U.S. Judge Orders Unabomber Suspect Moved to California

A federal judge Friday ordered Unabomber suspect Theodore J. Kaczynski moved from Montana to California to face charges that he carried out four bomb attacks, killing two people and injuring two.

Kaczynski, who appeared animated at the 20-minute hearing in U.S. District Court in Helena, said he had no objection to the request that he be moved to Sacramento, where he was indicted last week on charges stemming from the Unabomber’s 17-year anti-technology campaign of violence.

At the request of a prosecutor, U.S. District Judge Charles Lovell also dismissed explosives charges pending against Kaczynski in Montana as a formality to allow him to be moved to California.

Sherry Matteucci, the U.S. attorney for Montana, said she did not know when Kaczynski would be moved. She said she did not expect him to be moved Friday, however.

Kaczynski, 54, wearing tan pants, a green dress shirt and a beige tweed jacket that he quickly shed, appeared relaxed, smiling and talking with his court-appointed attorneys. Asked whether he felt well and whether he had been treated well, he responded “yes” in a clear, firm voice.

The Harvard-educated former mathematics professor was arrested at his small cabin outside Lincoln, Mont., on April 3.

A federal grand jury in Sacramento handed up an indictment Tuesday formally accusing him for the first time of being the Unabomber who planted or mailed 16 bombs that killed three people and injured 23 between 1978 and 1995.

The 10-count indictment charges Kaczynski with planting a bomb that killed a computer store owner in 1985 and with mailing a bomb that killed a timber industry lobbyist Gilbert Murray in 1995.

He is also charged with mailing bombs in 1993 to geneticist Charles Epstein and Yale University computer scientist David Gelernter.