U.S.

Unabomber Kin Gets $1M Reward

August 20, 1998 / 6:03 PM EDT / AP

The Justice Department has given a $1 million reward to David Kaczynski for turning in his brother, Theodore, as the Unabomber. He has said he would use the money to ease the grief of families victimized by his brother's bombs.

The decision to award the money to the Unabomber's younger brother was announced Thursday by Justice Department spokesman John Russell. David Kaczynski was not immediately available for comment.

The FBI had tracked the Unabomber futilely for 18 years before his capture in a remote, hermit's shack in Montana in April 1996. Agents involved in the hunt said they might never have found the reclusive ex-mathematics professor without the help provided by David Kaczynski.

David Kaczynski approached the FBI through an attorney after he read portions of the Unabomber's 35,000-word manifesto that federal agents had prevailed upon The Washington Post to publish. It reminded him of letters from his 55-year-old brother, who had moved to Montana after quitting a job at the University of California at Berkeley.

Kaczynski's trial ended in a plea bargain last January. In return for his guilty plea, the government, citing his apparent mental illness, agreed not to seek the death penalty. He was given four life sentences in May.

In 16 attacks between 1978 and 1995, the Unabomber killed three men and injured 29 others.

Last September, David Kaczynski said he would use the $1 million reward if he got it to help ease the grief of bomb victims' families.

"My mother and I respect their loss and wish to do whatever we can to ease their grief," David Kaczynski, 47, a social worker in upstate New York, said then.

A law firm had already offered to help him set up a trust fund to help survivors of the bombings, he said as he accepted an award for having the courage to notify authorities about his brother.

"I know that mere money cannot compensate for the loss of a loved one or rebuild a shattered life," David Kaczynski added.

The "Courage of Convictions" award was presented in September by Equinox, which runs the Albany-based youth shelter where he works.

He minimized his own courage, saying that ideal is more embodied in the homeless youngsters he counsels in his job.

He focused instead on thanking his mother, his wife and the friends who helped him out during the "bleak and hopeless" period when he began suspecting his brother was the Unabomber.

The pain of realizing his brother might be the Unabomber still lingers, David Kaczynski said then.

"The horror is with us now, and I very much doubt that it will ever leave us completely," he said. "Someone we love went over the edge or so it seems."

He lobbied to have his brother spared from the death penalty.

"I hope that Ted will someday forgive me," he said then.