Investigators from various law enforcement agencies converged on the site 100 miles (161 km) east of Atlanta looking for evidence of the pre-dawn explosion that blew a section of the 42-year-old monument, called the Georgia Guidestones, to pieces. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) later posted on its official Twitter feed a surveillance camera video of the explosion and separate footage of a car speeding away from the scene. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register He said the rest of the structure was deliberately demolished later in the day “for security reasons”, with a photo showing the entire monument reduced to rubble. The initial damage was attributed to “unknown persons” who “detonated an explosive device” at the scene. Before it was vandalized, the 19-foot-tall monument consisted of an upright plaque in the center of four larger plaques placed around it, with a large rectangular headstone placed above the others. The collection of gray monoliths was erected in 1980 in the middle of a large field near the town of Elberton, Georgia, off Highway 77, and is listed as a tourist attraction by the state travel website and the Elbert County Chamber of Commerce. The plaques were engraved with a cryptic message in 12 languages that called for the preservation of humanity by limiting the world’s population to less than half a billion people to live “in perpetual balance with nature,” according to official translations of the text. The Guidestones also functioned as an astronomical calendar, arranged to let sunlight shine through a narrow hole in the structure each noon to illuminate engraved dates. But the memorial has drawn occasional controversy from some who have linked its message to far-right conspiracies or religious blasphemy. Prominent among them was former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Candace Taylor, a third-place finisher in the May 24 Republican primary, who made removing the monument part of her campaign platform, a stance lampooned by TV comedian John Oliver. Following news of the Guidestones bombing on Wednesday, Taylor said on Twitter that the monument’s collapse was an act of divine intervention. “God is God in his own right. He can do ANYTHING He wants. That includes tearing down the Satanic Guidestones,” he tweeted. Taylor later released a video in which she insisted she would never condone vandalism and that “anyone who goes onto private or public property to destroy anything unlawful should be arrested.” No law enforcement officials have indicated that Kandiss was involved in the Guidestones bombing. The exact origins of the ill-fated roadside attraction remain murky. It was built by a local granite finishing company at the behest of a mysterious benefactor who commissioned the work under the pseudonym Robert C. Christian. The Elberton Granite Association, which had preserved and maintained the stones, estimated the cost of replacing them at hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to local media. Official descriptions say the monument has become known as America’s Stonehenge. But the site paled in age and grandeur to the original Stonehenge, a prehistoric landmark in Wiltshire, England, believed to date back as far as 3000 BC. Sign up now for FREE unlimited access to Reuters.com Register Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles. Editing: Aurora Ellis and Neil Fullick Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
