Suburban bombing suspect in jailhouse interview

December 7, 2006 (WLS) -- Thomas Zajac is being held in Salt Lake City on charges that he tried to blow up a library. He is also the prime suspect in two suburban Chicago attacks.

August 2004: a pipe bomb is found on Main Street. The DuPage County bomb squad dismantles the device without an explosion and no one is hurt.

Last September 1, in nearby Hinsdale: a similar pipe bomb blows up inside a trash can at the Metra train station. No one is hurt.

Two weeks after Hinsdale, September 15 in downtown Salt Lake City: a pipe bomb blows up inside the main library, destroying some windows. The bomb is set off by a model rocket igniter purchased at an Illinois hobby store. Some packaging for the igniter is found near the explosion and investigators say fingerprints on the wrapper are from 53-year-old Chicago native Thomas Zajac.

"I had nothing to do with the event of that day in any part," Zajac said in a telephone interview from the Utah jail where he is held.

Utah authorities say the bomber is seen on library security cameras entering the building with a package and leaving without it. Zajac says the man seen on tape is overweight.

"I'm not a heavyset individual. I don't have a belly," Zajac said.

Certainly, an individual of Zajac's size could make himself appear to be heavier set?

"I don't think you can make yourself out to be a heavy set man with a distended belly. These things cover your entire person, they don't just cover your stomach. It's not like you can stuff a towel in your shirt," Zajac said.

While fingerprints may have connected Zajac to the Salt Lake City bombing, there was a letter received by Hinsdale police in mid-October that threatened future bombings in that western suburb. Federal authorities have linked that letter to Zajac, as well as a letter written to Downer's Grove police after the attack there two years ago.

Some investigators suspect the bomb attacks are to avenge Zajac's encounters with local police.

"I don't have bad feelings towards the police in Downers Grove or in Hinsdale, certainly no reason to be spiteful towards the police," said Zajac.

Zajac was charged in of those municipalities for striking his wife.

At the time of his arrest for the Utah library bombing, Zajac was on probation in Illinois. He had been convicted of pouring glue into a tollway coin basket, apparently angry about a$100 in I-Pass fines. The evidence that nailed Zajac in that damage to tollway property case was much the same as a major piece of evidence in the Salt Lake City bombing, a security tape that authorities say showed him doing it.

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