The first bid came in at straight-up 10 a.m. Wednesday for $50 for the manifesto that "Unabomber" Ted Kaczynski typed in his 10-by-12 Montana cabin in his years-long attack on technology.
It was $150 within minutes and with 14 days and 23 minutes remaining in the first-ever online auction of a criminal’s belongings to raise money for his victims.
The bid on the handwritten version was at $5,000 by 10:30 a.m. The top bid for the typed version was at $2,525 by that time. The lot containing his birth certificate and licenses had a top bid of $1,525 by early afternoon. The familiar gray hoodie and six pairs of sunglasses had a top bid of $1,025. Only $50 had been offered by early afternoon for his bank statements.
Fifty-eight lots are being auctioned off by the federal General Services Administration and the bidding will continue until June 2.
“We’re using the very technology he railed against to monetize his victims,” Shyam Reddy, GSA’s regional administrator, said Wednesday, standing near a display of some of the items that will be sold.
Reddy said it’s a mystery how much will be raised for the families of the three killed and for the 23 injured. “There’s no defined market. There’s no book value,” Reddy said.
The court order that required the sale was an attempt to raise money to pay his victims restitution.
Many of the items were displayed for reporters Wednesday at a federal office building in Midtown, but pictures of them also are online on the site taking bids.
The FBI agent who was in charge of the investigation, now retired, and the behavioral expert who read all Kaczynski’s writings stood nearby, talking about their memories of a case that began in May 1978 when a primitive homemade bomb exploded and injured a Northwestern University campus police officer.
That was the first of 16 bombs Kaczynski either mailed or hand-delivered.
A computer rental store owner was killed in 1985 in Sacramento, Calif., Kaczynski’s first fatality. A New Jersey advertising executive was the second to be killed by one of Kaczynski’s bombs and his last bomb killed a timber industry lobbyist in Sacramento on April 24, 1995.
Kaczynski was caught on April 3, 1996, after his brother recognized his writings and contacted the FBI.
Last August, U.S. District Judge Garland Burrell of the Eastern District of California ordered that Kaczynski’s belongings be sold and the proceeds go to his victims. Kaczynski, imprisoned in Colorado at U.S. government’s most secure and restrictive facility, filed documents in court to stop the sale but failed.
The items were on display in Atlanta because they have been stored here.
“Whatever belonged to him is not going to be returned to him,” said retired FBI inspector Terry Turchie, who led the investigation.
The items for sale include a lot containing the gray hoodie and aviator sunglasses, typed and handwritten versions of his 35,000-word manifesto, two manual typewriters and his diplomas from Harvard University and the University of Michigan. Lesser-known items include another worn and ratty hoodie, homemade tools, a backpack he made out of poles and plastic bags and shoes with two soles, one smaller so law enforcement would be misled by smaller footprints.
“He was very concerned about getting caught,” said Turchie.
Turchie recalled that Kaczynski would retrieve stray hairs he found in public restrooms to plant on his bombs, another way of misleading investigators. He made switches for his bombs out of hickory wood so the devices could not be traced back to a particular manufacturer or store.
Officials expect the sale to go well. “There seems to be a huge public fascination with the Unabomber,” Turchie said.
The cabin was a “gold mine” of insight into a serial bomber that will help investigators in decades to come, he said.
“It takes you deep down into the soul of a serial bomber,” Turchie said. “These people do like to record and document every thought. He recorded everything.”
The auction is at http://gsaauctions.gov/gsaauctions/aucindx.
About the Author
