Suspect in Palm Springs bombing is said to have died in blast

Investigators on Sunday identified a 25-year-old man as the suspect in the bombing outside a fertility clinic in Palm Springs, California, as they searched for the motive behind the blast that damaged several blocks downtown and, they believe, killed him as well.

The suspect, Guy Edward Bartkus of Twentynine Palms, California, had “nihilistic ideations,” authorities said, and had specifically targeted the clinic. Officials called the bombing an act of terrorism and said they were examining writings that could be related to the attack, which happened Saturday.

On a website that promotes the idea of terminating life, an audio recording features a man who said he was going to bomb an in vitro fertilization clinic because he was angry at his own existence.

Three people familiar with the investigation said agents are examining that website to try to verify whether the bomber had made those statements.

On Sunday, Richard Bartkus, 75, the father of the suspect, said he believed the voice on the recording was his son’s. Richard Bartkus, of Yucca Valley, California, said that he had not seen his son in 10 years and that he had no idea his son had held opinions of the kind voiced on the recording. Earlier, Bartkus had said he was shocked when a relative texted him Saturday that his son had been implicated in the bombing.

Although officials did not say Guy Bartkus was the lone suspect, they did say they were not actively searching for others. They also said Sunday that there was no continuing threat to the community involving this attack.

Richard Bartkus described his son as having been a boy who liked tinkering with small model rockets, and said that in September 2009, at age 9, his son lit the family home on fire while playing with matches. “He burned the house down in Yucca Valley,” he said.

An article about the fire in the Hi-Desert Star of Yucca Valley said that the family lost everything, though Bartkus said no one was hurt. His son was placed on juvenile probation, but the incident was later expunged from his record, he said.

Bartkus said that as a teenager, his son would make “stink bombs” and “smoke bombs.”

“Nothing major, nothing like a ‘bomb’ bomb, but he’d build rockets, shoot them in the air,” Bartkus said.

In 2016, a court ordered the son to enter therapy, though the reason and circumstances of the case are unclear.

Bartkus said that his son was impressionable, and had often allowed himself to be drawn in by friends who got him into trouble. Once, for example, a friend whose parents owned a wrecking yard talked his son into smashing cars there, Bartkus said.

He said that when his son reached his late teens, he built computers and worked with special-needs children as an aide to a local bus driver.

“He wasn’t dumb,” Bartkus said. “But he wasn’t a leader. He was a follower.” He added, “If somebody came along and said this was a good idea, he’d probably go along with it.”

Ideas espoused on the website with the recording about plans to bomb an IVF clinic are associated with an obscure movement that both promotes death and discourages creation of new life, said Brian Levin, professor emeritus and founder of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.

“Within this movement, IVF is certainly disfavored, but so is procreative sex,” Levin said. “He probably targeted an establishment that was most directly related in some way to this twisted take on that philosophy.”

Levin said that the ideology could appeal to people who are suffering from isolation or other mental health challenges and seeking an “institutional framework for these grievances.” Domestic terrorism is often perpetrated, he said, by socially isolated young men who become radicalized in fringe online communities.

© 2025 The New York Times Company