Reports came in last week of an ingenious but terrible way someone has put a garage door opener to use. The suspect allegedly rigged some sort of chemical explosives to the mechanism such that when the owner of the house came home, and opened the door, the explosives went off. Now, it wasn't like in a movie, it wasn't enough to blow off half the garage and the house, but it was enough to concuss the homeowner. It was terrifying for the family, and no one knows why the perpetrator did it. There were rumors that the eldest son of the family ran with a bad crowd, but nobody knows for sure.
The actual rig itself depended on a double-backed remote trigger and some sort of jerry-rigged circuit closure. And apparently the explosives were not c4 or something that is generally used as an explosive, historically, but was instead a phosphorized mercury compound that looked like a crystal. The explosive is not produced in bulk by any companies, it would have required someone with some pretty intense chemistry skills to pull it off, and to create the crystals. Plus, the crystals require kinetic energy (aka brute force) to activate.
Though the results are of course completely morbid and horrifying, you have to admit it's pretty high on the ingenuity scale, in terms of a way to kill someone. It seems like the kind of thing someone might do in an action flick, or on a TV show, not in real life. Why the elaborate rigging? Why the non-usual explosive type? Why such a complex system, yet an effect that did not actually kill the intended target? Investigators have no idea what was going on with this case but the mystery is certainly intriguing. It would take a crack team of crime-scene investigators and chemists to figure out what happened. Unfortunately, it took place in a small town and they just don't have the resources to find this crystal garage door arson.