Unabomber’s Brother Gets $1 Million for Turning Him In

The Justice Department has given a $1-million reward to David Kaczynski for turning in his brother, Theodore, as the Unabomber. He has said he would use the money to ease the grief of families victimized by his brother’s bombs.

The decision to award the money to the Unabomber’s younger brother was announced Thursday by Justice Department spokesman John Russell, who said the check was turned over to Kaczynski.

Kaczynski was not immediately available for comment.

The FBI had tracked the Unabomber futilely for 18 years before his capture in a remote hermit’s shack in Montana in April 1996. Agents involved in the hunt said they might never have found the reclusive former mathematics professor without the help provided by David Kaczynski.

David Kaczynski approached the FBI through an attorney after he read portions of the Unabomber’s 35,000-word manifesto that federal agents had prevailed upon the Washington Post to publish. It reminded him of letters from his 55-year-old brother, who had moved to Montana after quitting a job at UC Berkeley.

Kaczynski’s trial ended in a plea bargain last January. In May, he was given four life sentences.

Last September, David Kaczynski said he would use the $1-million reward--if he got it--to help ease the grief of bomb victims’ families.

“My mother and I respect their loss and wish to do whatever we can to ease their grief,” David Kaczynski, 47, a social worker in upstate New York, said then.