Feds find trove of explosive materials, including devastating PETN, at IVF clinic bomber's house: ‘Full-blown bomb lab'
Bomb crews found multiple precursor chemicals in the home of the 'pro-mortalist' madman, who allegedly used a car bomb to blow up an IVF clinic in Palm Springs, Calif., on Saturday, killing himself and wounding four others, law enforcement sources said.
Batkus' neighbor in the town of Twentynine Palms – an hour drive from Palm Springs – said FBI agents evacuated the neighborhood and warned him of what he described as a 'full-blown bomb lab' just a stone's throw from his house.
'Five FBI agents came knocking on my door…They told me, 'The house behind you has suspected bomb-making materials,' the neighbor, Thomas Bickel, told The Post.
'I talked about it with agents. There was a full-blown bomb lab in this guy's house.'
5 The damaged front of the American Reproductive Centers fertility clinic stands following a bomb blast on May 17, 2025 in Palm Springs, California.
Getty Images
5 Guy Edward Bartkus, 25, of 29 Palms, California, poses in an undated driver's license photograph released by the FBI.
via REUTERS
5 A bomb squad near Guy Bartkus' house in Twentynine Palms.
KABC
'I know how powerful and destructive IEDs can be,' added Bickel, who said he was an Army veteran injured by bomb shrapnel while serving in Afghanistan.
'Sitting here with my kids, knowing that this guy was 50 feet away — a bomb of that magnitude could have destroyed our house. Just knowing that he was working on that right here while I was hanging out with my kids — it was pretty insane,' Bickel said.
PETN, which stands for pentaerythritol tetranitrate, is an extremely dangerous compound similar to nitroglycerin.
It had been used in terror attacks and attempted attacks throughout the world, including the 1983 Beirut barracks bombings, the attempted 'shoe bombing' by Richard Colvin Reid in 2001, and the 2009 Christmas Day bomb plot by the al-Qaeda terror group.
Saturday's car bomb blast destroyed at least one building of American Reproductive Centers in Palm Springs and severely damaged two others.
It shattered windows on buildings three blocks away, and its reverberations could be felt in the next town seven miles away, one local told The Post.
The explosion reduced Bartkus himself to human confetti.
Authorities believe bizarre, pro-death ideology may have inspired the attack.
The bomber allegedly uploaded a chilling, foul-mouthed, 30-minute rant in which he tried to justify detonating a car bomb outside the American Reproductive Centers on Saturday, law enforcement sources told The Post.
'I'm angry I exist,' the avowed vegan said in the recording, before claiming he did not give his parents permission for him to be born.
5 A firefighter inside a ruined building of American Reproductive Clinics.
ZUMAPRESS.com / MEGA
5 Debris is seen outside a damaged American Reproductive Centers fertility clinic after the bomb blast.
AFP via Getty Images
He took specific aim at IVF, calling it 'extremely wrong.'
'Basically, I'm anti-life. And IVF is like kind of the epitome of pro-life ideology,' he said.
Fortunately, the clinic's stored embryos and sensitive medical records survived the attack – thanks partly to a firefighter and FBI agent who rushed into the partially collapsed building to extract the records and make sure the cooling system for the embryos was still online.
'They go into a building that was collapsed … It wasn't safe, but they went inside,' Palm Springs Police Chief Andrew Mills told The Post.
'It's because of them expecting mothers didn't lose their dream of starting a family,' he added.
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