Unabomber Suspect Ordered to California

Unabomber suspect Theodore J. Kaczynski on Friday was ordered moved to Sacramento to face charges in four separate bombing attacks that killed a Sacramento lobbyist and a computer store owner and maimed two university professors.

U.S. District Judge Charles C. Lovell issued the order, and the U.S. Marshals Service said later that Kaczynski will arrive in Sacramento on Monday night.

He is scheduled to be arraigned at 1 p.m. Tuesday before Magistrate Judge Peter A. Nowinski, the U.S. attorney’s office in Sacramento said.

After a nationwide manhunt for the elusive Unabomber believed responsible for killing three people and injuring 23 over a 17-year period, Kaczynski was arrested in early April at his cabin in Montana.

After arriving in the courtroom Friday, Kaczynski, dressed in khaki pants and a green shirt, removed his sport coat, smiled and chatted with his attorneys.

Once the proceedings began, the bearded former UC Berkeley math teacher listened attentively to the judge and answered several questions succinctly.

Kaczynski, 54, said “good morning” to the judge and responded to one question from Lovell about his condition by saying in a firm voice: “I am being treated very well.”

He did not contest Lovell’s order moving him to Sacramento.

Kaczynski had been held in Montana on a single explosives charge. But that changed Tuesday when a grand jury in Sacramento indicted him on 10 bombing-related charges.

On Friday, Lovell agreed to a request by Assistant U.S. Atty. Bernard F. Hubley to dismiss the Montana count to ease Kaczynski’s transfer to California.

Kaczynski, formally arrested Friday on the Unabomber charges, was brought from the county jail to the squat, five-story federal courthouse under heavy guard so Lovell could establish his legal identity. The hearing was held in a courtroom crowded with reporters.

The 15-minute proceeding capped a week of stepped-up activity in the Unabomber case. Even before the indictment, Lovell unsealed a lengthy affidavit that federal investigators used to persuade the judge to allow them to search Kaczynski’s shack, off a gravel road four miles from the hamlet of Lincoln and about 60 miles from Helena.

The sworn statement by Terry D. Turchie, an FBI agent who has headed a special San Francisco-based Unabomber task force, outlined similarities in the way the bombs were built, the methods of delivering them and the personal identification marks placed inside some of the bombs.

Underscoring those parallels, Turchie said eight of the 16 bombs linked to the Unabomber bore a personal identification mark consisting of the initials “FC.” For example, a part of the bomb that killed Sacramento computer store owner Hugh Scrutton in 1985 had “FC” stamped on it, according to Turchie’s statement.

Kaczynski was identified by the alias “FC” in the indictment. The initials are the same ones the Unabomber used in his 35,000-word anti-technology treatise published last year by the New York Times and the Washington Post.

On Friday, Kaczynski’s lawyer, Michael Donahoe, acknowledged his client’s identity but said he “was not prepared to admit that he is also known as FC,” as asserted by the government.

In correspondence, the Unabomber claimed the initials stood for an underground organization known as the Freedom Club. However, agents of the Unabomb task force have dismissed the existence of any organization, saying the Unabomber was a loner.

The task force took its name from the bomber’s targets, which included many university professors and an airline executive. It has consisted of FBI agents, postal inspectors and members of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

The agents are continuing to investigate the case, including the killing in 1994 of a New Jersey advertising executive.

After the serial bomber’s manifesto was printed, Kaczynski’s brother, David Kaczynski, realized that the Unabomber’s writings were strikingly similar to those of his older brother. Eventually, his concern was voiced to the agents.

In Sacramento, Theodore Kaczynski was charged with 10 counts of illegally transporting, mailing and using bombs, including charges that carry penalties of life in prison or death. Although there is no general federal murder charge, Atty. Gen. Janet Reno still could decide to seek the death penalty for Kaczynski, whose trial is not expected to begin until sometime next year.

In addition to Scrutton’s killing, Kaczynski is accused in the 1995 slaying of Gilbert Murray, president of the California Forestry Assn., who died when he opened a package addressed to his predecessor and it exploded.

Kaczynski also is charged with mailing bombs from Sacramento in 1993 that injured UC San Francisco geneticist Charles Epstein and Yale University computer scientist David Gelernter.

Kaczynski’s lawyers, from the Montana federal public defender’s office, declined to discuss the charges.

Times staff writers Dan Morain and Max Vanzi in Sacramento contributed to this story.