Journalist: Bingman's bombing was case of domestic violence

I've spent much of my adulthood trying to understand what happened 50 years ago at Bingman's Drug Store.

For most of that time, the only real information I had came from a few newspaper clippings and an occasional comment from a family member. But my perch as a community journalist for more than 30 years gave me ample opportunity to speculate about the cause, as our nation found new ways to talk about violence.

Around 1980, "Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome," or PTSD, debuted in the lexicon, at a time when media was focusing on military veterans who committed acts of violence on the home front. If the man who carried the bomb into the drugstore where my father worked had been a combat veteran, might he have been suffering from PTSD?

In the 1980s and '90s, I wrote news stories containing another new phrase describing an old phenomenon: domestic violence. I spoke with victims in hiding from their abusers. I interviewed Christian pastors spreading the message that "Till death do you part doesn't mean until he kills you." I talked with convicted abusers in therapy to come to terms with their actions. Each time I wrote about the topic, I wondered: Was the bomber trying to kill his wife, who worked at the store?

I was at the Escondido Times-Advocate in 1989 when a postal worker showed up at his job with a gun ? an episode of what was being called "workplace violence." Again, I wondered: Could the Bingman's tragedy be classified as workplace violence?

It wasn't until this past year, as my sister Joni Foster began delving into the 1967 bombing, that I was finally able to settle the matter in my own mind. Based on her research and interviews with the bomber's family members ? and I thank them for their candidness ? I now know with certainty that my father and all of those killed and injured that day were casualties of domestic violence.

An hour or so earlier, he had broken into his estranged wife's house, beat her and slashed her with a knife. According to their son, it wasn't the first time he had abused her.

As Joni noted in her book, When Normal Blew Up, even though the term "domestic violence" wasn't common in 1967, episodes of spousal battery and killing were.

"In a quick search of the archives of the local newspaper," she wrote, "I found a 1964 report of a Pickaway County murder of a wife and three others by her husband; and I found another one before that, in 1959.

"In 1967, wife-battering was not a crime. If the police were called to a home, they wouldn't get involved. Police needed to see severe injuries before they would consider an arrest. ...The first protection for women didn't come until 1979, when an Ohio law made wife beating, elderly abuse and other family-related violence an actual crime."

Laws are stronger now and police are more inclined to act, yet as Joni pointed out: "Statistics tell us that today, by the time you have read this paragraph, six people will have been battered in the United States. By this time tomorrow, two people in this country will die from their abuser's hand. Even more relevant to this story, a recent study of intimate-partner homicides found that '20 percent of victims were not the intimate partners themselves, but family members, friends, neighbors, persons who intervened, law enforcement responders or bystanders.'"

In the year following the Escondido post office shooting, the Times-Advocate took a closer look at what was being called "going postal," examining whether the Post Office's culture was somehow contributing to the phenomenon. The coverage earned the newspaper staff credit as a Pulitzer Prize Finalist.

Had I known then what I know now, though, I might have encouraged a different focus since before he shot up the post office, the gunman killed his wife in their bed at home.

A recent study by Everytown for Gun Safety looked at FBI data and media reports from 2009 to 2016 concerning the nation's 156 mass shootings-incidents in which four or more people were shot and killed, not including the shooter. It found that "the majority of mass shootings-54 percent of cases-were related to domestic or family violence."

The Bingman's killer may have used dynamite instead of a gun, but his act was rooted in the violence he committed at home.

When purchased at Schieber Family Pharmacy, proceeds from sales of When Normal Blew Up go to Haven House of Pickaway County, Inc., Circleville's domestic violence/homeless shelter for women and children. The author is a retired journalist who lives in Vacaville, Calif.