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Aspen — After he delivered bombs throughout town on New Year's Eve Day, effectively placing downtown Aspen on lockdown, Jim Blanning walked around watching the mayhem unfold and then reflected on his 72 years of life before shooting himself.

That's according to a letter written to Pitkin County Sheriff Bob Braudis, which was found in Blanning's Jeep Cherokee at the North Star Nature Preserve on Thursday morning.

"I wandered around for hours this afternoon," Blanning wrote. "God knows I have a long history - Aspen school - Airforce Nuclear Weapons - Ski Patrol and Instructor - ASC Sundeck/gondola/mining claim. More varied deed and property etc., recorded etc. that most anyone."

What surprised Braudis the most was that his longtime friend Blanning intended to kill people, even though most who knew him said he wouldn't hurt anyone. But it became clear that Blanning intended harm based on what Braudis described as "an addled rant from a tortured mind." Blanning wrote the missive just hours before ending his life.

"Try to find a good author to study my story," he wrote. "The main point of doing the killing was to make a statement and make sure I'm remembered but it seem to me I've done that."

The fact that Blanning was on antidepressants, based on a statement made by his brother, Bill Blanning in other newspaper reports, could have contributed to his bizarre actions.

"He intended to cause death and destruction, which is totally out of character," Braudis said. "It sounds like he was apologizing for mass murder that he intended here ...

"Both professionally and personally, I have seen incredible mood swings from a pill, and it can cause suicidal and homicidal effects."

A dark place

In the letter, Blanning suggests that he was in a dark place.

"My body is short and the ongoing black depression has mush of my mind lately," he wrote.

Blanning also credited Aspen Mayor Mick Ireland, the late Pitkin County Judge J.E. DeVilbiss and former prosecutor Chip McCrory for ruining his life. Ireland was a reporter and Pitkin County commissioner during the 1980s and 1990s who scrutinized Blanning's pursuit of obtaining mining claims around Aspen. DeVilbiss sentenced Blanning to 16 years in prison after McCrory filed charges of fraud relating to the sale of mining claims and land scams. In 1996, he was convicted of racketeering, organized crime and fraud.

"There's a cartoon in my office 'Too Many People' and I know I had a wonderful life until Mik Irland and JE got me," Blanning wrote. "God knows I would love to have cut Irlands and Chip McCorey balls off before skinning them."

Blanning suggests in the letter that death was a better option than prison, which surely would have been a reality since he was on parole.

While Blanning had extensive knowledge of explosives from his work in the mines growing up in Aspen, the damage he caused in Aspen could have been worse - something Blanning acknowledged in his letter to Braudis.

"I came loaded for bear as you will see. I was going do just as the bomb note," he wrote of the notes attached to the bombs left at Wells Fargo and Vectra banks. "Could have done some serious damage. Oh-well. Too tired - to the bone."

But he wasn't too tired to build four bombs that were packaged in Christmas wrapping paper and delivered to two banks, and two that were left behind the Gap in an alley. Those packages contained 5-gallon "plastic bladders" of gasoline that were fitted with cellular phone actuators and mousetraps.

"If he truly wanted to take out a lot of people he could have," Braudis said.

Lingering resentment

It appears as though Blanning might have planned to take his life at a mining claim on the lower portion of Smuggler Mountain called Silver Brick. But Blanning wrote that he was interrupted.

"Some Caddlac came up near the Silver Brick and I had to move. Not sure where you will find me," Blanning wrote. "Will/should be interesting to hear everyone tales (stories) about me."

Blanning was found dead outside of his Jeep in the parking lot at the entrance to the nature preserve, about three miles east of Aspen. He apparently shot himself in the chin with a pistol. The Pitkin County coroner's office on Friday evening confirmed massive head trauma from a single self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head as the cause of death.