Family’s Agonizing Ordeal of Baring Bomb Suspect Told

Three language and human behavior experts privately examined a selection of Theodore J. Kaczynski’s letters last December and, much to his family’s anguish, concluded that there was a 60% to 80% chance he was the author of the Unabomber’s infamous published manifesto.

Clinton R. Van Zandt, a behavioral science specialist who until last year was the FBI’s chief hostage negotiator, said Monday that he conducted an intensive analysis of a number of letters submitted to him by a private investigator working for the Kaczynski family.

He was not told at the time who the writer was and the letters were retyped from the original handwriting. But the similarities were clear, he said in an interview.

“I saw phraseology, certain themes and sentence structures similar enough to make the analysis,” he said. “I felt there was a 60-plus percent probability that the letters and the manifesto were written by the same author.” He said two other experts he consulted for a second opinion increased the odds to 80%.

According to Tony Bisceglie, a Washington attorney who has assisted the Kaczynski family, the family had hoped postmarks on Theodore Kaczynski’s letters to them would show that he had remained in Montana and could not have been in places where the Unabomber had been seen or from which he had sent bombs. But they found otherwise.

“We could not find a postmark that would rule out the possibility that Ted had left the state,” Bisceglie said in a news conference.

The accounts by Van Zandt and Bisceglie provide a look at the agonizing process that David Kaczynski, the suspect’s younger brother, and his wife, Linda Patrik, went through from the time of their first inklings last year that Theodore Kaczynski might be linked to the 17-year string of mail-bomb attacks until the FBI raided his one-room shack last week.

Their research proved to be the precursor of the exhaustive investigative effort now underway in cities across the nation by authorities trying to pin down evidence that Theodore Kaczynski could have--and did--commit the attacks.

Separately, a source close to the investigation denied reports that federal agents searching Theodore Kaczynski’s Montana cabin have found pieces of paper with names of Unabomber victims written on them. The agents have found papers with names, the source said, but the names do not include those of victims, and law enforcement officials are not sure of the significance, if any, of the names they have found, the source said.

At the Justice Department, prosecutors from eight U.S. attorney’s offices, including San Francisco and Sacramento, met top department officials to coordinate the rapidly developing probe.

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Justice Department officials denied reports that the group had recommended that a trial in the case be held in Sacramento, which was the site of the Unabomber’s most recent attack. The sources did not rule out the possibility that Sacramento might be chosen as the trial site but said no recommendation had been made.

Theodore Kaczynski remains jailed in Helena, Mont., where the local sheriff told reporters he has been reading history books and jogging in an exercise yard. He has been charged only with possession of an unregistered explosive device. In Montana, federal officials said they expect to complete the search of his small cabin by the end of this week.

Several witnesses have told federal agents that they saw Kaczynski in Sacramento around the times of Unabomber attacks there. Agents have also combed through registration files of low-rent hotels and motels near the bus stations in Salt Lake City, where the Unabomber was seen by a witness in 1987 before a bomb attack.

Investigators suspect that Kaczynski may have traveled by bus from his home outside Lincoln, Mont., to a number of cities in which attacks occurred or from which mail bombs were sent.

Federal agents also believe that Kaczynski may have used aliases in his travels. Kwang Lee, manager of the Alta Motel Lodge in Salt Lake City, said that agents asked him about the aliases Dombek, Manny, Teszewski, Touminen and Konrad. “I browsed through my records but could not find any of these names,” he said.

In Northern California, hotel operators also reported recent visits from agents seeking registration information and mentioning a series of aliases. Kimberly Choi, manager of the Jefferson Inn in downtown Oakland, said she would have to check hotel records for the list of aliases she was given. “He could have stayed here and maybe he didn’t stay here,” she said.

As agents finish searching Kaczynski’s cabin, where he has lived for most of the last 20 years, the investigation elsewhere is attempting to fill gaps in the “time line” of his movements since 1978 and the known activities of the Unabomber since the attacks began in that year.

Last fall, Bisceglie said, David Kaczynski reluctantly started doing the same thing after he read the Unabomber’s 35,000-word statement of philosophy, jointly published at the terrorist’s demand by the Washington Post and New York Times, and noticed similarities with the views of his 53-year-old brother, a former mathematics professor living in seclusion in the Montana outback.

Bisceglie said David Kaczynski at first considered going to Theodore’s cabin and confronting him but that Theodore did not want him to come.

Bisceglie said that David experienced “tremendous dismay” at his suspicions and even today “is somewhat in shock.”

Asked whether the brother now thinks Theodore is the Unabomber, Bisceglie said: “I think that he believes that his brother is involved.” The lawyer said he knows of no information suggesting that Theodore acted other than alone.

While David had no knowledge of any use of explosives by his older brother, Bisceglie said, he did know that Theodore as a hobby had the ability to make rockets, mixing his own chemicals for the propellant “and to use metal tubing to fashion the rockets.”

At the press conference he called to speak for the family, Bisceglie also said David had last seen his brother six years ago, but that there had been correspondence with the family since then, with the most recent letter from Theodore last fall.

Bisceglie said there has been family financial support of Theodore over the years--amounts he estimated to be “in the hundreds of dollars,” including birthday and Christmas gifts. In addition, Bisceglie said, the suspect had worked in the Salt Lake City area in the early 1970s as a laborer.

Those points are significant because authorities have been trying to determine how Kaczynski could have financed his bomb-making activities and his travels to mail or deliver the devices. Officials and acquaintances said Kaczynski was not employed during most of the time he lived in the cabin, beginning in the 1970s.

According to the account provided by Bisceglie and others aiding the family since last fall, the family began exploring the possible link between Theodore and the Unabomber by contacting Susan Swanson, who worked at a Chicago investigative firm and was a childhood friend of Patrik’s.

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Paul Browne, a vice president with the firm, Investigative Group International, said Swanson compared the text of the Unabomber’s manifesto with the text of several “pieces of correspondence” from Theodore Kaczynski provided by the family.

“There were clear similarities in writing style and content,” Browne said. Swanson farmed out copies of the correspondence to Van Zandt.

Van Zandt said the material he examined included a four-page letter that was about 10 years old and a more recent one-page letter.

He declined to discuss the contents, but said that based on his work, he prepared a psychological profile of the author. He said it portrayed the writer as a white man aged 45 to 55 with a strong academic background who had possibly been a teacher and “appeared to be a loner.”

Browne said the analysis of the writings “seemed to point to” the conclusion “he was in fact the Unabomber, and this helped the family make the decision to go to the authorities.”

With the possible links to the Unabomber mounting, Bisceglie, who is also a friend of Swanson’s, contacted the FBI at the family’s behest. He said that in his initial discussions he did not disclose the names of Theodore or David Kaczynski because the family did not want a full-scale investigation of a “potentially innocent person” to be conducted. He said, however, that David wanted to make sure no further lives were lost if his brother was the Unabomber.

One of the reasons for trying to keep secret David’s role in prompting the investigation, Bisceglie said was a “realistic fear” that Theodore would retaliate if he had found out.

The attorney said that neither he nor David was aware of the $1 million reward posted for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the Unabomber. But he said there has been some consideration given to turning over any reward to victims of the bombings and their families.

Times staff writers Richard C. Paddock in Lincoln, Judy Pasternak and Stephen Braun in Chicago, Robert L. Jackson in Washington and Maura Dolan in Oakland contributed to this story.