http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1996 ... -fbi-cabinFbi Lab Analyzes Trove Of Items From Kaczynski's Hut
April 16, 1996|By Gary Marx and Flynn McRoberts, Tribune Staff Writers. Gary Marx reported from Chicago and Flynn McRoberts from Helena, Mont. Additional reporting was provided by Tribune staff writers David Jackson in Washington and Karen Brandon in Los Angeles.
The contrast could not be more stark: Crude bombmaking materials that once lined Theodore Kaczynski's dark, tar-paper shack now sit in a warren of brightly lit, high-tech laboratories on the third floor of FBI headquarters in Washington.
In his Montana cabin, amid a hermit's clutter, Kaczynski stored soldering wire in a Calumet Baking Powder can and "melted metal fragments" in a Del Monte whole-leaf spinach tin, FBI reports released Monday show.
Now, in the sprawling lab filled with computers and high-powered microscopes, dozens of FBI scientists and technicians are comparing those workshop ingredients to the fragments left by the Unabomber's explosions.
The results of the tests will determine where and how the case against Kaczynski is built, officials said Monday.
Federal investigators have expressed confidence that they will match items taken from the cabin to the vast collection of chemical traces and bomb parts left after the Unabomber's two recent slayings: the 1994 killing of New Jersey public relations executive Thomas Mosser, and the 1995 death of California timber lobbyist Gilbert Murray.
"The case is now in the hands of the lab," former FBI forensic specialist Danny W. Greathouse said.
Kaczynski, 53, has not been charged with any of the Unabomber attacks, which killed three people and injured 23 in nine states over the last 18 years. Arrested April 3 at the cabin near Lincoln, Mont., he is being held on a single count of possessing bomb components.
Kaczynski's court-appointed attorney, Mike Donahue, on Monday filed court papers asking that the former math professor's property be returned and the case dismissed. Donahue claimed Kaczynski's rights to a fair trial have been compromised by government leaks to the media.
"The government has been intentionally leaking highly prejudicial information," the court papers said.
The computerized FBI inventory released Monday by U.S. District Judge Charles Lovell in Helena, Mont., lists several explosive devices and a variety of tools and chemicals that authorities believe were used to fashion bombs.
Agents also found a quiver of arrows and a paperback copy of "Growing Up Absurd," Paul Goodman's 1956 celebration of youth culture and non-conformity.
They recovered a bottle of the anti-depressant trazadone, the inventory shows.
They found Kaczynski's maps in a Tater Tots box.
Agents found the names and addresses of corporate executives in Kaczynski's cabin, as well as street maps of the San Francisco area, bus schedules and four guns. The FBI report does not identify the executives.
Agents also found the names of 31 University of California-Berkeley professors in the cabin, most of whom worked in the mathematics department, according to university police. Federal investigators were attempting to determine whether the professors on the list had any connection to Kaczynski, although the purpose of the list was not clear.
Several of the professors, some of whom are retired, said they did not know why their names were on the list and added that they had not been contacted by federal agents.
"I can't imagine what that list would mean," said Berkeley math professor emeritus Morris Hirsch, whose name was listed.
Hirsch said he had no recollection of Kaczynski or of even hearing the name.
"Maybe he admired our mathematics," he said.
Another university professor, Stuart Yudofsky, chairman of the psychiatry department at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, said the FBI had informed him last week that his name appeared on a "list" found inside Kaczynski's cabin and warned him to screen his mail.
"He said they found a live bomb in the cabin and that I should be very careful about any unusual packages mailed to me," said Yudofsky, who was previously chairman of the psychiatry department at the University of Chicago Medical School.
The list of seized evidence also described a hooded jacket, a blue zippered sweatshirt and hood and two pairs of plastic glasses. A witness who saw the Unabomber plant a bomb in Salt Lake City described him as wearing a hooded sweatshirt and aviator glasses, resulting in the famous artist's sketch of the suspect.
In a plastic jar in Kaczynski's cabin, triggering devices were tagged with numbered pieces of masking tape.
Using stereo microscopes that enable them to examine two images at once, FBI lab technicians are comparing plaster casts of screwdrivers and other tools taken from Kaczynski's cabin with the fragments of the Unabomber's bombs, an official said.
Defects in a tool can leave as unique an impression as a fingerprint, a forensic scientist said.
By collecting the chemical traces left after explosions, forensic scientists are able determine the compounds used to detonate bombs. Impurities in those chemicals are also often unique and might be matched to several jars of explosive chemicals found in Kaczynski's cabin, a government official said.
Officials said that serial bombers often reuse the same chemicals, once they arrive at a formula that works.
"A bomber follows a recipe and a plan," said former FBI crime lab director John Hicks, now deputy director of the Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences.
FBI scientists also have analyzed the alloys that made up the metals used in the bombs and are comparing these to materials taken from the cabin.
Agents have isolated DNA samples from the saliva on the back of the stamps used to mail the Unabomber's packages and have taken samples of hair and rug fiber from the packing tape.
Agents have performed "every conceivable test" on the evidence gathered from the Unabomber attacks, according to Christopher Ronay, former chief of the FBI's explosives unit.
Former and current federal officials said completing the tests on the newly gathered material could take as long as four months.
Said Greathouse: "Good forensics and fast forensics are mutually exclusive
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