FBI agents and local law enforcement investigators who spent three solid days late last week and early this week searching for evidence at the Twentynine Palms residence of the 25-year-old man it is now their consensus opinion was solely responsible for the car bomb explosion outside the American Reproductive Centers fertility clinic in Palm Springs on May 17 have concluded their extensive survey of the property.
Normal activity in the neighborhood in the 5500 block of Adobe Road has resumed. Authorities have offered assurance that any explosives or ordnance it was earlier believed might be located on the property along with other possible hazards has been removed.
Guy Edward Bartkus, a 2017 graduate of Yucca Valley High School, drove his car into the parking lot of the American Reproductive Centers fertility clinic located at 1199 North Indian Canyon Drive in Palm Springs, about a quarter of an hour before 11 a.m. on Saturday May 17.
The clinic was closed on weekends, and this allowed him to locate his vehicle, a 2010 silver Ford Fusion with the license plate 8HWS848, close to the rear of the building. He got out of the car, bringing with him a tripod and a video camera. He placed the camera in a position calculated to bring both the Ford Fusion and the building in which the clinic was housed within the camera’s field of focus. After Bartkus tinkered with and adjusted the video equipment, what investigators have now conclusively determined was an improvised explosive device inside the vehicle containing a “substantial” quantity of a nitrate-based explosive detonated at 10:52 a.m. There was extensive but incomplete damage to the clinic, in which a huge hole was created in the wall closest to the Fusion, a major portion of the building’s roof collapsed, and a good portion of the clinic itself was sliced through. Nearby buildings sustained a lesser degree of damage, as debris was sent flying as far as an eighth of a mile away and some windows even further away than that were shattered. Investigators believe the explosives were arranged in the vehicle and the vehicle parked in such a position as to vector as great of force toward the building as possible.
Paradoxically, the blast might have been so intense that it resulted in lighter damage to the building than a lesser explosion might have wrought, as the force unleashed launched the car across the parking lot away from the building, simultaneously mutilating it into a metallic and melted plastic hull.
Shredded pieces of Bartkus’s remains were strewn across the parking lot and out into the street. A firearm and ammunition, which may have been on Bartkus’s person when the explosion occurred, were also found relatively close to the vehicle.
The blast caused a temporary flash fire inside the building, which resulted in smoke billowing up through the displaced roof. A quick response from a fire company based at Palm Spring Fire Station Number 1, located on North Indian Canyon Drive less than a mile south of the clinic, prevented any of the embryos stored on the premises from being damaged or compromised.
Within an hour and ten minutes, no fewer than four FBI agents were on the scene. In short, order, they had extrapolated from the remnants of Bartkus’s vehicle and security video footage in the area – including visual and other data available from multiple medical offices and a hospital proximate to the clinic – enough information to postulate that Bartkus was involved. By 2:30 p.m., a search warrant for his last known residence, his mother’s home in Twentynine Palms located at 5535 Adobe Road, had been obtained.
By 3;20 p.m., FBI agents accompanied by deputies and detectives with the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department converged on the home,. Sheriff’s deputies closed off Adobe Road to prevent anyone from entering into the area. As agents together with the sheriff’s bomb squad members gingerly approached the single story, 1,640 square foot home on a slightly-larger-than-one-third-of-an-acre lot, other deputies fanned out into nearby neighborhoods, starting with the one just north of Manana Drive and south of Siesta Drive, advising residents to evacuate.
Meanwhile agents, investigators with the Palm Springs Police Department and sheriff’s detectives conducted an intensive exploration of who Bartkus was.
An initial conclusion, correct it would turn out, was that he was responsible for the blast. Another immediate assumption, one which subsequent discoveries would override as inaccurate, was that he had accidentally killed himself when the bomb detonated prematurely. Investigative work continued as to whom he was working or coordinating with and whether other acts of violence were imminent and where.
In the immediate vicinity of 5535 Adobe Road, a sheriff’s department helicopter remained overhead, scouting, at first, whether anyone came from or went onto the property, behind which was a crude dirt alleyway that might have provided a means of escape or approach. The helicopter also served as a platform for the use of technical surveillance and examination tools before personnel, clad in both blast protection gear and hazardous chemical suits, accompanied by a canine, moved methodically toward and into the structures on the property.
Although the FBI has made no direct statements and had discouraged the sheriff’s department from doing so as well, sources close to the on-site search of the property said there were remnants of what might be described as a small-scale explosives laboratory in the garage. In at least four cases, items that might have been booby traps were detonated as a precaution on the spot. None of those triggered a larger explosion. By late Saturday, investigators on the scene had secured video which thoroughly profiled the home and its contents.
Investigators sought out personal details regarding Bartkus, learning in short order that he was born in Waterbury, Connecticut in September 1999, moved with his family to California in 2002, where they initially lived in North Palm Springs before moving to Joshua Tree, Yucca Valley and Flamingo Heights north of Yucca Valley. His parents divorced in 2013, and both he and his sister, Regina, who is one year older than he is, remained with his mother. He attended Landers Elementary School and Yucca Valley High School, where he maintained a 3.47 grade point average after he was put on an “independent study” track beginning with his junior year. As a teenager, he developed computer code writing skills. From an early age, he had an interest in pyrotechnics.
Using all available data bases available to law enforcement, including those maintained by the National Crime Information Center, the Justice Data Interface Controller System, the California Law Enforcement Telecom System, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department’s Central Name Index and San Bernardino County Superior Court records as sources, investigators drew a complete blank. Bartkus had no prior interaction with law enforcement agencies and had flown entirely under the radar.
It appears that in some cases, at the request of federal officials, references to Bartkus and his family members have been removed from public data bases over the last 72 hours.
Investigators soon determined Barkus had created and left behind an extensive profile cataloging himself as a promortalist, whose philosophy featured a heavy dose of anti-natalism.
Pro-mortalists embrace death as a desirable exit from life, which they define as consisting of continuous suffering. Anti-natalism is a belief system that holds human procreation is an immoral act in that it brings people into the world without their consent and consigns them to years, decades and conceivably a century or more of suffering.
In exploring Bartkus’s on-line postings, it was discovered that his intention all along had been to commit suicide, while videoing it to livestream the event to the world. By the time the Sentinel had replicated the steps the FBI took in finding Bartkus’s on-line postings, the video of his suicide/bombing of the American Reproductive Centers fertility clinic in Palm Springs had been taken down. Much of what Bartkus had uploaded to the site https://promortalism.com/ and which is yet available at https://archive.ph/viYHu or Fuck you pro-lifers! remains intact.
Bartkus’s postings offer a glimpse of his world view.
In those postings, Bartkus made the point that “basically, I’m a promortalist,” which he said did not make him in favor of “psycho killers.” He argued that his embrace of death had a compassionate side. He counseled others to accept and “understand your death is already a guarantee, and you can thank your parents for that one. All a promortalist is saying is let’s make it happen sooner rather than later (and preferably peaceful rather than some disease or accident), to prevent your future suffering, and, more importantly, the suffering your existence will cause to all the other sentient beings.”
Bartkus said his philosophy was closely related to “negative utilitarianism, efilism, abolitionist veganism, basically, philosophies that have realized religion is retarded, but that there is objective value in the universe, and it lies in the harm being experienced by sentient beings.”
Efilism is a belief system holding life to be fundamentally broken and that all sentient beings should stop reproducing. The term is derived from spelling the word “life” backwards, symbolizing the idea that ceasing to exist is the only saving grace for all of Earth’s inhabitants.
According to Bartkus, “The end goal is for the truth (efilism) to win, and once it does, we can finally begin the process of sterilizing this planet of the disease of life. Life can only continue as long as people hold the delusional belief that it is not a zero sum game causing senseless torture, and messes it can never, or only partially, clean up. I think we need a war against pro-lifers. It is clear at this point that these people aren’t only stupid, they simply do not care about the harm they are perpetuating by being willing agents for a DNA molecule. This should not be seen as tolerable to any intelligent and caring person. Don’t be fooled by the ones who play stupid and pretend they don’t understand these simple truths. It’s just their way of playing with you and saying ‘fuck you, we don’t care’.”
His philosophy is, or was, Bartkus stated, “the polar opposite of nonsense like nihilism.”
On the website, Bartkus, intentionally using the lower case, states, “I just wanted to say, your god definitely doesn’t exist, but if he did, I’d choose satan over your evil god. Did you ever think that maybe the bible is just slander against satan, and that satan just realized what a fucking creep your god is?”
A driving factor toward Bartkus’s suicide and the bombing, the website postings show, was his relationship with and the fate of a woman investigators have now determined was Sophie Tinney.
Bartkus knew Tinney through his mother, who before she married Bartkus’s father, Richard Bartkus, was married to Daniel Tinney, whom she divorced in 1997. It is unclear whether Sophie Tinney was Guy Barkus’s half sister or, perhaps, his mother’s ex-husband’s daughter. Guy Bartkus referred to Sophie Tinney as an extremely close friend.
Sophie Tinney in a number of social media posts, including TikTok and Reddit, explained her antinatalist philosophy. She asserted that because children before being conceived have not consented to being born, their rights have been abridged by their parents. “I don’t believe it is in anyone’s best interest to go from a state of non-existence to a state of existence because I don’t believe happiness and pain are separate metrics,” she stated while she was still alive. The wages of life are pain and boredom, she said.
According to Bartkus he and Tinney were both anti-sex, although they were not asexual. He also characterized Tinney and himself as “misandrists, VegAntinatalists and negative utilitarians.” Misandrists are opposed to men and vegantinatalists are vegans who oppose procreation, while negative utilitarians are opposed to suffering.
He, like Tinney, had a borderline personality disorder, Bartkus stated.
What is known is that on April 20, slightly less than a month prior to the Palm Springs bombing, Lars Eugene Nelson, 29, fatally shot Tinney, his girlfriend, at their Fox Island, Washington home. Nelson called 911 to report her death as a suicide, but according to subsequent statements, her death came as the consequence of a suicide pact in which she had requested that Nelson shoot her while she slept. Tinney was shot three times in the head and Nelson has been charged with second-degree murder under Washington law, while prosecutors there consider escalating the charge to first degree murder.
“I’ve known for a few years now I wasn’t going to allow myself to make it past my 20s,” Bartkus posted. “Recently my best friend Sophie killed herself (she got the guy she was living with to shoot her while she was sleeping, her preferred method), and I don’t think I really knew how much it was going to affect me. I’ve never related to someone so much, and can’t imagine I ever would again. We were both antisex (don’t mistake for asexual, I’m talking like r/antisex) misandrists, VegAntinatalist, negative utilitarians. [We] Both also had borderline personality ‘disorder’. Anyways, we got along quite well and it was very nice, especially when you feel like you are in an apocalypse and nobody else seems to get anything. IIRC [If I recall correctly] we had agreed that if one of us died, the other would probably soon follow. It’s just too much of a loss when there’s nobody else you really relate to significantly.”
On Monday, May 19, it was confirmed through DNA verification that the thoroughly dismembered body found at the scene of the Palm Springs blast was Bartkus.
The same day, a scientific analysis of remnants found at the scene of the bombing as well as of materials found at the home on Adobe Road showed that the device utilized pentaerythritol tetranitrate as a primary explosive. Pentaerythritol tetranitrate, also known as PETN, is an extremely powerful explosive material with a relative effectiveness factor greater than nitroglycerin. For that reason, it is often used by terrorists or guerrillas in car bombings or efforts to destroy buildings or facilities.
Just prior to the noon hour on May 19, the sheriff’s department signaled to the residents at the periphery of the nearby neighborhoods furthest from the Bartkus residence that they were free to return to their homes. A “hard closure” from Two Mile Road north to White Sands Drive was not lifted until the following day.
At this point, FBI profilers, working with the advantage of having Bartkus’s identity and being armed with a compendium of information about him available from disparate sources including his academic records, 126 IQ, work history, tax records, social media postings, internet and telephonic communications, have determined that he was, most likely, working alone in the bombing of the clinic.
Around the time he was a senior in high school, Barkus began to refine his bomb-making skills. Videos posted to the internet in the 2017-to-2019 timeframe show him performing experiments or demonstrations with high-power explosives, incendiary devices, high-speed explosives, shaped charges and in one particularly alarming video, the contents of a possible “dirty bomb,” consisting or radioactive uranium ore.
In the weeks and days prior to the bombing, Barkus signaled his intention in somewhat ominous terms, in postings to the internet forum Sanctioned Suicide, a creation of Joaquín Galante and Lamarcus Small, who go by the online pseudonyms Serge and Marquis, in which the subject of suicide and suicide methods are openly discussed and where suicide is freely encouraged.
An individual, using the moniker “IndictEvolution” who used the idiosyncratic spelling of “VegAntinatalist” in describing himself, on May 5 gave an in-depth account of how he intended to commit suicide in an isolated area of the desert using a timed explosive device capable of an “8,000 meters per second” detonation affixed to his head that would go off after he had fallen into a drug-induced sleep. Later that day, however, he reported that the attempt had been abandoned because the sleepative agent had failed to work.
Two days before the fertility clinic bombing, on May 15, Bartkus, again in the guise of IndictEvolution, Iogged onto Sanctioned Suicide, declaring he was purposed to make use of a timed improvised explosive device in his car to create “some extra drama that I probably should not say” after he killed l himself by means of chemical reaction that would produce carbon monoxide in the confined space of his vehicle prior to the explosion.
While the FBI did not confirm that Bartkus was IndictEvolution, Palm Springs Police Chief Andrew Mills indicated as much when he said that the roughly 300 subscribers to the IndictEvolution account and/or chat groups who had read those postings or had knowledge of what Bartkus was going to do had violated the law by not reporting Bartkus’s plans to law enforcement and should therefore be prosecuted.
-Mark Gutglueck