Compassion Over Shepard Stirs Emotion in Unabomber Family

The Unabomber’s brother, David Kaczynski, received an award Saturday from the state bar association for turning in his relative and said he had been moved to tears when Matthew Shepard’s mother asked that her son’s killer not face the death penalty in another widely publicized case.

“Maybe you can imagine what I was feeling: The report [on the Shepard case] hit very close to home, touching memories that are never far removed,” Kaczynski told members of the New York State Bar Assn.

The association had just given Kaczynski and his wife, Linda Patrik, its new Justice Award for making the difficult decision to turn in a loved one.

“We applaud their willingness to seek justice despite the personal costs and to do what is in the best interest of our country,” said Gregory X. Hesterberg, chairman of the association’s Committee on Justice and the Community.

In 1996, the couple alerted authorities of suspicions that Theodore J. Kaczynski was the Unabomber after reading published versions of the Unabomber’s “manifesto.” Kaczynski was arrested and, in 1998, pleaded guilty in Sacramento in a series of mail bombings that killed three people and injured 23 others. The couple then fought--against Kaczynski’s wishes--for a deal to save him from the death penalty.

On Saturday, the couple criticized the nation’s legal system for its use of capital punishment and its shortcomings in dealing with mentally ill criminals.

Judy Shepard should be held as a model of compassion, Kaczynski said, because she was able to find mercy for Aaron McKinney. McKinney and Russell Henderson beat her son, Matthew, and then tied him to a fence outside Laramie, Wyo., and left him to die last October.

Both men will serve life in prison. Mrs. Shepard asked prosecutors to spare McKinney from the death penalty.