MrBallen

And also now, because the feds had completed a preliminary assessment of the bomb, Shepard could actually imagine how the bombing went down.

There was a six-inch hole in the foyer floor, and Shepard now knew that that was where the bomb had been placed, right there on the ground, probably concealed in some kind of a small box or package.

From the autopsy, which had shown distinct damage to Kem's right hand, Shepard knew that what likely happened was that she had spotted the package and picked it up with her right hand, which then triggered the explosion.

And this was actually the single most important thing the feds had been able to determine, that the bomb was motion activated.

This was huge because it meant the bomber did not have to be at or even near Kem's house to trigger the explosion manually.

which meant they could have left this thing there any time during the weekend.

This also explained why there were a bunch of wires and bomb-making materials found in the basement.

Because if the bomb had been built somewhere else and transported to Kem's house in, say, a car, the bomb could have exploded along the way.

So what likely happened was that Kem's killer brought a partially finished bomb to Kem's house that would not detonate as they carried it,

And then they put the final touches on it right on site once it was actually in position in the foyer.

This also meant the bomber had to be pretty sophisticated because building a bomb like this took technical skill.

It took some intelligence and real attention to detail because if you don't have those things, you can set off the bomb and kill yourself.

And so in Shepard's mind, this likely took Kem's mother, Cricket, right off the table.

She just did not strike him as organized enough or really coherent enough to build this type of bomb.

She just seemed way too scatterbrained.

Kem's exes, Dale Fosdick and Todd Wenger, both worked with machines for a living, so they were definitely still in.

And her fiancé, Kurt, was highly educated, so he was still in.

Shepard wasn't sure about Phil Hartman, the co-worker who Kem had accused of sexually harassing her.

He had reached Phil by phone that morning, and Phil had told him he was working in Louisiana at the time the bomb went off, hundreds of miles away.

But Shepard knew just being physically far away from the bomb when it went off was not a perfect alibi, because it was motion-activated.