Unabomber Evidence Reveals New Insights
To evade authorities chasing him, Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski kept shoes with smaller soles attached to the bottom in his reclusive Montana cabin, according to evidence released 10 years after his capture.
The shoes were intended to make it appear as if a person with smaller footprints were walking in them, investigators believe.
Kaczynski, 64, is serving a life sentence with no possibility of parole for a bombing spree that lasted from 1978 to 1995. The blasts from homemade bombs killed three people and injured 23.
The government had collected evidence from his Lincoln, Mont., cabin for a trial, but it was never publicly released because Kaczynski pleaded guilty in 1998.
CBS station KPIX-TV in San Francisco aired a report Tuesday about the evidence. A source close to the case gave the station photographs of the items, which included his typewriter, a handmade gun of wood and metal, writings, and the hooded sweat shirt and sunglasses featured in his FBI wanted photos.
"He wrote about everything. He wrote about what he had for lunch on May 5 of 1979, where he got the food, how he prepared it and what did it taste like," said retired FBI agent Max Noel, who helped lead the investigation.
CBS5.com, the news Web site for CBS station KPIX in San Francisco, prepared these slideshows of photos relating to the Unabomber Case:
Unabom Case: Bombs & Bombings
Unabom Case: Exhibits & Evidence
Unabom Case: Go Inside The Unabomber's Cabin
Investigators also found an unexploded bomb inside a silver box with the name of another intended victim, the station reported.
Kaczynski described in his writings how he placed two human hairs he found in a bus station into a bomb "to deceive the policemen, who will think that the hair belongs to whoever made the device," KPIX reported.
Kaczynski also made a homemade gun — part wood, part metal — that was untraceable. About the gun, he wrote, "I want to use the gun as a homicide weapon," KPIX reported.
"He did it successfully for 17 years," Noel said of Kaczynski's ability to evade capture. "From the FBI standpoint, I think we should learn from it, we should learn investigative techniques, we should learn how to attack a major investigation."
Kaczynski's writings also revealed what he thought of many of his crimes, such as a 1982 explosion that injured a Tennessee woman.
"No indication that the woman was permanently disabled," he wrote. "Frustrating that I can't even (make a) lethal bomb."
Regarding a failed attempt to explode an American Airlines plane, Kaczynski wrote, "Unfortunately plane not destroyed, bomb too weak, at least it gave them a good scare."