How do you catch a twisted genius who aspires
to be the perfect, anonymous killer—who
builds untraceable bombs and delivers them
to random targets, who leaves false clues
to throw off authorities, who lives like a
recluse in the mountains of Montana and tells
no one of his secret crimes?
That was the challenge facing the FBI and
its investigative partners, who spent nearly
two decades hunting down this ultimate lone
wolf bomber.
The man that the world would eventually know
as Theodore Kaczynski came to our attention
in 1978 with the explosion of his first, primitive
homemade bomb at a Chicago university.
Over the next 17 years, he mailed or hand
delivered a series of increasingly sophisticated
bombs that killed three Americans and injured
24 more.
Along the way, he showed fear and panic, even
threatening to blow up airliners in flight.
In 1979, an FBI-led task force that included
the ATF and U.S. Postal Inspection Service
was formed to investigate the “UNABOM”
case, code-named for the University and Airline
BOMbing targets involved.
The task force would grow to more than 150
full-time investigators, analysts, and others.
In search of clues, the team made every possible
forensic examination of recovered bomb components
and studied the lives of victims in minute
detail.
These efforts proved of little use in identifying
the bomber, who took pains to leave no forensic
evidence, building his bombs essentially from
“scrap” materials available almost anywhere.
And the victims, investigators later learned,
were chosen randomly from library research.
We felt confident that the Unabomber had been
raised in Chicago and later lived in the Salt
Lake City and San Francisco areas.
This turned out to be true.
His occupation proved more elusive, with theories
ranging from aircraft mechanic to scientist.
Even the gender was not certain: although
investigators believed the bomber was most
likely male, they also investigated several
female suspects.
The big break in the case came in 1995.
The Unabomber sent us a 35,000-word essay
claiming to explain his motives and views
of the ills of modern society.
After much debate about the wisdom of “giving
in to terrorists,” FBI Director Louis Freeh
and Attorney General Janet Reno approved the
task force’s recommendation to publish the
essay in hopes that a reader could identify
the author.
After the manifesto appeared in The Washington
Post and The New York Times, thousands of
people suggested possible suspects.
One stood out: David Kaczynski described his
troubled brother Ted, who had grown up in
Chicago, taught at the University of California
at Berkeley (where two of the bombs had been
placed), then lived for a time in Salt Lake
City before settling permanently into the
primitive 10’ x 14’ cabin that the brothers
had constructed near Lincoln, Montana.
Most importantly, David provided letters and
documents written by his brother.
A linguistic analysis determined that the
author of those papers and the manifesto were
almost certainly the same.
When combined with facts gleaned from the
bombings and Kaczynski’s life, that analysis
provided the basis for a search warrant.
On April 3, 1996, investigators arrested Kaczynski
and combed his cabin.
There, they found a wealth of bomb components;
40,000 handwritten journal pages that included
bomb-making experiments and descriptions of
Unabomber crimes; and one live bomb, ready
for mailing.
Kaczynski’s reign of terror was over.
His new home, following his guilty plea in
January 1998: an isolated cell in a “Supermax”
prison in Colorado.
