It was a Monday morning in October. The kind of morning when Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, is still dark at six a.m. — the streets empty, the courthouse locked, the judges still at home in bed. The kind of morning when nothing is supposed to happen.

Just after six o’clock on October 10th, 1988, a homemade pipe bomb detonated outside the Sir Louis Henry Davies Law Courts in downtown Charlottetown. The device had been hidden in a flower bed at the rear of the building. The blast was so powerful it drove shrapnel through walls and wooden beams, sending metal fragments up into the judges’ chambers on the second floor.

When Chief Justice Kenneth MacDonald arrived for work a couple of hours later, he found holes punched through the floor of his office — and a piece of shrapnel lodged in his desk, right about where his midsection would have been had he been sitting there.

No one was hurt. The building was empty. But for the people of Prince Edward Island — Canada’s smallest province, a land of potato farms and unlocked doors and the fictional home of Anne of Green Gables — a line had been crossed.

It would take eight years, three more bombs, a series of chilling letters signed by a mysterious figure calling himself “Loki 7,” and a joint police task force before investigators would finally unmask the bomber. His name was Roger Charles Bell. A retired high school chemistry teacher. A quiet, brilliant loner who lived in a drab apartment within walking distance of every bomb site.

I’m your host Ryan Dell. This is Canadian CrimeCast: Coast to Coast True Crime.

Today’s story takes us to Prince Edward Island, where a divorced chemistry teacher retreated into a world of Norse mythology, Wagner’s operas, and Nietzsche’s philosophy — and emerged as a serial bomber who held an entire province hostage for nearly a decade.

This is the story of Roger Bell and Loki 7.

CHAPTER ONE: THE QUIET YEARS

To understand how Roger Bell became Canada’s own Unabomber, you have to go back to the beginning.

Bell was born in 1944 in Murray River, a small community in eastern Prince Edward Island. He was bright — intellectually gifted, by all accounts. He earned degrees in chemistry and education, first from Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia, then later attending the University of Western Ontario. By 1968, he was back on the Island, teaching high school chemistry at schools including Bluefield High and Englewood Regional.

For fourteen years, Bell was a fixture in the Island’s education system. His colleagues described him as intelligent and engaged — if a little unorthodox.

Eugene Murphy, who worked alongside Bell for fourteen years and eventually became principal of Bluefield High, later recalled:

“We’d sit around the table at times and talk philosophy or religion, and Roger was, oh, a little unorthodox in his thinking for a small, rural, Christian-based community. An agnostic at best, or an outright atheist — you did not know if that was his belief or his just being the devil’s advocate. He was able and willing to be part of the banter, and we kind of appreciated that viewpoint. I did not see anything sinister.”

But some students noticed things that were harder to explain. According to investigators who later interviewed former pupils, on at least one occasion Bell walked into his classroom, stared silently out the window for the entire class period, said nothing, and then walked out.

By 1982, Bell’s personal life had begun to unravel. His marriage fell apart. According to RCMP Corporal Les Dell, who would later lead the bombing investigation, Bell stalked his ex-wife for a period after the divorce. He resigned from teaching and traveled the world on his savings, distancing himself from the institutions and bureaucracies he felt were controlling society.

When he returned to Charlottetown, he didn’t re-enter public life. He moved into a small apartment complex and effectively vanished. His next-door neighbour, John Acorn, later told reporters:

“He didn’t say as much as hello.”

For the next several years, Roger Bell lived in almost total isolation. He filled his days with reading, classical music, and what investigators would later discover was a growing obsession with Norse mythology, Nietzsche’s philosophy, Nazi history, and the operas of Richard Wagner — who had been Adolf Hitler’s favourite composer.

A bitter man. A powder keg. With a very long fuse.

CHAPTER TWO: THE FIRST BOMB

The pipe bomb that detonated outside the Charlottetown courthouse on that Monday morning in October 1988 was crude but effective. Hidden in a large flower bed, it exploded at six a.m., rocking the law courts building on the waterfront. The blast caused extensive damage to the law library and shattered windows throughout the building. Shrapnel punched into the judges’ chambers on the upper floor.

It was sheer luck that no one was hurt. Had the bomb gone off during working hours, the casualties could have been severe.

Bill Acorn was the deputy sheriff at the courthouse. He remembers the shock.

“P.E.I. is a pretty safe place. We thought it was up until then. We never had bombings on P.E.I. before. That’s just not P.E.I.”

🔵 POLICE PERSPECTIVE MARKER

Charlottetown Police in 1988 was a small municipal force dealing with its first-ever bombing. They had no bomb squad, no explosives expertise in-house, and limited forensic capabilities. With no claim of responsibility, no witnesses, and no comparable crimes on the Island, investigators had very little to work with. The case went cold. It would stay cold for seven years.

Police were baffled. Investigators suspected the bomb had been planted by someone with a grudge against the courts, but they couldn’t identify a credible suspect. In a province where crime was rare and the close-knit community usually produced tips quickly, there was nothing. No street talk, no rumours.

The bombing eventually slipped to the back of the community’s collective mind.

What no one knew was that the bomber was watching. Waiting. And planning.

Six years would pass before he struck again. In July 1994, a pipe bomb was discovered in a garbage can in Point Pleasant Park in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The device was defused without injury. At the time, no one connected the Halifax bomb to the Charlottetown courthouse explosion. Different province, different city, six years apart.

🔵 POLICE PERSPECTIVE MARKER

This is a classic example of what happens when a serial offender crosses provincial lines. In 1994, there was no centralized Canadian database linking bomb incidents across jurisdictions. Charlottetown Police and Halifax Regional Police had no reason to compare notes. Loki 7 didn’t claim the Point Pleasant Park bombing until after the Province House attack in 1995 — meaning police operated for over a year without knowing they had a serial bomber on their hands.

CHAPTER THREE: PROVINCE HOUSE

April 20th, 1995. A warm spring afternoon in Charlottetown.

Inside Province House — the 152-year-old sandstone building where the Fathers of Confederation once debated the terms of creating Canada — the P.E.I. Legislature was in session. MLAs had just finished Question Period. Premier Catherine Callbeck was in a room next to the chamber. Reporters were in the press gallery. Tourists wandered the halls. And a class of high school students had just walked across a wooden wheelchair ramp on the north side of the building.

Minutes after those students passed, a powerful pipe bomb hidden under that same ramp detonated.

The blast was enormous. It shattered more than twenty windows. Shrapnel and debris were thrown for several blocks. Inside the chamber, MLAs dove under their desks as a rush of air scattered shards of glass across the floor. A cloud of thick smoke and the smell of gunpowder filled the building. Speaker Nancy Guptill described how she and about a dozen others ducked under their desks and, fearing a second explosion, crept from the building.

Outside, on a park bench near the ramp, sat Terrence Steele, a 46-year-old unemployed local man, enjoying the afternoon sunshine. The blast broke his ankle and severed blood vessels. He was the first — and ultimately the only — person physically injured by the Loki 7 bombs.

Provincial treasurer Wayne Cheverie was close to tears. His 15-year-old daughter Joslin had been in the gallery just minutes earlier, visiting with her high school class.

“That was the first thing that went through my mind,” Cheverie said. “I went downstairs but she and her class had already left, thank God.”

The timing was chilling in another way. Just one day earlier, Timothy McVeigh had detonated a truck bomb in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people. The Unabomber was still at large. The world suddenly felt much less safe, and Charlottetown was no exception.

🔵 POLICE PERSPECTIVE MARKER

The timing of this bomb — one day after Oklahoma City — immediately raised the question of whether this was a copycat attack. It later emerged that Bell may have timed the Province House bomb to coincide with April 20th — Adolf Hitler’s birthday. The Oklahoma City parallel was likely coincidental, but it’s the kind of coincidence that can send an investigation in the wrong direction for weeks.

CHAPTER FOUR: LOKI 7 SPEAKS

Within days of the Province House bombing, something unprecedented happened. Police and media in Charlottetown began receiving letters.

The first communiqué, dated May 24, 1995, was addressed to the Chief Justice of the P.E.I. Supreme Court. In it, the writer claimed responsibility for both the 1988 courthouse bombing and the Province House attack — linking the two for the first time. The letter also threatened more bombs aimed at judges.

The following day, Sara Fraser, co-host of CBC’s Compass, received another letter. This one contained specific, detailed information about the 1988 explosion that had never been made public, along with an accurate drawing of the bomb and its timing device. This was no crank. This was the real thing.

Both letters were signed the same way: “Loki 7.” And both ended with the same declaration: “Heil, Thor.”

Each letter bore a stylized swastika as a letterhead. The content railed against politicians, judges, and big business — references to “venal injustice officials” and “crypto-Zionist producers.” One letter read: “This bomb’s for you.” Another warned: “Next time you open your garage door you better think.”

Yet despite the neo-Nazi rhetoric, police profilers did not believe Loki 7 represented a genuine white supremacist group. Detective Mike Quinn of the Charlottetown Police relied on an important investigative instinct: the absence of street talk.

“There was no street talk. There was no scuttlebutt, no rumours around who might have been involved. So we pretty well determined that it was an individual who worked on his own.”

The letters kept coming — seven in all over thirteen months. Each bore routine Charlottetown postmarks but was free of fingerprints. The envelopes were sealed with water, leaving no trace of saliva for DNA identification.

🔵 POLICE PERSPECTIVE MARKER

RCMP Corporal Les Dell noticed that Bell switched from a typewriter to press-on transfer letters almost immediately after news coverage of the FBI’s typewriter evidence in the Unabomber case. This showed the bomber was actively monitoring law enforcement techniques through the media — a counter-forensic awareness that made him significantly harder to catch. The first communiqué was typed on a Smith Corona portable. After the Unabomber trial coverage, Bell disposed of his typewriter and started photocopying the communiqués, obliterating fingerprints.

Dell took the communiqués to an English professor at the University of Prince Edward Island for linguistic analysis. Her assessment was striking: the grammar and spelling was better than the top ten percent of her graduating class. They were dealing with a highly educated individual.

Dell later recalled the weight of what they were facing:

“We were faced with the idea that after an 18-year investigation with the FBI, the Unabomber had just been caught. And we’re thinking, Oh my God, that’s gonna take us that long or even longer to find this person.”

CHAPTER FIVE: THE PROPANE BOMB

June 25, 1996. Marlene Stanton, an assignment editor for CBC’s Compass, was sorting through the daily mail. Buried in the pile was a letter that had arrived a few days earlier. Inside was a swastika-emblazoned missive from Loki 7.

The letter was terrifyingly specific.

“There is an unexploded bomb in a Green Gables bag among the tanks in the North East corner of the Speedy Propane compound on Allen Street. This one is for the BOMB SQUAD.”

Police evacuated the surrounding area. The bomb squad moved in among the tightly packed propane storage tanks. They found exactly what the letter described — a large pipe bomb, concealed in a bag bearing the logo of Prince Edward Island’s most famous fictional character.

The countdown timer on the device had stopped. A manufacturer’s defect had prevented detonation. But the bomb was live, and it could be booby-trapped.

Brad MacConnell, who would later become Charlottetown’s deputy police chief, described the gravity of the situation:

“If it had’ve exploded it would’ve had a significant impact on our city.”

That was an understatement. According to investigators, if the propane tanks had ignited, the blast could have levelled a mile-wide radius of downtown Charlottetown. The patrons in a nearby bar had no idea that a catastrophic explosion could have engulfed them at any moment.

Police sent in a specially armed robot to destroy the device. Twenty-four hours after receiving the warning, the bomb was destroyed in a controlled detonation.

🔵 POLICE PERSPECTIVE MARKER

This is the critical turning point of the investigation. The propane bomb’s timer failed due to a manufacturer’s defect. Bell’s device didn’t detonate as planned. For most bombers, a dud would be a frustration they’d walk away from. But Bell couldn’t. His perfectionism — his pathological need for control — compelled him to send the communiqué directing police to his unfinished business. That ego ultimately cost him his freedom.

CHAPTER SIX: THE TASK FORCE

The propane bomb changed everything. Under intense public pressure, the Charlottetown Police Department and the RCMP formed a dedicated joint task force to find Loki 7. Previously, three officers had been working the case part-time. Now six investigators were assigned full-time, with additional resources from police departments across the country. Charlottetown city councillor Mike Duffy  pushed city council to post a $25,000 reward for information leading to an arrest.

The task force set up their headquarters in a windowless, clipboard-covered room in the basement of a government building. The location was kept secret — in case the bomber decided to make them a target.

MacConnell described the atmosphere:

“There was a sense of urgency and pressure to get this solved before the next bomb did go off and cause a loss of life or a huge destruction of property.”

🔵 POLICE PERSPECTIVE MARKER

The creation of this task force is a case study in inter-agency cooperation under pressure. Charlottetown Police and the RCMP had different organizational cultures, different chains of command, and different investigative methodologies. Detective Mike Quinn led the municipal side. RCMP Corporal Les Dell led the federal contingent. They had to build trust and a working relationship from the ground up while racing against a bomber who could strike again at any time. MacConnell, who was brought in for his IT expertise from the armed forces, described how novel even basic internet research was for policing at the time. This was 1996 — the web was in its infancy.

Meanwhile, forensic examiner Jean-Yves Vermette had reconstructed the propane bomb and compared it to the Province House device. He was convinced both bombs had been built by the same hands.

And then came the break that would crack the case.

CHAPTER SEVEN: THE FOUR-INCH NIPPLE

The reconstructed pipe bomb was unusual. Vermette identified it as one of the largest pipe bombs he’d ever seen — built from a four-inch industrial pipe nipple with two end caps. This was not a standard hardware store item. It was a specialized industrial plumbing component, the kind of thing Prince Edward Island — with no heavy industry — simply didn’t stock.

“It’s probably one of the biggest pipe bombs in diameter I’ve ever seen. Only a specializing store would stock these type of pipe and caps, especially the caps, which are very rare to find.”

Dell and Quinn traced the pipe to an industrial plumbing supplier several hours away in Moncton, New Brunswick. At the store, they learned something crucial: when someone buys a four-inch pipe nipple, they normally purchase one end cap. Nobody buys a pipe with two end caps — unless they’re building a bomb.

The clerk produced a handwritten receipt for exactly that purchase — one pipe, two caps. The name on the receipt was “John McLeod.”

The clerk couldn’t remember what the buyer looked like. Police asked him to undergo hypnosis. Under hypnosis, all that emerged was a description of the buyer’s eyes and nose — the only part of his face visible through the store’s service wicket.

🔵 POLICE PERSPECTIVE MARKER

This is a beautiful example of forensic supply-chain investigation — the kind of painstaking physical detective work that’s largely been replaced by digital surveillance in modern policing. In 2026, this purchase might be flagged automatically by a suspicious transaction algorithm. In 1996, it required investigators to physically reconstruct the bomb, identify the unusual pipe size, then personally visit plumbing suppliers across the Maritimes until they found a match.

Using education level as a filter, the suspect list was rapidly narrowed to five. Dell was going through the shortened list when he asked Detective Quinn about one name in particular.

“Who’s this Roger Bell?”

“I think he’s a school teacher.”

A retired chemistry teacher, to be precise.

Bell had first appeared on the radar back in 1994, when Canada Border Services flagged him for ordering three books on how to make explosives from an American publisher. Police had tried to talk to Bell at his apartment on several occasions. No one ever answered the door.

Now the task force pulled Bell’s old school attendance records — documents where he had written both “John” and “McLeod” as student names in his own hand. The samples were sent to an RCMP handwriting expert.

Cpl. Les Dell recalls that the task force had spoken with Roger Bell’s ex-wife, she told police that Roger had a Smith Corona type written, which is what the letters had been typed with, and that Roger Bell was fascinated by the Nazi’s, which the letters referenced.  

The match came back positive. Roger Bell had written the “John McLeod” signature on the plumbing store receipt.   With this much circumstantial evidence pointing at Roger Bell, police knew they had the right person.

But handwriting evidence alone wasn’t enough to convict. Just because Bell bought the pipe and caps didn’t necessarily prove he built the bomb or sent the communiqués. The task force needed more.

CHAPTER EIGHT: THE SURVEILLANCE

Roger Bell was placed under twenty-four-hour surveillance from July to November. For four months police followed his every move, hoping to catch him in the act.

What they observed was both unremarkable and deeply unsettling.  Bell would steal newspapers from the library.  On one occasion, Bell parked in front of a CIBC branch in Charlottetown and stared at the bank for about an hour.  Police letter found a hold-up note in Bell’s apartment.  It would appear Bell was planning to rob a bank.  Bell was aware of the intense media coverage for his actions, and although he deployed rudimentary counter-surveillance tactics, he never realized he was under surveillance.  One of the counter surveillance tactics he used was to walk into a large open area, and double-back, hoping to see if anyone was following him.  The highly trained team was never spotted.  

Bell was a ghost. He barely spoke. During the entire surveillance operation, Dell never once heard him utter a word to another person.

“I was really wondering whether he actually could speak or not.”

They watched him at the library, where he once carried in a large, heavy bag — sending a jolt of alarm through the surveillance team. A class of students was sitting just feet away. But the bag contained only books.

There were other tense moments as well, in early November, Premier Joe Ghiz passed away and the Prime Minister, Jean Chretien, would be attending.  There would be a a crowd of politicians and public at the funeral home and the cemetery, which was only a few blocks from Bells apartment.  The task force was worried that Bell might harm people during this time.  Sure enough, Bell walked right through the crowd during the ceremonies, and was carrying a white plastic bag with something heavy inside, possibly a gun.  The tension was high and the surveillance team was only feet away from Bell, ready to take him down on a moments notice, thankfully nothing happened.  

They watched him flying model airplanes in a park using remote control devices — which raised the alarming possibility that he might use remote detonators on future bombs.

Dell even tried to strike up a conversation with Bell directly. Bell said nothing. Not a single word.

Without enough evidence for a search warrant, police collected Bell’s outdoor garbage bags. What they found inside was chilling. First, there were discarded newspaper clippings about the Unabomber case. But then something worse appeared: paper targets — silhouettes of human figures, riddled with bullet holes.

Roger Bell was armed. And he appeared to be contemplating assassination.

The investigative team obtained for a General Warrant to place video and audio recording devices inside Bell’s apartment.  When Bell was away from his apartment, police secretly entered Bells apartment and installed a video camera hidden inside a smoke detector and a listening bug elsewhere in the apartment.  Uncharacteristically, while Bell was out of his apartment, he turned around and came home early, and the covert police team was still inside his apartment.  The team hid inside Bell’s attic for three hours in the sweltering summer heat, while Bell was only a few feet away from them.

Police were able to monitor Bell from a discreet observation post that had great sight of Bell’s apartment was very close by.  Police wanted to see him making a bomb. 

🔵 POLICE PERSPECTIVE MARKER

The task force was in a terrible bind. They believed Bell was the bomber, but they didn’t have enough evidence for a search warrant, let alone a conviction. The discovery of the shooting targets dramatically escalated the threat. Yet without an overt criminal act, police could not arrest him. Detective Quinn’s heart attack during this period underscores the human toll of high-stakes investigations. The relentless stress of surveilling a suspected serial bomber — knowing that any day he might strike again, possibly with a firearm — put Quinn in intensive care for two months.

With Quinn out of action, Dell gathered the remaining task force members to make a critical decision. Management from both the RCMP and the city police were pushing them to wrap it up. It was a gamble either way. Arrest too soon, and Bell might walk free. Wait for more, and he might kill someone.

Dell made the call. They would go in.

CHAPTER NINE: THE ARREST

December 16, 1996. Early morning. Charlottetown.

A team of RCMP and Charlottetown police officers moved on Roger Bell’s apartment at 7:30 a.m. They took him completely by surprise.

Bell was arrested and brought in for questioning. Dell conducted the interrogation. It lasted eight hours.

Bell said almost nothing.

“He would just stare at the wall. He would tell us his name, and that would be it. He just was not talking. I used every technique that I could possibly think of to get him to talk to us, and he remained totally silent. Which was frustrating. Very, very, very frustrating.”

🔵 POLICE PERSPECTIVE MARKER

Dell’s eight-hour interrogation of Bell is a masterclass in suspect resistance. Bell understood his legal position perfectly: the police had circumstantial evidence, not proof. By saying nothing, he forced investigators to build their case without a confession. This is unusual for lone-actor offenders, many of whom are eager to explain their motives once caught. Bell’s silence was deliberate, calculated, and strategically sound.

Frustrated, Dell abandoned the interview and joined the ongoing search of Bell’s apartment. Officers had been collecting boxes of material, but nothing had yet directly tied Bell to the bombs or the Loki 7 communiqués.

Then Dell spotted something.

An art pad was sitting on Bell’s desk. Dell held it up to the light. There, faintly visible in the paper, were scratched impressions. He recognized the shape instantly. It was the stylized swastika. The Loki 7 letterhead.

“I said, ‘Boys, I found the swastika,’ and they were all jumping for joy.”

Police also found several firearms, ammunition, and several books about Nazis.

But the biggest discovery was yet to come. A pad of paper from Bell’s apartment was sent to RCMP documents examiner Susan MacInnis. Most people, when they use dry transfer press-on letters, simply scribble over the top. But Bell was meticulous. He traced over each letter carefully. And because he did that, he left perfect indented impressions on the pad beneath.

MacInnis recovered the full text of the final Loki 7 communiqué — the very letter that had warned police about the propane bomb.

🔵 POLICE PERSPECTIVE MARKER

This is the supreme irony of the Roger Bell case. The very quality that made him a meticulous bomber — his obsessive precision — was the quality that convicted him. A sloppier person would have left faint or unreadable impressions. Bell’s careful tracing produced forensically perfect indentations that reproduced the entire communiqué word for word.

The case was sealed.

CHAPTER TEN: THE GUILTY PLEA

At his first court appearance on December 19, 1996, Bell arrived under tight security. He told the court he intended to represent himself and asked for a legal advisor and a private investigator. He referred to himself in the third person as “the accused” and requested release on his own recognizance — a request that was denied.

In a moment that captured his personality perfectly, when the Crown attorney requested a publication ban on evidence, Bell resisted, saying he was “interested in justice being seen to be done.”

Roger Charles Bell pleaded guilty to all four bombings — the 1988 courthouse explosion, the 1994 Halifax Point Pleasant Park bomb, the 1995 Province House attack, and the 1996 propane terminal device. He was convicted by Chief Justice Armand DesRoches and sentenced to ten years in federal prison at Springhill Institution in Nova Scotia.

The lottery tickets in Bell’s garbage had provided one final link. Bell consistently played the same numbers at the same store near his apartment — except for two occasions. Once, the tickets were purchased in Halifax, at the time of the Point Pleasant Park bombing. And once in Moncton, at the same time the pipe was purchased from the plumbing supply store.

Even the most meticulous criminal leaves traces. Bell’s were lottery tickets.

🔵 POLICE PERSPECTIVE MARKER

Bell’s ten-year sentence is worth examining. He planted four bombs over eight years, one of which injured a bystander, and another of which could have killed hundreds had the timer not malfunctioned. His letters threatened judges, politicians, and public figures. He was found to have shooting targets in his garbage. Yet he received ten years and was released after serving two-thirds. This was partly a function of the charges: Bell was convicted of explosives offences, not attempted murder. Canadian sentencing in the late 1990s also operated under different guidelines than post-9/11 terrorism legislation would later establish.

CHAPTER ELEVEN: THE MOTIVE

For years, Roger Bell said nothing about why he did it.

In 2000, he was eligible for parole but waived his right to apply. If he had applied, he would have been required to appear before a hearing and explain himself. He wasn’t ready.

In 2002, he finally appeared before the National Parole Board at Springhill. According to those present, he looked frail and gaunt. And for the first time, he spoke about his motives.

“I think my mission was simply revenge at society.”

He said his bitter divorce and problems at work had left him feeling mistreated by society — angry at government, the courts, and big business. Three institutions he’d had personal grievances with. Having withdrawn from society, his isolation fuelled his anger.

He admitted that even after Terrence Steele was injured by the Province House blast, he couldn’t stop. It had become a game he didn’t know how to end. And besides — he enjoyed the attention. He enjoyed the power to make people afraid.

He described the Loki 7 letters as playing a game with the media. The name, he said, came from a book of Norse mythology. Nothing more, nothing less.

🔵 POLICE PERSPECTIVE MARKER

Bell’s admission that the bombings had “become a game he didn’t know how to end” is particularly revealing. It suggests that by the later bombings, ideology was secondary to the psychological reward of the activity itself: the planning, the attention, the power. He was addicted to being Loki 7. From a law enforcement profiling perspective, Bell fits the classic lone-actor bomber profile almost perfectly: male, middle-aged, educated, socially isolated, with a grievance narrative that escalated over time from resentment to violence.

The parole board was unimpressed. Five years of psychological counselling had produced no measurable change. Bell’s application for day parole was denied.

In June 2003, he was released from Springhill after serving two-thirds of his sentence. He went to a halfway house in Halifax. In 2004, at the age of 60, he was given permission to leave institutional supervision and move into his own place.

He disappeared back into the quiet anonymity from which he had emerged.

EPILOGUE

Today, the Charlottetown courthouse where the first bomb exploded in 1988 looks very different than it did then. Security cameras watch every approach. Visitors pass through metal detectors. Sheriff’s deputies screen everyone who enters.

Bill Acorn — the same deputy sheriff who was working at the courthouse the morning of the first bombing — is still there, now as a part-time commissionaire.

“It’s like day and night. We’ve got security cameras all over the place. You can see someone coming a block away. It’s a big, big difference.”

Brad MacConnell sees Bell’s bombing campaign as a turning point for the entire province.

“Loki 7 was the catalyst to getting security cameras around the legislature and courthouse. That has evolved today to our E-Watch around the city.”

Seventy surveillance cameras now monitor Charlottetown’s streets. The bombings permanently transformed how Prince Edward Island approaches security and threat assessment.

* * *

There’s a question that hangs over this entire case, one that even the investigators who spent months studying Roger Bell can never fully answer: Why?

Bell gave the parole board a reason — revenge at society. But that explanation feels incomplete. He was, by all accounts, a brilliant man. A gifted teacher. Someone who could have been, in Detective Dell’s words:

“An extremely valuable member of society. Having been a teacher and having the knowledge that he had, he could have influenced lives in a positive way. He didn’t, and chose to hurt people.”

Instead, somewhere in the years after his divorce, after leaving teaching, after retreating into his apartment with his Wagner records and his Nietzsche and his Norse mythology — something broke. A switch, as Dell put it, turned off. And Roger Bell became Loki 7.

He signed his letters with “Heil, Thor” — a salute to the Norse god of thunder, from Loki, the god of mischief and destruction. In the myths, Loki is the trickster who brings about Ragnarök — the twilight of the gods, the end of everything. It’s a grandiose identity for a man who lived alone in a small apartment, flew model airplanes in the park, and played the same lottery numbers every week.

But for eight years, he held an entire province hostage. He shattered the quiet confidence of a place that believed violence was something that happened elsewhere. He came within a defective timer of killing potentially hundreds of people in a propane explosion that would have levelled blocks of his own city.

And in the end, he was caught because of a handwritten receipt at a plumbing store in Moncton, press-on letters that left impressions on a notepad, and lottery tickets pulled from his garbage.

The most meticulous bomber makes mistakes. And Prince Edward Island, it turned out, was too small a place to hide.

Roger Charles Bell was born in 1944 in Murray River, Prince Edward Island. As of the last public records, he would be in his early eighties. His current whereabouts are unknown. He has never spoken publicly about the bombings since his 2002 parole hearing.

Loki 7 is silent.

* * *

This episode was written, researched and produced by me, Ryan Dell. If this is your first time listening, and you like what you heard, please take a moment to give me a 5-star review. It helps the podcast grow and helps other people find these amazing stories.

I love hearing from you, if you have a story I should cover, please send me an email. My email is: canadiancrimecast@gmail.com

I’m Ryan Dell, and this is Canadian CrimeCast: Coast to Coast True Crime.

SOURCES:

CBC News Longform — “The blast that shook P.E.I.” by Sally Pitt, October 10, 2018

CBC News — “P.E.I. Bomber denied parole,” August 23, 2002

CBC News — “No day parole for P.E.I. bomber,” August 24, 2002

CBC News — “P.E.I. bomber declines parole hearing,” February 10, 2000

The Canadian Encyclopedia / Maclean’s — “Charlottetown Bombing” by John Demont, originally May 1, 1995

The Canadian Encyclopedia / Maclean’s — “PEI Bombing Suspect Arrested” by Ron Ryder, originally December 30, 1996

The Canadian Encyclopedia / Maclean’s — “PEI Bomber Sought” by Barb McKenna, originally September 23, 1996

Tampa Bay Times — “Canadian bomber’s motive leaves police baffled,” August 7, 1997

The Washington Post — “A Journey Into Violence” by Howard Schneider, August 5, 1997

The Globe and Mail — “Bomber waives right to parole,” February 12, 2000

Wikipedia — “Loki 7 bombings”

True Crime documentary transcript featuring Det. Mike Quinn, Cpl. Les Dell, Jean-Yves Vermette, and Susan MacInnis