Year in review





"All the dogs hated him."


For years, the face stared menacingly from behind aviator sunglasses, the only image of the Unabomber, so called because his favorite targets were universities and airlines. The sketch was based on the only known sighting-- a fleeting glimpse at a bombing in Salt Lake City in 1987. That was a rare slip; usually the Unabomber mailed his bombs, leaving few traces. His 16 bombs had killed three people and injured 23.

But it wasn't the sketch that led to an arrest. It was his words. After speaking only through his bombings for 18 years, the Unabomber began talking too much.

Nothing but a profile

The government's UNABOM Task Force had gone through 200 suspects, thousands of interviews (including some with clairvoyants) and 20,000 phone calls to its toll-free number. They felt they knew who their man was -- a middle-aged white man with an academic background and links to the Chicago area and Northern California. But after more than a decade of trying to fit the profile to a name they were no closer.

Kaczynski in custody -- 259K QuickTime movie
Cabin is moved -- 563K QuickTime movie
Tony Biscegli, Kaczynski family lawyer, describes Ted -- 234K AIFF or WAV sound

Then in April 1995, right after the devastating bombing at a federal building in Oklahoma City, the Unabomber attacked again, perhaps peeved that another bomber was making headlines. A package bomb killed a timber industry lobbyist in Sacramento. Days later, Unabomber threatened to blow up a plane out of Los Angeles; and then he promised to stop the bombings if The New York Times and Washington Post published his 35,000-word, anti-technology, anti-modern-civilization diatribe.

Growing suspicion

After much debate, the newspapers agreed. One of those who read the Unabomber's Manifesto was David Kaczynski. He'd been fighting the growing suspicion that his brother Theodore, who lived as a hermit in a cabin in the Montana wilderness and held eccentric views, might be the Unabomber. Later in the year when he came upon some of his brother's old journals and letters, he found the style and ideas disturbingly similar to the manifesto. He alerted the FBI.

Cabin

They staked out the cabin for a month, and on April 3, moved in to arrest Theodore Kaczynski. He fit their profile perfectly. He was white, 53, had a doctorate in Mathematics and had taught at the University of California at Berkeley. He had not worked in years. Neighbors said he stayed inside for days at a time, wore black clothes or fatigues and rarely spoke. "All the dogs hated him," said one.


Over the next few weeks came reports of what the FBI had found in the cabin:

On May 15, the cabin itself was moved to a Montana Air Force Base to protect it from vandals and sightseers.

At first Kaczynski was charged only with possessing bomb-making components, but later in the year he was indicted for bombings in New Jersey and California. He has pleaded not guilty, and trial has been scheduled for November 1997.


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