On this episode of Fedit, we react to the Unabomber case. This case is probably one of the most expensive and longest FBI investigations in its history. It cost over $30 million to track down and catch a serial killer.
00:00:00.060What's up, guys? Welcome to FedIt. Today, we're going to react to the Unabomber, man.
00:00:03.560This is probably one of the biggest cases, the most expensive and longest investigation that the FBI has ever done as far as tracking a guy down.
00:00:11.200This is a big one, guys. Let's get right into it, man. This will be a good one.
00:00:17.000I was a special agent with Homeland Security Investigations, okay, guys? HSI.
00:00:20.240The cases that I did mostly were human smuggling and drug trafficking.
00:00:25.300No one else has these documents, by the way.
00:05:12.120The first bomb came in the spring of 1978. The damage it caused was minimal, but its impact would be enormous. With each new detonation, the bomber learned a little more about bombs, and law enforcement learned a little more about the man who sent them. Because its targets were universities and airlines, the FBI called him the Unabomber. I'm Jim Kallstrom, former director of the FBI's New York office.
00:05:36.660He was actually the special agent in charge, but most people wouldn't understand what that means, so he just says director. But what that means is he was a special agent in charge, which is the SCS or senior executive level manager. So he was the one running the office. Everyone went through him to get anything done. So that's what he was, guys. Or aka, the FBI calls it SAIC is what the FBI calls it. When I worked for HSI, we used to call it SAC, special agent in charge, but it's the same exact thing.
00:06:03.320We never knew the name Ted Kaczynski. We knew we were dealing with a disgruntled genius. We just didn't know how smart or how angry he truly was, or how far he'd go.
00:06:14.900But while the UNIQ somewhere in the 160s, guys, right around Albert Einstein level.
00:06:19.020Obama was carefully perfecting his bombs. We were refining our profile. It was all a matter of who would finish first.
00:06:26.960On May 25th, 1978, an engineering professor named Buckley Crist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, appeared in the mailroom with a shoebox-sized parcel.
00:06:43.960Professor Crist was listed as the return addressee, and he didn't know the man it was addressed to.
00:06:50.880Campus security guard Terry Marker cracked, maybe it's a bomb.
00:08:39.300It essentially was a wooden box that looked to be hand-fashioned, handmade.
00:08:45.680We found that it contained a barometric switch and some other initiating components, batteries, wires, and a container for the explosive charge.
00:09:00.840The barometric switch would function when the pressure changed in the baggage compartment sufficiently to close the switch or allow the barometric switch to function and then actually detonate the bomb.
00:09:16.580Pretty clever scheme, as you guys can see here.
00:09:18.980The use of an altitude-sensitive barometric switch told the FBI that they were dealing with a serious and smart bomber.
00:09:28.820Rone began his inquiries with the Chicago police.
00:09:32.680He was looking for anything to compare to the airline device.
00:09:39.020So this is prior to 9-11 or the formalization of, you know, terrorist attacks being fairly common on U.S. soil.
00:09:47.720So they didn't have really like something that they can go ahead and, you know, look to.
00:09:52.680You know, nowadays, right, with bombs, they're able to look at the bomb and decipher, okay, this comes from, you know, Al-Qaeda-type people or this is, you know, Islam extremists.
00:10:00.960Or this might be from some Cuban, you know, Cuban nationalists that are going crazy.
00:10:06.740Typically, you're able to identify the maker of the bomb based on how the bomb is constructed.
00:10:12.100But in this case, this is still fairly early in the FBI's journey to thwart terrorism.
00:10:19.220And they had never come up on something like this before.
00:10:22.720You know, obviously with a wooden shell, a sophisticated wiring system that, you know, detonates based off of altitude.
00:10:32.960At Northwestern University, a thorough search uncovered the existence of two minor and seemingly unrelated incidents at the university.
00:10:42.300In addition to learning of the device that injured Terry Marker, Rone learned of another.
00:10:48.840On May 9, 1979, another bomb had gone off at Northwestern University, seriously injuring graduate student John Harris.
00:10:59.460Its design was nearly identical to the first one.
00:11:03.540But since they were both relatively minor incidents, authorities at the time didn't connect the two.
00:11:10.700Dismissing those devices as amateurish pranks, the recovered debris was discarded.
00:11:15.680There were construction techniques, the way the wood was cut, the way it was put together, the markings on the wood, the way the tape was applied.
00:11:35.500The pipe bombs placed inside wooden boxes were all made of ordinary components, screws and nails and smokeless powder and black tape.
00:11:52.220So you got yourself a serial bomber right now, okay?
00:11:55.700So obviously this is going to have the FBI on high alert.
00:11:59.360The components were homemade and sanded to render them untraceable.
00:12:03.400Certain components were not crafted as much as fondled and played with and looked at.
00:12:15.520And you could see they were handled and shaped and reshaped.
00:12:20.060And that just struck me that somebody spent an awful lot of time on this bomb, enjoying putting it together.
00:12:26.140The FBI realized they were dealing with a serial bomber, one that was passionate about his craft.
00:12:35.420And guys, typically when you use the term serial to define maybe a serial killer or a serial bomber, whatever, typically it means they have a certain pattern and trend and how they commit their crimes and how they perpetrate the crime, okay?
00:12:46.660That's typically what a serial killer, serial bomber, serial anything typically means.
00:12:50.860No, not serial from like, you know, with milk or whatever, but serial as in they commit their crimes in a certain fashion and it follows this trend, okay?
00:13:01.440In the 1950s, a shy, highly intelligent boy from suburban Illinois named Ted Kaczynski skipped a grade in elementary school.
00:13:12.460Now we're going into the Unabomber's background.
00:13:14.960He was an introvert, preferring to withdraw into his room to study, especially to study chemistry.
00:13:25.100He was a prodigy with genius-level intelligence, his IQ top 170.
00:13:33.520Yeah, he was scored between 160 and 170.
00:13:39.420Went to Harvard, graduated in three years, guys.
00:29:15.840Berkeley graduate student John Houser, a captain in the Air Force, noticed on the floor a three-ring binder sitting on top of another object.
00:30:08.700Unabomb-related crime scene investigations conducted by the FBI, ATF, and the United States Postal Service had become frustratingly routine.
00:30:17.100Okay, so you guys may be wondering, hey, why the hell is the ATF involved?
00:30:22.040Because, hey, it doesn't stand for alcohol, tobacco, and firearms.
00:31:13.2801811 is a job series code for special agent in the U.S. government, whether you work for DEA, FBI, ATF, Postal Inspector, Secret Service, whatever it is, OSI, it's all 1811s.
00:31:25.420The recovered bomb components were packaged and sent to the FBI lab for future comparisons.
00:31:30.940Over the next few years, there would be many such examinations.
00:31:37.280On May 8th, 1985, a package was received at the Boeing Corporation in Auburn, Washington.
00:31:49.800It was addressed only to the company, was heavy, and had too much postage.
00:32:16.520On November 15th, 1985, Dr. James McConnell, a psychology professor at the University of Michigan, received a letter and package from a Ralph C. Kloppenberg.
00:32:30.080And also, just so you guys know, that bomb that didn't hurt anybody at the Boeing Foundation Fabrication Division, they safely detonated it, but they lost a lot of the forensic evidence.
00:32:41.060I'm getting this directly from the FBI website here.
00:33:40.880So, as an investigator, you're getting scared because, like, obviously each bomb gives you more evidence to try to figure out who the guy is.
00:33:47.760But, each bomb is becoming stronger and stronger, which means the likelihood of someone dying from one of these bombs going off is going to increase.
00:33:56.720And, obviously, as an investigator, you don't want that to happen.
00:34:02.740They were making little progress in determining the identity of the Unabomber.
00:34:08.460And he was throwing in little things like that, like the little note, FC, etc.
00:34:13.760He's putting these little things on the bombs, guys, so that he can throw people off so that they wouldn't be able to detect them and get on his trail.
00:34:21.380Which was actually very smart for him to do this.
00:34:23.060This is something that a lot of serial killers don't do, where they purposely put information in there to throw off investigators.
00:35:34.420The bomb that killed Hugh Scrutton was the most powerful yet.
00:35:40.100It consisted of a pipe within a pipe and contained all of the same characteristics as the others, right down to the F-C stamped on a surviving end cap.
00:35:48.720The unibomber investigation was now officially a homicide, I guess.
00:35:57.000Investigators stuck to their strategy of keeping the details of the case sequels, lest the unibomber learn what they knew, or worse, lest they encourage copycats.
00:36:06.560Agents were desperate for a solid lead.
00:36:11.280Ted Kaczynski was always active in his secluded cabin.
00:36:16.260When he wasn't making bombs, he was writing his philosophy that justified them.
00:36:23.760For Ted Kaczynski, technological society was a horror, defined by the Earth's destruction and human beings amounting to little more than mindless robots.
00:36:33.060In Ted Kaczynski's story, anyone who was participating in the human race's dependency on technology was a villain.
00:36:48.700On February 20th, 1987, a secretary at Cam's computer store in Salt Lake City looked out of her office window and caught a glimpse of a man in the parking lot, placing an object on the ground.
00:41:35.000Dr. Charles Epstein is a renowned geneticist at the University of San Francisco.
00:41:46.580On June 22, 1993, he sat down at his kitchen table to open his mail, including a padded envelope, which had arrived that day.
00:41:56.780The blast critically injured Dr. Epstein, after two and a half hours of surgery, he was stabilized and very lucky to be alive.
00:42:13.640Two days later, on June 24, Dr. David Galerger, a prominent computer scientist at Yale University, arrived early at his office to open his mail from the previous day.
00:44:00.480The FBI determined that the number was a social security number of a 20-year-old parolee in Northern California, incredibly with a tattoo on his arm reading pure wood.
00:44:14.480An investigation quickly dismissed him as the unibomber.
00:47:12.760And, you know, for big investigations like this, you typically want someone that's dedicated to the case.
00:47:16.880And they can go ahead and open their own case on their end, obviously, to document their hours, write their reports, et cetera, on your case.
00:47:23.380And that handles all the forensic information on the investigation, keeps things nice and clean and organized.
00:47:30.160Or they can write reports on your case, either or, but you definitely want to use the same guy every single time,
00:47:38.220especially for big investigations like this because you're going to need that person more than likely to come in and testify as a subject matter expert
00:47:43.660if the defendant ends up going to trial so they can talk about, you know, how they personally examined the information
00:47:49.880and how they were able to draw their conclusions.
00:47:51.680All the evidence in the Unabomb case, no matter if it was explosive-related or not, came through me and my unit.
00:48:01.680In a serial bombing-type case such as the Unabomb case, the most frustrating aspect was the fact that we were doing all forensic examinations
00:48:10.900that could possibly be done to the evidence, and it wasn't able to lead us to any individual.
00:48:16.420While the task force struggled, Kaczynski's warped revolution against society continued.
00:48:24.580On December 10, 1994, advertising executive Thomas Moser was opening his mail in his North Caldwell, New Jersey home.
00:48:33.020His wife and two daughters were upstairs.
00:48:36.480He examined a small package with excessive postage from an H.C. Wickle, Department of Economics, San Francisco State University.
00:48:46.420The explosion was the most gruesome yet, instantly decapitating Thomas Moser.
00:49:26.440As with the 15 bombs he had reconstructed, this one was unquestionably the work of the Unabomber.
00:49:36.540A few months later, Ted Kaczynski prepared for an extended visit to the West Coast.
00:49:41.820This trip would be his busiest to date.
00:49:44.320On April 19, 1995, Ted Kaczynski was in the San Francisco Bay Area when Timothy McVeigh's 2,000-pound fuel oil bomb destroyed the Alfred P. Murrow Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people.
00:50:01.120And I will also cover the Oklahoma City bombing as well, guys, from Timothy McVeigh.
00:50:25.520Support me, man, because like I said, I do this channel for you guys.
00:50:28.120I really do enjoy breaking down these cases and watching these types of documentaries and giving you guys a little bit more insight as to how these investigations are done from the perspective of a former federal agent that used to do these investigations themselves.
00:50:39.660Ted would not let his agenda be eclipsed by the devastation in Oklahoma.
00:50:46.100The next day, April 20th, the nation still reeling over Oklahoma City.
00:50:51.380Kaczynski mailed five items, four letters and a parcel.
00:50:57.620Within a few days, the mail arrived back east.
00:51:01.120First was a letter to the New York Times.
00:51:04.060FBI Special Agent Terry Turchy was second in command of the Unabombed Task Force.
00:51:09.620In the letter to the New York Times, he mentioned that he was claiming responsibility for the attacks on Thomas Moser, Charles Epstein and David Galerner.
00:51:19.440He also mentioned some of his goals and objectives and said that he was thinking of sending a manuscript essay and that he wanted them to consider publishing that essay.
00:51:29.880And if they did, he would make an agreement to cease committing terrorist acts.
00:51:37.420The second letter received was to recent victim David Galerner at Yale.
00:51:41.860Still remember, he was he lost his eye pretty much.
00:51:50.400Dr. Galerner, people with advanced degrees are not as smart as they think they are.
00:51:56.060If you'd had any brains, you would have realized that there are a lot of people out there who resent bitterly the way techno nerds like you are changing the world.
00:52:05.020On April 25th, 1995, a package arrived at the California Forestry Association addressed to its former president, William Dennis Law.
00:52:20.840Its current president, Gilbert Murray, decided to open it himself.
00:52:24.920It exploded with incredible violence, destroying everything in the office.
00:52:33.180Gil Murray was literally blown to pieces.
00:52:36.240Four blocks away, the governor of California heard the blast from his office.
00:53:30.880Two months after Murray was brutally killed, a letter arrived at the San Francisco Chronicle.
00:53:36.200It read, the terrorist group FC, called Unibomb by the FBI, is planning to blow up an airliner out of Los Angeles International Airport during the next six days.
00:53:48.460Okay, guys, one million dollars in 1994 is the equivalent of purchasing power to about one million nine hundred ninety nine thousand hundred sixty three dollars and twenty nine cents today.
00:54:00.000It's basically double two million dollars back in the early 90s would have been the purchasing power of today, which is wild that they would have that big of an award for someone like this.
00:54:10.180You don't see big rewards like this unless it's like a crazy, you know, international terrorist, you know, like Osama bin Laden had a big reward like this.
00:54:18.760So for the Unibomber to get this in the early 90s, crazy.
00:54:22.020That tells you how bad the FBI wanted this guy.
00:54:24.700The threat had to be taken absolutely seriously because the Unibomber had, in fact, placed a bomb aboard an aircraft before it wasn't lethal enough below the plane out of the sky.
00:54:37.120But we knew that that his bomb making ability had progressed enough that he certainly was capable of that now.
00:54:42.560The FBI saw to it that special security measures went into effect immediately at California airports.
00:54:50.080No one without a ticket was allowed through security.