Suspect in Montana Tied to Unabomber Blast, Source Says

Federal agents searching the cabin of former UC Berkeley math professor Theodore J. Kaczynski have found evidence directly connecting him to at least one of the bombings carried out by the elusive Unabomber, a source familiar with the investigation said Sunday.

The disclosure came even as new witness identifications placed Kaczynski at a hotel near the bus depot in Sacramento, where some of the Unabomber’s deadly parcels were posted.

Together, the two developments mark a strong indication that federal agents are building a concrete case against the thin, bearded hermit that could connect him not only to the Unabomber’s rambling writings, but also to the 16 bombs mailed or placed by the Unabomber over the past 18 years.

Investigators also revealed Sunday that the unexploded bomb discovered in Kaczynski’s remote cabin over the weekend was not only fully constructed, but had batteries attached to it--a key step in the final arming of a bomb. They would not say whether they had evidence that Kaczynski was preparing to deliver the bomb. The Unabomber had declared that he would cease his bombing campaign if the New York Times and Washington Post printed a 35,000-word manifesto, which the newspapers jointly published in the Post last year.

The explosive device, discovered as agents were painstakingly X-raying 40 boxes of materials found in Kaczynski’s cabin, is a crucial link in the puzzle. It not only strengthens the current explosives possession charge on which Kaczynski is being held, but it also may enable investigators to compare design and construction techniques with those in the Unabomber’s fatal repertoire.

Federal authorities would not provide specifics about new evidence found at the remote mountain site that provides a link to the Unabomber’s unique method of making bombs. Long before coming across Kaczynski, federal officials had established to their own satisfaction that all 16 bombs attributed to the Unabomber were made by the same person. So linking Kaczynski even to one of the 16 is a significant step toward connecting him to all--a connection that investigators are growing increasingly confident of being able to make.

“It’s there,” said a federal source, who requested anonymity.

In the widening trail following the 53-year-old Kaczynski’s travels from his Rocky Mountain cabin here, authorities have placed him in Sacramento, where two of the Unabomber’s three fatal attacks occurred. Two of his bombs and a recent Unabomber mailing to the New York Times had Sacramento postmarks.

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Frank and Gloria Hensley, desk clerks at the Royal Hotel, said they told FBI agents several weeks ago that they recognized a photo of a man later identified as Kaczynski as a guest who has stayed at the hotel several times since 1992.

“They came in and they showed a picture and they asked if I had seen the person either at the hotel or in the area. And he was familiar, so I said ‘Yes,’ ” Frank Hensley said. The hotel is next door to the Sacramento bus depot.

The trail to Sacramento tracks the web of transportation links connecting Kaczynski to the bombing locations or places where mail bombs were posted. There is increasing evidence that Kaczynski, who owned only a battered bicycle, traveled by bus from Montana to other locations.

During their three-hour visit, Hensley said, federal agents requested hotel records for the spring and summer of 1992, 1993 and 1995 for a guest registered under the last name of Konrad. Though no one by that name was located, Hensley said, the agents did take some of the hotel records for those years.

The string of attacks linked to the Unabomber include the June 22, 1993, injury of a UC San Francisco geneticist, the June 24, 1993, injury of a Yale University computer scientist and last April’s killing of Gilbert P. Murray, president of the California Forestry Assn., who died after opening a mail bomb in the group’s Sacramento office.

Although the 100-room Royal Hotel caters to transients, charging $27.50 a night, Hensley said he recognized the photograph shown by the FBI agents because the man’s “demeanor” was so atypical of the hotel’s clientele.

“[He] wasn’t the usual transient,” said Hensley, a former security guard. “He was very quiet. The way he spoke I could tell a little bit that he was educated . . . he was polite. He didn’t cause any problems whatsoever.”

That same serious demeanor prompted a fast-food restaurant manager to recall Kaczynski as well. Mike Singh, one of the managers of a Burger King near the bus depot, said Sunday he remembered Kaczynski from 1994 after seeing his picture on television.

Federal agents have visited several low-budget hotels in the Sacramento bus depot area, requesting registration records, going over them wearing gloves to preserve fingerprints and displaying a photo of a man hotel managers now recognize as Kaczynski.

“I asked, ‘What has this man done?’ ” said Ronald Henry, whose family owns the Hotel Capitol Park. “And they said, ‘Very bad things.’ ”

He said agents looked over several boxes of records and pulled seven or eight registration cards from June 17 to June 23, 1993.

As witnesses in Sacramento recalled Kaczynski, so too did bus firm employees in Montana. In Butte, Greyhound Bus Lines ticket agent Tom Gilbert said another agent and at least two drivers remembered seeing Kaczynski taking buses between Helena and Missoula.

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Gilbert said it was unclear whether Kaczynski had continued south to Salt Lake City, where the Unabomber placed two of his bombs. From Salt Lake City, he could have caught a bus traveling along Interstate 80 to Sacramento, Berkeley or San Francisco, where the Unabomber also placed bombs or mailed letters and packages.

At the search site in Lincoln and at FBI testing labs, the focus of the case is on tracking the Unabomber’s signature bomb-fashioning techniques and other physical evidence--including nearly 50 latent fingerprints obtained earlier from bomb fragments and letters and packages sent by the Unabomber.

“This case is going to be made forensically,” a source close to the investigation said.

Some of the Unabomber’s signatures are known: that at least some of his devices were engraved with the initials “FC,” which the terrorist said in his letters stood for “Freedom Club”; the bombs were characterized by wood cases and the use of smokeless powder.

But investigators have withheld from the public numerous other details about the bombs that could now prove key.

The Chicago Tribune reported Sunday that federal agents in mid-March searched a shed at the former Kaczynski family home in the Chicago suburb of Lombard, Ill., and found matches, traces of gunpowder and half-empty containers of compounds used in making explosive devices.

The Unabomber’s first bombs contained either wooden match heads or gunpowder. One of the devices contained both, the Tribune reported.

Prosecutors from the various jurisdictions where the Unabomber carried out his bombings will meet in Washington, D.C., today to discuss what charges should be brought against Kaczynski and where the case should be handled.

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The search of Kaczynski’s cabin is expected to continue until Wednesday or Thursday. The FBI has until Saturday either to complete its search and file a return on the search warrant or ask a federal magistrate for an extension.

“We’ll make damn sure there are no other bombs in the vicinity,” one official said.

Meanwhile, the small town of Lincoln, stunned by the media invasion that followed Kaczynski’s arrest four miles south of town last week, gathered at Easter services Sunday as religious leaders called for the community to coalesce around its shock and pain.

“We as a community need to come together to heal and be healed,” said Methodist Pastor Jack Preston, who also prayed for the eastern Montana community of Jordan, where a a group of anti-government “freemen” is defying law enforcement agents.

“We must remember that we are never judge and seldom jury,” the pastor added. “Help us to love the unlovable; help us to have hearts to love and to have minds to understand.”

Paddock reported from Lincoln, Ostrow from Washington and Krikorian from Los Angeles. Times staff writer Kim Murphy in Lincoln contributed to this story.