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notacoward 1993 days ago
Glad that they found it, but I don't think that changes the point. The "usual places" is just one or two places on each model, and bomb sites are messy. They could have been diligent and not found it. You were expressing a certainty that wasn't warranted, and in a way that was slightly disparaging to those actually on the ground doing the work.
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evan_ 1993 days ago
My “should” was intended in the sense of “I’m optimistic that they would find it”, not “if they don’t find it it’s because they didn’t try hard enough.”

“You should find carrots in the produce section”, not “you should wash your hands after sneezing”.

If I wanted to convey that tone I should have italicized it or used asterisks. That should have carried my intention more accurately.

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