The Mardi Gra bomber was finally unmasked yesterday as an elderly man who eluded police during a three-and-a-half year terror and extortion campaign. Despite leaving a trail of injuries and fear as he tried to hold two of Britain's biggest companies to ransom for up to £3.6 million a year, Edgar Pearce only got £700 on the day he was arrested.
The 61-year-old Edgar Pearce hatched the plot after watching a television programme about a blackmail scheme by a crooked former detective and then tried to better him by leaving 36 explosive devices across southern England.
But detectives said his greed finally brought him down and he yesterday admitted 20 charges at the Old Bailey including blackmail attempts on Barclays Bank and Sainsbury's supermarket.
His blackmail campaign started when he sent a home-made bomb covered in paper containing a picture of a scene from Reservoir Dogs and labelled "Welcome to the Mardi Gra Experience" to Barclays branch.
He failed to get any money from the bank so he switched his attentions to Sainsbury during the second stage of his long-running blackmail campaign between December 1994 and April 1998, the court heard.
He was finally arrested with his brother Ronald after a huge police operation involving hundreds of officers when he visited a cash machine to try to draw out money.
Pearce had negotiated with an undercover police officer acting as a representative of Barclays and Sainsbury through the personal columns of the Daily Telegraph.
He had demanded both companies produce plastic give-away cards in publications.
These could be used with a PIN number only he knew to pay out £1,000 or £2,000 a day without time limit.
But despite his attempts at eluding police with a disguise, going along with his brother and drawing out amounts of £100 and £250 at various cash points in west London, he was still caught.
He was spotted at a cash machine in West Ealing, west London, and followed before being arrested "red-handed" trying to remove blackmail money, the court heard.
The court was shown a black and white video film of Pearce planting one of his devices at a bus stop in Eltham, south London.
The device exploded in a black plastic bin liner where scores of people, including a mother wheeling a baby in a pushchair, had passed, but nobody was hurt.
The hearing was adjourned until this morning. Pearce is due to be sentenced next week.