Unabomber Probe Finds New Evidence
Federal agents searching the Montana cabin of Theodore Kaczynski have recovered hand-carved wooden boxes similar to those containing several of the bombs mailed by the Unabomber, and believe a typewriter found in the cabin was used to write his anti-technology manifesto published last year, U.S. officials said Friday.
Agents combing the mountain cabin some 35 miles from Helena were especially pleased to discover the boxes and a wood-carving knife since distinctive hand-carved wooden boxes became a trademark of the Unabomber’s later and more sophisticated bombs, one official said.
“There are great bounds of enthusiasm about what’s being found out there (in Montana),” said another senior federal law enforcement official here.
The official also said there was “a match” between one of the two manual typewriters found at the secluded shack and the 35,000-word anti-technology manifesto, attributed to the Unabomber, published by The New York Times and The Washington Post last year.
Laboratory technicians already have determined that the typewriter used to write the manuscript also apparently produced typing found at the scenes of bombings and attempted bombings attributed to the Unabomber, the government sources said. Similarly, they said, there was an apparent match to letters sent to newspapers, allegedly by the Unabomber.
The publication of the manifesto appears to have been the suspected Unabomber’s undoing. The official said that Kaczynski’s younger brother, David of Schenectady, N.Y., tipped off the FBI in January when he found “contextual” similarities between the manifesto and some 200 letters Kaczynski had written him and his mother over the years.
Another source familiar with the case said a letter Theodore Kaczynski sent to his brother contained at least one paragraph that was identical to one in the manifesto.
Investigators also are reviewing records of stays by Kaczynski at a hotel in Helena, according to a source familiar with the investigation. The source said records reveal that Kaczynski stayed at the hotel at least twice a year since 1982, and that some of those stays coincided with times shortly before delivery of the Unabomber’s parcels. That suggests he may have stayed at the hotel en route to other locations from which bombs were mailed.
Kaczynski, 53, a Harvard graduate and former math professor at the University of California, Berkeley, was charged Thursday with possessing bomb components found in the cabin. FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents have searched the cabin since Wednesday, moving slowly for fear some of the boxes might be booby-trapped.
Kaczynski is being held without bail in a Helena jail under a suicide watch.
xxxx Hotel stays Theodore Kaczynski stayed at the Park Hotel in Helena 25 times between 1982 and 1995. Here is a breakdown of his stays that are around the time of bombings: April 29, 1985 - On May 15, one person was injured by a bomb at the University of California. May 22, 1985 - On June 13, a letterbomb postmarked from Oakland, Calif., was safely disarmed at a Boeing Co. plant in Auburn, Wash. June 6, 1993 - On June 22, a man was injured in San Francisco by a letter bomb sent from Sacramento, Calif.; on June 24, a man was injured at Yale University by a letter bomb mailed from Sacramento. March 13, 1995 - On April 24, a man was killed in Sacramento, Calif., by a bomb mailed from Oakland.