A man has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for setting off a pipe bomb at a Metra station in suburban Hinsdale in 2006.
Thomas Jane Zajac is already serving one federal sentence for bombing a public library in Salt Lake City, Utah, also in 2006.
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On Sept. 1, 2006, Zajac placed a pipe bomb in a trash can at the BNSF railway station in Hinsdale, which then exploded during the morning commute. A station agent was injured.
Zajac, who is now 70, was prosecuted on federal charges and convicted in 2023. During that trial it was revealed Zajac had felt “disrespected” when a relative was arrested by Hinsdale police in 2005. Prosecutors said a month after the bombing, he sent an anonymous letter to the Hinsdale Police Department saying the police had “[expletive] with” the wrong person and that the writer had “fired a warning shot” the month before.
The letter threatened that at least one person in Hinsdale would eventually die as a result of police actions and the writer wanted to see if the department was “bright enough or possess[ed] the character to stop this death.”