Aspen Residents in Fear on New Year's

Aspen, Colorado -- "A one-time resident of this city who had been bitter over its transformation into a playground for the rich left four gift-wrapped bombs downtown in a bank-robbery attempt, turning New Year's Eve celebrations into a mass evacuation, Aspen police sargeant said today." "The 72-year-old man suspected of placing them in two banks and in an alleyway on Wednesday shot and killed himself a short time later," police said. James Chester Blanning, who grew up in the area and lived in Colorado since 2003, was found by police on Thursday after an apparent suicide. According to newspaper accounts, Blanning climbed atop the county courthouse with a noose earlier that year and threatened suicide. "Blanning was talked off the courthouse after seven hours; he told reporters afterward that he was protesting the "elitists" of Aspen and was angry about a 1990s Colorado Supreme Court ruling about a mining claim." Banning was known by Aspen residents as an eccentric who grew up fascinated by Aspen's past as a silver mining town. Blanning said in his handwritten note that he had spent time in prison. He obviously had psychiatric issues that caused him to carry out a complicated bombing in this area. This disturbed man who made bombs out of gasoline and cell phone parts caused a serious explosion and wanted to be known for a "mass death." Those that remembered him remarked that he never understood or accepted the capitalistic growth that Aspen endured and that he felt the growth was taken advantage of and that he was left out of the prosperity that many experienced in this city over the past 25 years. He also mentioned George W. Bush in one of his notes that he wrote when in despair, but it was very unclear as to why he mentioned the President of the United States in relation to Aspen, Colorado and silver mining.