A "miserable" father blew up his car, killing his 2-year-old son, his friend and himself

A man used homemade explosives to blow up a car last weekend. He committed suicide, his infant son and an adult friend in a grisly murder-suicide which he described planning in angry letters sent to police and family members, investigators said. .

Jacob Schmoyer, 26, sent the letters shortly before the blast to Allentown who killed him, his 2-year-old son, Jonathan "JJ" Schmoyer, and a friend, 66-year-old David Hallman , announced the authorities. A letter was delivered on Tuesday, the other Wednesday, dated September 29, said Special Agent Don Robinson of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

"He was miserable," said Robinson. "At bottom, the four letters described a miserable life, he was dissatisfied with himself. … He admitted to committing a number of criminal acts and did not think it would be better. There was a lot of hate there, some directed against Mr. Hallman and others against his son.

The crimes he admitted included robberies and break-ins, Robinson said.

"There is a lot of anger, there is a lot of vitriol in the letters, and he was very meticulous about wanting to make sure we knew how he had organized this thing," Robinson said.

The reason Schmoyer had targeted Hallman was unclear. Mr. Robinson added that he had "pulled" the man to his vehicle on the night of the explosion, which scattered debris and remains of bodies over a large area and forced several days to close several streets. the city.

"The scene is probably the most horrible thing I've ever seen," Allentown police chief Tony Alsleben told CBS News earlier this week. "It was a big scene, there were a lot of components involved." There is a lot of evidence, so it takes time to process them. "

US Assistant Attorney John Gallagher described the crime scene as a "nightmare".

"We asked our police to make sense of what was really a war zone," he said.

The investigation showed that the craft craft, consisting of two unspecified explosives, was either in the center console of the vehicle, or near the passenger seat. Schmoyer was in the driver's seat, Hallman in the front passenger seat and the toddler in a car seat at the back.

Schmoyer's grandmother, Kathleen Pond, told the WFMZ that she received one of Schmoyer's letters on Wednesday. She did not detail her content, but said, "I really believed that he would never do it, maybe in my heart I knew that he would do it for himself, but never for JJ "

Shannon Rehrig, Jonathan Schmoyer's aunt, described his father as "diabolical" in an interview with Allentown's morning call, adding that Jacob Schmoyer had written in one of the letters that he " had something against autism, which he suspected JJ had. "

Rehrig, the boy's mother's sister, Jasmine Kerecz, said Kerecz "wanted to believe that Jake was not able to do it. She wanted to believe that it was an accident. But that gave her the closure she needs.

Lehigh County Coroner Scott Grim said the three men died as a result of traumatic injuries related to the blast, which occurred in a densely populated block of the city around 9:30 pm. Saturday. Thousands of people attended a minor league hockey game two blocks away.

"He knew that he was also putting a lot more people in danger," Gallagher said. "It's a miracle that no other public is seriously hurt or injured in this case."

Some residents of the area were able to return to their homes on Wednesday afternoon, but the owners of some houses heavily damaged by the blast may not be able to return for several days, the deputy chief of police said. Allentown at the Morning Call.

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