Bladel was born in 1933 and worked for the New York Central railroad until he lost his position in the early 1960s, in a dispute over seniority following a merger. He blamed the men who kept their jobs.
Between 1963 and 1978 he shot railway employees at stations and yards in Michigan and Indiana. Three men were killed at the Amtrak station in Jackson, Michigan, in December 1978, shot in the waiting room; earlier shootings in 1963, 1968 and 1976 were also attributed to him. He was arrested on March 22, 1979. The Michigan press called him the Railway Sniper.
The railway employees named in the record are the engineers Roy Bottorf and John Marshall, the firemen Paul Overstreet and Charles Burton, the conductors James McCrory and William Gulak, and the flagman Robert Blake.
He was convicted of the Jackson killings and sentenced to three consecutive terms of life imprisonment. That conviction was overturned on appeal on the ground that his statement to police had been improperly obtained, and he was retried and convicted again.
He died in prison on November 15, 2006.
The motive is unusually specific and unusually well documented: he said so himself, repeatedly, and the killings were confined to one occupational group over fifteen years. The range of three to seven covers the earlier shootings, which were not charged.
The Jackson killings were the deadliest attack on railway employees in the United States and produced changes to security at station facilities.