Unabomber Is Sent to ‘Alcatraz of the Rockies’

Convicted Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski was whisked from his jail cell here Tuesday and taken on a government jet to begin serving multiple life sentences in a Colorado prison known as “the Alcatraz of the Rockies.”

Passing through gates and razor-wire-lined walls of the tough, “super-max” penitentiary, Kaczynski was assigned a cell in solitary confinement, closed off from most human contact, U.S. Bureau of Prisons officials said.

Kaczynski’s swift entry into the prison system came one day after he was sentenced to four life terms plus 30 years for waging a 17-year terror campaign, using letter and package bombs. In a plea agreement, Kaczynski acknowledged guilt in five bombings that killed three people and took responsibility for 11 other attacks across the nation.

Surrounded by federal marshals, the confessed Unabomber was taken from his jail cell to a U.S. Marshals Service executive jet at nearby McClellan Air Force Base. He was flown to Pueblo, Colo., then taken on a 30-mile drive to the federal penitentiary at Florence, officials said.

Among Kaczynski’s fellow inmates at the prison 110 miles southwest of Denver are Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, lodged on death row, and other high-profile convicts including Charles Harrelson, father of actor Woody Harrelson, convicted of killing a federal judge; Ramzi Yousef, mastermind of the World Trade Center bombing; and Medellin drug trafficker Juan Ramon Matta Ballestros.

At Kaczynski’s sentencing hearing Monday, the 55-year-old former math instructor sat stone-faced as victims recounted the pain and loss caused by the Unabomber’s attacks.

U.S. District Judge Garland E. Burrell Jr. said Kaczynski, who showed no remorse for what the judge called “unspeakable and monstrous” crimes, continues to present a “grave danger to society.”

Accordingly, federal prison officials assigned Kaczynski to one of the nation’s harshest federal penitentiaries, known officially as an administrative maximum security unit.

At the 3-year-old high-tech fortress of concrete and steel, inmates spend 23 hours a day alone in 7-by-12-foot cells furnished with a bed, a stool, a shower and a toilet. Only the sky is visible through single windows. Meals for new inmates are delivered to cells mechanically.

Bureau of Prisons officials said there are gradations of confinement restrictions that may ease depending on an inmate’s conduct.

But some inmates in the high-tech institution are never allowed direct contact with guards and other prisoners, according to a government description of the prison.

Visits in such cases are conducted over video monitors attached to cell walls. Most inmates, however, are allowed to see relatives and lawyers at “non-contact visiting booths.”

Prison officials said inmates can receive psychological counseling at the Florence facility, some conducted over closed circuit television. But Kaczynski’s lawyer, Quin Denvir, said in Sacramento that it is unlikely that Kaczynski would seek such services. During his court case, Kaczynski’s lawyers and family described him as suffering from schizophrenia, but he refused to allow descriptions of his mental condition to be used as part of his defense.

“There is nothing in the public record indicating any interest [in such treatment] on his part,” Denvir said.

Times wire services contributed to this story.