The “pro-mortalist” maniac who detonated a car bomb outside a Palm Springs IVF clinic over the weekend had burned down his own family home when he was just 9 years old, his dad has revealed.
Richard Bartkus told KTLA that his son, Guy Edward Bartkus, had a habit of playing with matches as a child — and later became obsessed with making smoke bombs.
“After he had burned the house down, he started changing a little bit, he’d light fires,” the father said as he teared up.
As a teen, Bartkus then developed a fascination with the smoke bombs and model rockets, his dad said.
The older Bartkus spoke out after it was revealed his 25-year-old son bombed the American Reproductive Centers in Palm Springs on Saturday — killing himself and injuring four others.
The dad, who noted he hadn’t spoken to his kid in a decade, described his son as “a follower who was easily influenced by others.”
He alleged, too, that Bartkus’ mother was “lenient” on him as the parents were divorcing.
“I was too strict for him, so he wanted to stay with Mom until the divorce came through,” he told the outlet.
“Mom was lenient.”
Bartkus, who had tried to livestream the car-bomb explosion that gutted the IVF clinic, left behind writings detailing pro-death or “pro-mortalist” beliefs and condemned bringing people into the world without their consent, the feds said.
Authorities are still probing how Bartkis — a former military member — constructed the bomb used in the attack.
“This was a targeted attack against the IVF facility,” Akil Davis, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office, said on Sunday.
“Make no mistake: we are treating this, as I said yesterday, as an intentional act of terrorism.”
Bartkus’ body was discovered near the vehicle – a 2010 silver Ford Fusion – in the aftermath, the feds said.
Police also found an AK-47 and an AR-style rifle, as well as ammunition, next to the exploded vehicle
Despite the explosion, all embryos at the facility were miraculously saved, Davis said.
“Good guys one, bad guys zero,” he said.
Bartkus wasn’t known to the FBI prior to the incident, the fed said.
“Thank God today happened to be a day that we have no patients,” Dr Maher Abdallah, who leads the clinic, said in the aftermath.
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