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In 1971 Kaczynski set off for Montana, buying land and building his house and living on what he could grow or kill. He did odd jobs now and then but apparently got by on a few hundred dollars a year, with plenty of free time for his growing vocation: the disruption of the industrial society he had left behind. A fellow bank customer claims Kaczynski had some assets, yet six weeks ago he applied for a checkout clerk's job at Blackfoot market, which now sports a sign reading NO MEDIA, NO PRESS. Sherry Wood, the Lincoln librarian, is equally tight-lipped, though one of the library's unpaid volunteers has described his reading habits to the press. "I would go to jail before disclosing anything about my people," says Wood, who has nevertheless been grilled for several days by the FBI. She has also been offered bribes to talk about Kaczynski, but will publicly say only, "I like him."
On April 17 a federal grand jury will begin meeting in Great Falls to consider explosives charges against Kaczynski. If he is eventually charged for the Unabomber's spree, the case could be moved to San Francisco or some other jurisdiction where bombings occurred. Police and prosecutors from California to New Jersey are watching the mounting evidence and deciding whether to argue for the right to try him in their states. In the meantime, the investigators' job is not just to prove that Kaczynski looks, talks, walks and thinks like the Unabomber, but to show that he is the Unabomber. That means showing that he was in the right place at the right time to have concocted and delivered the bombs, that he never had an alibi, that he was never in jail or a mental hospital when a bombing occurred.
Already they have run down some bus tickets for trips out of Helena and identified the hotel he frequented there. Other agents last week were scouring hotels in Berkeley and Sacramento, California, showing clerks pictures of their suspect, hoping to place him in the city at the time when bombs were postmarked there. One of two typewriters found in the shack appears to match the one that produced the manifesto and will be subjected to comprehensive tests; the dna from saliva found on the stamps may be compared to Kaczynski's. The most daunting task, and one that may never be complete, is to determine how he chose his victims--how, in his omnivorous reading of magazines, newspapers, journals and academic texts, particular names caught his attention and sparked his rage.
But Thursday night, dozens of FBI agents celebrated at the Seven-Up Guest Ranch a few miles from Lincoln--which has become their temporary headquarters. They are sure they have their man. They believe they have not only stopped an 18-year crime spree but also bagged an exceptional specimen: the brilliant sociopath who made himself virtually invisible. Says Ken Thompson: "The boys in the basement at Quantico are going to spend years studying this case."
--Reported by Sam Allis/Cambridge, Wendy Cole/Chicago, Pat Dawson/Lincoln, David S. Jackson/San Francisco and Elaine Shannon/Washington