MENOMONIE, Wis. — In hindsight, friends of Luke J. Helder say the tiny changes in his recent behavior do not seem to add up to much.

Last month, at home in Pine Island, Minn., for his mother's birthday, Helder, a lapsed Roman Catholic who often annoyed friends with his rantings about God and the government, surprised his family by asking for a Bible and spending an hour poring over its pages.

James Divine, who shared a dank two-bedroom apartment with him just off campus at the University of Wisconsin-Stout here, saw Helder carrying dozens of $20 bills recently rather than relying on his usual check card. Then last week, Helder, an art major whom Divine described as articulate and kind with strong beliefs about many things, bought a cellular telephone and abruptly left town on Thursday.

He scrawled an uncharacteristic note about going to Madison to party, explaining he would skip work at the local Servicemaster home cleaning company and saying, "I'll call in sick."

Instead, law enforcement officials said, Helder took his father's 1992 Honda Accord on a 3,400-mile road trip of terror, planting a string of 18 pipe bombs in five states that injured six people and rippled fear across the belly of the country. He turned 21 while speeding through Colorado on Sunday. After his arrest on Tuesday in Nevada, Helder, wearing a T-shirt of his idol, Kurt Cobain, the grunge rocker who committed suicide in 1994, admitted his crimes, according to affidavits filed along with felony charges in three states.

The police said they found six more bombs in the car.

The hunt began Monday night, when Cameron Helder, a construction worker whose wife works as a receptionist in a medical clinic, called the police here in Menomonie to say he had received a letter from his adopted son, a letter echoing the ones that accompanied the pipe bombs. There was also a handwritten addendum: "If I don't make it through this ordeal (if the gov't doesn't realize I can help) then I'll have to get out of here for awhile."

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The authorities contacted Divine, who told of a message Luke had left on the apartment answering machine after he had disappeared, saying, "Check the news and act accordingly."

Back home in Pine Island, the sheriff reviewed his records, and found that Helder had been questioned four years back about threatening to blow up a friend's mailbox.

Divine and his friends, who had for months laughed off Helder's obsession with cable news programs and overbearing monologues about spirituality and current events, looked under Helder's bed Monday night and found a bag filled with pipes, nails and two plastic bottles of gunpowder. One was empty.

"What troubles all of us, not only the parents but the whole community, is what happened?" said the Rev. Dennis Kamps, pastor of St. Michael's Church in Pine Island, where Luke was confirmed and the Helders are Sunday regulars.

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