Required Unabomber Reading

In order to get our message before the public with some chance of making a lasting impression, we’ve had to kill people . . .

--From a manifesto attributed to the Unabomber.

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The body is received in a white plastic body pouch which has on the zipper a Sacramento County Coroner’s Office Tag. . . .

--Opening of an autopsy report filed in the death of Sacramento timber lobbyist Gilbert Murray, the last person to be killed by the serial bomber.

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This is payoff time for the Unabomber. Gone are the days of ineffective little bombs that hurt nobody and barely made the papers. After 17 years in the trade, he at last has achieved full-blown notoriety, the target of the most intensive manhunt in the nation’s history, a mystery figure with the power--the Power!--to shut down airports and disrupt mail delivery and make headlines coast to coast.

But that’s not the best of it. In a conversion that must amaze even the Unabomber, he has begun to be treated as a man of serious thought and letters. The publisher of Penthouse wants to hire him as a monthly columnist. His 56-page manifesto--”Industrial Society and Its Future”--circulates through back channels among academicians and journalists. They pore over his every word, ostensibly for clues to his identity, but also as an intellectual pursuit. What does the Unabomber bring to the debate? they ask. What is his “point?”

“I really appreciated that he tried to educate me. . . ,”said a UC Berkeley professor to whom the Unabomber sent his treatise. “I would rather be having a dialogue [about] what concerns him and these issues in society.”

The professor’s relief upon receiving a kinder, gentler communique from the Unabomber was understandable, given the alternative. The alternative is what Murray, father of two, got one Monday morning in April.

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The body is received partially clothed in the following garments, which are noted to be markedly disrupted by thermal and blast injury: There are remnants of a white button-down shirt on the upper torso. Present about the neck are remnants of a burgundy and blue necktie. Portions of gray plaid slacks are present about the lower extremities. There is a marked disruption of the waist and thigh areas of the pants, especially on the anterior surface. . . .

The upper extremities reveal significant blast injury with the right hand and wrist absent. The right radius and ulna end with prominent fractures of the midshafts. Multiple abrasions are present over the right biceps. The left hand has prominent laceration and blast injury of the left thumb and index finger. The second, third and fourth fingers of the left hand are relatively intact with multiple burns and abrasions present. Present on the third (or ring) finger of the left hand is a plain yellow-metal band. The ring is removed in the usual fashion.

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Fascination with the case is strongest in the San Francisco Bay Area, which is thought to be the bomber’s base of operation. In Southern California, he is known chiefly as the idiot who created temporary havoc at LAX. Up here, however, his status approaches that of cult figure. “One thing I’ve noticed among the intellectual elite at this place, where I do a lot of work” a defense lawyer told a Chronicle reporter at the courthouse, “is that this guy is actually kind of admired privately. They wouldn’t necessarily say it in public, but ‘cool’ is even a word I hear used.”

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The skin of the face is markedly blackened and abraded secondary to blast trauma. The lips have large amounts of dry blood present. The tip of the tongue is clasped between the teeth . . . . Multiple lacerations are present on the anterior chest wall. The ribs and sternum of the right lateral chest are visible through a large defect . . . . The anterior abdominal wall, comprising the skin, subcutaneous fat, as well as the muscles of the anterior abdominal wall, is largely absent . . . .

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It’s not uncommon up here for people to confess, sheepishly, that they agree with at least some of what the Unabomber says. Yes, modern society is a mess. Yes, technology can make trouble. And so what? That, late in the game, the Unabomber has sought to sanitize his murders with a suggestion of political motive is irrelevant. He is what he is: a whack, a loon, a madman, and the time and ink spent in attempts to mine reason from his ramblings measure, not his lunacy, but that of the rest of us.

Want to read up on the Unabomber? Read Gil Murray’s autopsy, which in the last pages describes, in cold coroner-ese, how they literally scraped what was left of the man off walls and ceilings. These specimens of skin and bone filled 11 large brown paper bags. Explain to me the societal implications of that.